Adam of Bremen

Adam of Bremen gathered a great deal of interesting but irrelevant background information for his history of the archbishopric of Hamburg ("Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum", completed about AD 1075) so he added to the work a long appendix "Descriptio Insularum Aquilonis" on the geography of the Scandinavian and Atlantic islands. One of his most useful informants was King Sven Estridsson of Denmark, who seems to have provided a sound geographical account of the area, which Adam then fleshed out with further information from other sources. Unfortunately, some of those other sources were both misleading and misled, sometimes giving Adam information on the wrong places because the names sounded familiar. Here is an attempt to sort out Adam's description of the lands in the far Atlantic (with the "schola" footnotes, probably not by Adam himself, incorporated in brackets). On the translated side below, yellow is probably reliable, pink is material referring to the wrong place, blue is just plain fiction, [and green in square brackets is my commentary].

Sunt autem plures aliae in occeano insulae, quarum non minima Gronland, profundius in occeano sita contra montes Suediae vel Riphea iuga. Ad quam ferunt insulam a littore Nortmannorum vela pandi quinque aut septem diebus, quemadmodum ad Island. Homines ibi a salo cerulei; unde et regio illa nomen accepit; qui similem Islanis vitam agunt, excepto quod crudeliores sunt raptuque pyratico remigantibus infesti. Ad eos etiam sermo est nuper christianitatem pervolasse.	[This is actually the second entry in a list starting with Iceland, called "Island" in Norse or "Thule" in Latin] There are, moreover, many other islands in the ocean, of which not the least is Greenland, sited in the ocean depths opposite the Swedish mountains or Rhipean ridge. [I think "opposite" refers, like the next sentence, to a sailing course, due west from the mountains at the far north of Sweden. The term "Riphea" has probably been introduced by Adam- a reference to the legendary mountains from which the North Wind blows, which he mentions several times in his work, in a very confused fashion] To this island from the Norwegian coast the sail lasts five to seven days, about the same as to Iceland. There are men there blueish-green from the sea- from which the region also takes its name- who lead lives like the Icelanders except that they are more cruelly attacked and plundered by pirates in oared boats [I have seen this translated to make the Greenlanders the attackers and the "remigantibus" (literally "rowers") the victims, but "infesti" is passive, and Greenland seems a poor base for attacks on shipping]. To them also the news about Christianity has recently flown.
Tercia est Halagland insula vicinior Nortmanniae (Alii dicunt, Halagland esse partem Nordmanniae postremam, quod sit proxima Scritefingis, asperitate montium et frigoris inaccessibilis), magnitudine ceteris non impar. Haec in estate circa solsticium per quatuordecim dies continuos solem videt super terram et in hieme similiter per totidem dies sole caret. [Irrelevant bits omitted here] Itaque rex Danorum cum multis aliis contestatus est hoc ibi contingere, sicut in Suedia et in Norvegia et in ceteris quae ibi sunt insulis.	The third is "Halagland" [the King probably said "Helluland" but somewhere along the line it got confused with Halgoland, aka Halogaland, at the far north of Scandinavia] an island nearer to Norway (others say Halgoland is the furthest part of Norway, which is next to the Scritefinns, inaccessible due to the ruggedness of the mountains and the cold), not unlike the others in size. [i.e. that last phrase is probably from the King's original description of Helluland] Here in summer, for fourteen days continuously around the solstice, one sees the sun above the land, and in winter similarly for the same number of days it is absent. [Yes, we're in Norway's famous " Land of the Midnight Sun"- for this to be Helluland, it would have to be north of the Cumberland Peninsula on Baffin Island; and apart from the folly of making such a trip in midwinter, the midnight phenomena would be seen better from Greenland's south-west facing coast. I omit most of the rest of Adam's description of the phenomenon] Hence the King of the Danes with many others is a witness to this happening there, just as in Sweden and in Norway and in the other islands which are there. [Although this is still confusing Helluland with Halgoland, some have taken it as evidence that King Sven took part in a large trans-Atlantic expedition]
Praeterea unam adhuc insulam recitavit a multis in eo repertam occeano, quae dicitur Winland, eo quod ibi vites sponte nascantur, vinum optimum ferentes. Nam et fruges ibi non seminatas habundare, non fabulosa opinione, sed certa comperimus relatione Danorum. [This section is not in all manuscripts: Post quam insulam, ait, terra non invenitur habitabilis in illo occeano, sed omnia quae ultra sunt glacie intolerabili ac caligine inmensa plena sunt. Cuius rei Marcianus ita meminit: 'Ultra Thilen', inquiens, 'navigatione unius diei mare concretum est'. Temptavit hoc nuper experientissimus Nordmannorum princeps Haraldus. Qui latitudinem septentrionalis occeani perscrutatus navibus, tandem caligantibus ante ora deficientis mundi finibus inmane abyssi baratrum retroactis vestigiis pene vix salvus evasit.]	Moreover, he told of still another island in that ocean, discovered by a number of people [OR of the many discovered in that ocean- sometimes I really hate Latin], which is called Vinland because vines grow wild there, producing the best of wine. For crops also abound there without being sown- not a fabulous rumour, but fact learned from the reports of the Danes. After this island, he said, no habitable land is to be found in that ocean, but all those beyond are full of intolerable ice and vast fog-banks. On which subjects Marcianus noted as follows, saying "One day's sail beyond Thule/Iceland the sea is solid". That most experienced prince of the Norwegians, Harald, lately tried this- searching the northern latitudes of the ocean with his ships; finally giving up before the foggy boundary and retracing his course away from the immense abyss to the underworld, he only just escaped with his life.
In Dania vero supervixerunt adhuc theologus Poppo et ille nobilis Odinkar episcopus (Odinkar filius erat Toki ducis Winlandensis et sedem in Ripa habuit. Nam tercia pars terrae Winlandensis patrimonium eius fuisse narratur, et tamen vir tantarum divitiarum mirae fuit continentiae. Cuius unum virtutis exemplum comperi, quod omni quadragesimali tempore, semper altero die intermisso, iussit se verberibus a quodam suo affligi presbytero), quem pro fide ac sanctitate vitae eius familiarissimum habuit archiepiscopus. Hos duos episcopos solummodo in Iudlant fuisse comperimus, antequam Chnut regnum intraret.	[This passage is from the main body of Adam's text about bishops etc., not the geographical appendix, and I'm only going to translate the first sentence of the note in brackets, which contains one exciting but misleading word] Odinkar was son of Toki duke of Wendland and had his seat in Ribe [Adam knew the place he meant on this occasion, for Wendland was the northern area of modern Germany, but the name in Latin happens to be the same as Vinland]

For lots more references to primary sources relating to misconceptions about the early history of the North Atlantic region, see my Primesauce pages.