The Flat Island Book consists of transcripts of various sagas made by the Icelandic priests Jon Thordsson and Magnus Thorhallsson. Very little of their lives is known, but there is evidence to show that the most important portion of the copying was completed about 1380. There is, however, no information concerning the original from which the transcripts were made. From internal evidence, however, Dr. Storm of the University of Christiania thinks that this original account was a late production, possibly of the fourteenth century.[4-1] It is, moreover, evident that this original account was quite different from the one from which the existing "Saga of Eric the Red" was made, so that we have two distinct accounts of the same set of events, both separately derived from oral tradition, a fact which, on account of the lack of harmony in details, has been the source of much confusion, but which nevertheless gives strong testimony concerning the verity of the Vinland tradition in its general outlines.
The saga which has best stood the test of modern criticism, namely the "Saga of Eric the Red," has beyond this fact the additional advantage of having come down to us in two different vellums. The one is found in Hauk's Book, No. 544 of the Arne-Magnæan Collection in Copenhagen, and the other is in No. 557 of the same collection. These two narratives (in vellums 544 and 557) tell the same story. They are so closely allied that the translation which appears in this volume has been made from a collation of both texts, that of Hauk's Book (544) having been more closely followed.[5-1] The Hauk's Book text is clearly legible; No. 557 is not in such good condition.
Many facts in the life of Hauk Erlendsson, who with the assistance of two secretaries made Hauk's Book, are known. He was in 1294 made a "lawman" in Iceland, and died in Norway in 1334. There are reasons for believing that the vellum bearing his name was written a number of years before his death, probably during the period 1310-1320. Hauk was particularly interested in the "Saga of Eric the Red," as he was descended from Thorfinn Karlsefni, the principal character of the saga, a fact that perhaps lends a certain authority to this version as against that of the Flat Island Book. Hauk brings the genealogical data of the saga down to his own time, which is not done in No. 557, one fact among others which shows that 557 is not a copy of 544.