as
of excellent family. His lineage is given at greater length in the
_Landnama-bok_ (Book of Settlements).

[31-1] Usually called Gudrid.

[32-1] There is doubt as to why the expedition sailed northwest to the
Western Settlement. Possibly Thorfinn desired to make a different start
than Thorstein, whose expedition was a failure. See Reeves, p. 172, (45).

[32-2] _Doegr_ was a period of twelve hours. Reeves quotes the following
from an old Icelandic work: "In the day there are two _doegr_; in the
_doegr_ twelve hours." A _doegr's_ sailing is estimated to have been
about one hundred miles. There is evidently a clerical error in this
passage after the number of days' sailing. The words for "two" and
"seven" are very similar in old Norse.

[33-1] The language of the vellum AM. 557 is somewhat different in this
and the previous sentence. It does not say that "they sailed southward
along the land for a long time, and came to a cape," but, "when two
_doegr_ had elapsed, they descried land, and they sailed off this land;
there was a cape to which they came. They beat into the wind along this
coast, having the land upon the starboard side. This was a bleak coast,
with long and sandy shores. They went ashore in boats, and found the
keel of a ship, so they called it Keelness there; they likewise gave a
name to the strands and called them Wonderstrands, because they were
long to sail by."

[33-2] AM. 557 says _biafal_. Neither word has been identified.

[33-3] Hauk's Book says "eider-ducks."

[34-1] The god Thor.

[35-1] The prose sense is: "Men promised me, when I came hither, that I
should have the best of drink; it behooves me before all to blame the
land. See, oh, man! how I must raise the pail; instead of drinking wine,
I have to stoop to the spring" (Reeves).

[35-2] The prose sense is: "Let us return to our countrymen, leaving
those who like the country here, to cook their whale on Wonder-strand."
From an archaic form in these lines it is apparent that they are older
than either of the vellums, and must have been composed at least a
century before Hauk's Book was written; they may well be much older than
the beginning of the thirteenth century (Reeves). The antiquity of the
verses of the saga is also attested by a certain metrical irregularity,
as in poetry of the tenth and beginning of the eleventh centuries
(Storm).

[35-3] In the next sentence the authority for this doubtful statement
seems to be placed upon