So too with the episode of the Bremen merchant. It smacks of the fourteenth century, and it is obvious that the doings of Karlsefni after leaving Greenland would not be accurately known to an inhabitant of that country. But it seems not improbable that the Greenlanders, being without timber, continued to visit the new lands to obtain such commodities, especially for use in ship-building, and indeed the Icelandic Annals for 1347 contain an allusion to a ship coming from Markland. It must be remembered that ‘mösur’ wood is not elsewhere specifically mentioned in the Flatey Book account, which makes it probable that this passage is from a different source from the main narrative. But, at a later date, some anonymous Greenlander may well have sold a ‘húsa-snotra’, which appears to have been something connected with a ship, to a German at Bergen or elsewhere, and, in conformity with the tendency to which allusion has been made of attributing the actions of lesser-known characters to those more distinguished, the transaction may easily have come to be associated with Karlsefni, as the principal hero of the Wineland tradition, and the only one who after his return left the coasts of Greenland. All this points to Greenland as the country where the Flatey Book version of the story originated, and if this be so it not only accounts for several inconsistencies in the rival versions, but renders it likely that the account here preserved escaped the contamination which affected the later Icelandic sagas, through the influence of foreign literature. III. THE STORIES AS HISTORY It has now, I think, been established that the Norse discovery of America is an historical fact, and that the broad lines of the story have a substantial claim to be regarded as history. While so much has been and must be generally admitted, there is still a considerable difference of opinion as to how far the details of any and which of the versions are to be treated as part of an authentic record, and how far, if at all, the saga has become contaminated with external and mythological influences. Some writers, such as Rafn and Horsford, have treated these records with a credulity to which no early work of history is probably entitled; others, of whose views Dr. Nansen is perhaps the most distinguished exponent, consider the admissible element of truth to have been so overlaid with fiction and imported mythology that the details can no longer make any claim to be regarded as historical. ‘It will therefore be seen’, says the writer last referred to, ‘that the whole narrative of the Wineland voyages is a mosaic of one feature after another gathered from East and West.’[77]