It seems to me, however, that too much importance may easily be attached to the fruits of this sort of microscopic criticism. The broad fact that we have two quite independent versions telling to all intents and purposes the same story—at any rate providing material for a substantially consistent and circumstantial history collated from both sources—is much more important than the existence of any number of minor discrepancies. By placing ourselves as far as possible in the positions both of the actors and chroniclers of these adventures we are likely, I think, to get a fuller appreciation of the facts as they were and of the truth with which they have been related than if we pore with a too studious eye over every line and every word, with a view, if it be possible, to establish an inevitable but trivial inconsistency. _A Greenland Saga?_ The reader who has carefully followed the argument so far will at this point probably be disposed to make some such observation as follows: You argue that the story is more likely to have lost the additional facts given in the Flatey Book than to have invented them by the natural operation of tradition. Well and good. You also point out, with a certain amount of plausibility, that the probable state of interest and knowledge in Iceland was just such as to produce precisely those alterations and omissions from what you consider the true course of the story, which, according to you, have taken place in what we may call Hauk’s version. You appear to forget, however, that both texts are Icelandic, and that this argument ought therefore to apply with equal force to the Flatey version, where the parts uninteresting to Icelanders are notwithstanding retained. My first answer to this would be that it is quite possible that actual facts might be retained in one version in Iceland, even though not of great interest to the people of that country, but it is highly improbable that an Icelandic chronicler would be at the pains to supply by invention precisely those points in which his audience would feel the least concern. My own private conviction, however, is that the Flatey version is in the main drawn from a Greenland source. Here we are embarking upon conjecture, a conjecture, by the way, which has been made before, but it may be interesting shortly to consider the grounds upon which such a theory is based.