The earlier writers on the subject of the Wineland voyages based their theories very largely on the Flatey version, and indeed accepted its authority as in every way preferable to the alternative rendering of the story. Laing, for example, in his preface to the Heimskringla, laments the fact that any other document besides the Flatey Book should come into the discussion at all: and Hauk’s version is dismissed by a writer in the _Cornhill Magazine_ for 1872 (vol. xxvi) as ‘a later manuscript ... full of the most marvellous impossibilities’. In a slashing and sceptical paper on the subject in vol. VII of the _Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society_, by R. G. Haliburton, the same view is emphasized. This writer had but little faith in any of the stories, but he treated the Flatey account as at all events preferable to that of the Saga of Eric the Red. Perhaps none of the writers cited above can be considered as of very high authority, but their attitude is typical of the older school of thought, and the Flatey Book has as great a critic as Vigfusson on its side. They are quoted to show how widely the opinions of students can vary. For since Gustav Storm in 1887 published his _Studier over Vinlandsreiserne_[72], his views, which have found very general acceptance and still hold the field, have completely reversed the relative status of the different versions. To-day it is the Flatey Book which is criticized, and on all points where it joins issue with the rival version the evidence of the latter is preferred. With great deference to those whose learning has contributed to such a result, it seems to me that such criticism has gone a great deal too far. Let us endeavour impartially to consider the main points wherein there is variance, and thus form our own conclusion as to which story is the more correct.[73] _Bjarni Herjulfson._ Herjulf, Bjarni’s father, was undoubtedly a real person, whose name and pedigree occur in Landnáma, and it appears to be historically established that he was one of Eric’s companions when Greenland was colonized in A.D. 985 or 986. A well-known headland in Greenland was named after him, and in fact no one hitherto has ventured to question Herjulf’s existence, or his emigration to Greenland.