In considering Thorvald’s final voyage, we may take the descriptions of both authorities together. We should aim, in fact, at finding a locality embodying the highest common factor of both versions. To the point of Keelness both stories agree, the Flatey version saying that Thorvald sailed ‘fyrir austan’, i.e. either turned eastward from his camp or followed an eastward-facing coastline. Both may be true if we consider the starting-point to have lain somewhere on the heel of the Barnstable peninsula. Thorvald would first turn east and then follow the eastern coastline of Cape Cod, to reach ‘the more northerly part of the country’ which, we are told, was his next objective. Eric’s Saga says they sailed north to Keelness, which comes to the same thing. Then, according to the Flatey version, they were wrecked on the point of Keelness, and, after a long stay to carry out the necessary repairs, they turned eastward into a closely adjacent fjord. The fact that it was closely adjacent is important. Eric’s Saga states that on rounding Keelness they bore along to the west of it, which, as Dieserud points out—though with a different intention—should be taken with the phrase which follows, ‘nordr aptr’ (back north), and therefore means a voyage southwards along the west coast of the promontory, not a voyage westwards. Apart from the clue given by the expression ‘back north’, the Icelandic would bear either interpretation. The same version of the narrative then mentions that they came to a river flowing from east to west, and lay by its southern bank. Now, if we consider Keelness to be Cape Cod, both versions are roughly correct, though the Flatey Book is slightly more so than Eric’s Saga. From the extreme point of Cape Cod the course would lie eastward to the mouth of the Pamet river, which flows westward, but, broadly speaking, the expedition would be following the west coast of the peninsula. In the time of the Pilgrim Fathers all this coast was densely wooded. As to its being a beautiful spot for a home, this may have been Thorvald’s opinion, or an embellishment by the story-teller, who has apparently introduced some fictitious touches here of bodings and warnings. Such a detail need not trouble us. The only objection to the theory is that the Saga of Eric the Red says that they had sailed a long time; if this, however, means from Straumsfjord and not merely from Keelness, it may well be literally true.