In February of the year 1477, Colombo (if we
are to believe his own words) visited Iceland, but very likely
he only got as far as the Faroe Islands which are cold enough
in February to be mistaken for Iceland by any one. Here
Colombo met the descendants of those brave Norsemen who
in the tenth century had settled in Greenland and who had
visited America in the eleventh century, when Leif's vessel
had been blown to the coast of Vineland, or Labrador.
What had become of those far western colonies no one
knew. The American colony of Thorfinn Karlsefne, the husband
of the widow of Leif's brother Thorstein, founded in the
year 1003, had been discontinued three years later on account
of the hostility of the Esquimaux. As for Greenland, not a
word had been heard from the settlers since the year 1440.
Very likely the Greenlanders had all died of the Black Death.
which had just killed half the people of Norway. However
that might be, the tradition of a ``vast land in the distant west''
still survived among the people of the Faroe and Iceland, and
Colombo must have heard of it. He gathered further information
among the fishermen of the northern Scottish islands and
then went to Portugal where he married the daughter of one
of the captains who had served under Prince Henry the
Navigator.
From that moment on (the year 1478) he devoted himself
to the quest of the western route to the Indies.
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