The World's Columbian Exposition 1893. Chicago, U.S.A. 1893
Official Catalogue With Illustrations issued by the Royal Danish Commission

140 DENMARK expeditions that were made from Greenland, and later on from Norway, to Vineland. The pages of this folio manuscript, bound in two vo- lumes and called the Flateybook, which since 1662 has belon- ged to the Great Royal library at Copenhagen, are 42.5 cm. high by 28.5 cm. wide. Each page is divided into two written columns of sixty lines each, 32 cm. high and 23 cm. wide jointly. Grcenlendinga pattr begins to the right at the bottom of a left-hand page, and this beginning, the last fifteen lines from the bottom, is reproduced on the opposite leaf*). Translated into English the Icelandic text runs as follows: Here, begins the Brief History of the Greenlanders. Next to this is now to be told how Biarni Heriulfsson came out from Greenland on a visit to Earl Eric (in Norway), by whom he was well received. Biarni gave an account of his travels when he saw the lands, and the people thought that he had been lack- ing in enterprise, since he had no report to give concerning these countries, and the fact brought him reproach. Biarni was appointed one of the Earl’s men, and went out to Greenland the following summer. There was now much talk about voyages of discovery. Leif the son of Eric the Red, of Brattahlid, visited Biarni Heriulfsson and bought a ship of him, and collected a crew, until they formed altogether a company of thirty-five men. Leif invited his father, Eric, to become the leader of the expedition, but Eric declined, saying that he was then stricken in years, and adding that he was less able to endure the exposure of sea-life than he had been. Leif replied that he would nevertheless be the one who would be most apt to bring good luck, and Eric yielded to Leif’s solicitation and rode from home when they were ready to sail. When he was but a short distance from the ship. . . . *) In the photo-lithographic edition of the pages of the Flateybook that treat about the discovery of Vineland and which, as stated above p. 67, is exhibited by the topographic department of the Danish Staff, the text is accompanied by a transliteration into modern types and an English and a Danish translation.