176 p. Illustrated with (lithographed) facsimiles of early Icelandic and Latin manuscripts. 4to. 31 cm. Very handsome original full cloth binding, decorated in silver and black. Edges uncut. Mildly XLib. Though it abounds in contradictions, 'The Flatey Book' (along with 'Hauk's Book' - also included in part here) is the chief repository of facts concerning the North American Vinland voyages of the Norsemen. Completed around 1380, the actual manuscript of this collection of Icelandic sagas was presented to the Danish King in 1662. According to this version, Biarni Heriulfsson, on a voyage from Iceland to Greenland around 985, was blown off course and sighted new lands to the south-west. Fifteen years later Leif Ericsson set out from Greenland in search of the lands that Biarni had seen, and found them. These he named: Helluland (Flat-stone-land); Markland (Forestland); and Vinland (Wineland). After his return, successive expeditions visited the new lands. In all probability, the Vinland they discove red now belongs to some part of southern Nova Scotia (though some claim it for Rhode Island). This collection of manuscripts and translations into English and Danish is edited by Rasmus Bjorn Anderson (1846-1936). It is augmented and supported by several very interesting texts from the Vatican, about the Catholic Church in America Greenland and before the time of Columbus. These were discovered in 1902, and first exhibited at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition (1904). Reading the Flatey sagas, we find that the grapes of Vinland were discovered in Winter; by Leif's foster-father, Tyrker the German; who got drunk from eating the fruit; which grew on trees large enough for building timber. One wonders why they did not stay? A fine copy of this important text about the Discovery of America by Norsemen. **PRICE JUST REDUCED! W150
