Vikings in America (38 page)

Thingvellir. The Althing in session, as imagined by William G. Collingwood in this 1875 painting.

The Icelandic Sagas. This picture, from the fourteenth-century
Flateyjarbok
, now in the Arni Magnusson Institute, Iceland, shows King Harald I Fairhair receiving the Shetlands.

Green Greenland. This summer view in the vicinity of Kangerlussuaq demonstrates the appropriateness of the name Greenland.

L'Anse aux Meadows. View of the reconstructed Viking buildings.

The Skalholt Map. Universally acknowledged as a genuine Icelandic map showing Vinland, it is fitting that it should be commemorated on this 1967 postage stamp.

The Vinland Map.

Narwhals.

Unicorn. A frequent theme of European art in the fifteenth century. This tapestry of
The Maiden and the Unicorn
is in the Musée de Cluny, Paris.

The Kensington Runestone.

Viking Strap End (tenth century from East Anglia, England). This is typical of the many small metal detector finds from Europe and perhaps from America.

Hans Egede (1686–1758), the missionary to Greenland.

The Greenland or Whale Fishery. The eighteenth-century concept of Greenland is illustrated by this engraving, from a picture of about 1740 attributed to Thomas Baston.

Magna Britannia
by Petrus Bertius. This map of 1616 shows the tiny island of Rona situated off the north-west coast of Scotland.