Then too we have the evidence of Adam of Bremen, to which allusion has been made in the chapter on sources. Adam, indeed, is likely to have been well acquainted with the classical allusions to the Fortunate Isles, but the same can hardly be predicated of his informant King Svein of Denmark, and the Danes whose ‘_certa relatio_’ is contrasted by this author, and as I think purposely contrasted, with the ‘_fabulosa opinio_’ on which the existence of such a country had hitherto rested. Adam’s testimony, dating from about 1070, may therefore be regarded as very strong and practically contemporary corroboration of the discovery of the vines alluded to in these sagas. Again, it is clear that by the time of Ari the Learned, who was born in 1067, the name Wineland had become definitely attached to a country discovered in the west by the Norse explorers, whose existence and position were well enough known to be understood in a casual allusion. It seems to me in the last degree improbable that, by the time Ari wrote, so large an accretion of legend should have collected round the story of the discovery as to account for the name containing an allusion to wine if grapes had not in fact been discovered there. The style of Ari’s writings, as indeed of all the earlier sagas, is the most independent and natural to be found in the whole of literature; this is due to the absence in these times of almost all external influence. It is clear too that Ari was well qualified for the duties of an historian by a most discriminating judgement as to the merits of his sources of information; he is constantly giving us the names and qualifications of the persons from whom his statements are derived, and their knowledge not infrequently goes back to the period now under consideration; hence it is impossible to ignore the value of a mention of a land of vines or wine in the work of this early and conscientious authority. But it is further to be observed that if the Norsemen discovered America—and it is generally agreed that they did—the commodities of which the sagas speak were in fact there, waiting to be discovered. Precisely the same two things—wild grapes and cereals—struck almost every one of the rediscoverers and later explorers of this continent. The coincidence of a mention of wild vines and corn in the mythical lands of classical writers is just as strong an argument against the truthfulness of these later explorers as of the Norsemen, yet no one doubts their word, corroborated as it is by the facts known to us at the present day. The whole force of Dr. Nansen’s argument under this head rests upon this coincidence; in fact, he summarizes it in these words: ‘The resemblance between this description (Isidore’s of the Fortunate Isles) and that of Wineland is so close that it cannot be explained away as fortuitous.’[79] Yet the resemblance is just as close between the passage cited and many in the reports of later explorers, where it is quite certainly fortuitous.