[In the following essay, York attempts to identify the country Wace calls Wenelande in Le Roman de Brut.]

When Wace wrote his account of Arthur's Scandinavian conquest, he added Rummaret of Wenelande to Geoffrey's list of kings and kingdoms that submitted to Arthur.¹ Ever since Le Roux de Lincy published his edition of Le Roman de Brut (1836-38), scholars have tried to solve the questions raised by these names: where Wace got them, who Rummaret is, and what country he meant by Wenelande. In 1941 Margaret Houck concluded from her study of Wace's sources that Wace derived the names from oral tradition, and this theory has been repeated without further addition through succeeding years.² Rummaret remains a nebulous figure, but with him this study is not concerned.

The identification of Wenelande has received wider attention. The name was picked up from Wace by Layamon, Robert Mannyng, and a few other adaptors, but their accounts give no clue as to the identification. There is one account of Arthur's Northern conquest, however, which can help to identify Wenelande. This is a pseudo-historical passage inserted in the Leges Edwardi Confessoris, an account which has gone without comment by students of Wace and Arthurian literature. De Lincy printed the passage in a footnote in his “Analyse,” not as a comment on Wenelande, but as an account of Arthur written prior to Geoffrey. He erroneously thought it belonged to the eleventh century.³

The Leges Edwardi Confessoris is a collection of Anglo-Saxon laws translated into Latin and traditionally attributed to Edward the Confessor. Both the original and a second version were compiled in the first half of the twelfth century. In the thirteenth century the second version was reworked by a Londoner, who inserted at various places a number of pseudo-historical passages. This version, known as the third recension, was considered authoritative by legists of its day and was used by Bracton. In manuscript tradition it is part of a larger compilation which Liebermann called the Leges Anglorum. He dated the lost original of this compilation at around 1210. The passage containing the Arthurian material is inserted in the thirty-second chapter of the Leges Edwardi and is itself divided into chapters, each with a title. Chapter 5 (32 E-E6, according to Liebermann's notation) is the Arthurian section and is entitled De jure et de appendiciis corone regni Britannie.⁴

The account has to do with Arthur's subjugation of the Northern kingdoms. Arthur is depicted as a benign conquerer. The subdued peoples are proud to be united politically and socially with the Britons. Arthur commands them to become Christians and to be baptized. He has his earliest known encounter with the pope, who grants him the right to rule the Northern kingdoms in perpetuum. Arthur conquers all the lands mentioned in Geoffrey's Historia, but his conquest extends much farther. He subdues many of the outer islands until finally his kingdom reaches all the way to Russia. The text reads thus:

subiugauit sibi … Scanciam totam … et omnes insulas ultra Scanciam, scilicet Islandiam et Grenelandiam, que sunt de appendiciis Norweye, et Suetheidam et Hiberniam et Gutlandiam et Daciam et Semelandiam et Wynelandiam et Curlandiam et Roe et Fenielandiam et Wirlandiam et Estlandiam et Cherrelam et Lappam et omnes alias terras et insulas orientales occeani usque Russiam … et multas alias insulas ultra Scanciam.⁵

(The italics are mine.)

The significant names in this passage are Wynelandia, Finielandia, and Grenelandia. Wynelandia is Wace's Wenelande. That the author derived it from Wace is very unlikely, since his list of lands conquered by Arthur includes a number of other place names not in Wace, and no other feature of his account remotely resembles that of the French poet. The source of the passage is unknown. The author knew the Historia, since his fourth chapter (32D-D7) consists of Book I, Chapter 2 of that work, but he obviously did not get his Arthurian material from Geoffrey. Liebermann says that while he may to some extent reflect historical events of his day, his remarks about Arthur derive solely from his own brain.⁶

Fenielandia is Finland. Some early critics thought Wenelande was Finland, and the translation of Wace in the Everyman's Library so identifies it,⁷ but the appearance of Fenielandia in the Leges Edwardi together with Wenelande indicates that at least this author held them to be separate lands. The passage shows that later critics are most probably right in rejecting Finland. Most modern critics hold that Wenelande is Wendland. This theory was given great prestige by Tatlock in his Legendary History of Britain.⁸ Only one critic has voiced a slight variation. William Sayers in an article of 1964 holds to Wendland but identifies it not as the land of the Slavic Wends but as the island of Wollin in the Pomeranian Gulf.⁹

Of all the lands conquered by Arthur according to the Leges Edwardi, the most significant is Grenelandia. Liebermann identifies this as the North American Greenland. One manuscript has Groenlandia.¹⁰ Greenland is almost unknown in medieval romance. It occurs in one manuscript of Partonopeus de Blois, in which one of the kings invading France is Norois of Grunelande.¹¹ But the passage in the Leges Edwardi is the only known text which connects this land with Arthur. And this can lend support to an older identification of Wenelande. In his note on Wenelande, De Lincy suggested that it means Vinland. He supported this notion by quoting a nineteenth-century history of the Northmen.¹² Ivor Arnold in his edition of 1930 repeated this suggestion in the form of a query: “serait-ce le Vinland des explorateurs scandinaves?”¹³ And a generation later, M. M. Pelan simply copied Arnold's note without further comment.¹⁴ No one has accepted Vinland without reservation. Sir Frederic Madden, commenting on Layamon's Winetlond (Wace's Wenelande), rejected Vinland because it is part of the North American continent.¹⁵

The most recent critic to reject Vinland is William Sayers, who raises two objections. One is that “knowledge of its discovery is not attested by any other reference in Continental vernacular writing.”¹⁶ It is true that the earliest version of the Vinland sagas belongs to the fourteenth century, and the date of the original remains uncertain. But some of the recently translated Sautharkrokur manuscripts have been shown to derive from a lost princeps of the eleventh century which was compiled by Heriolf Ingolfsson.¹⁷ Written in Icelandic, these have much to say about Vinland as well as Greenland. Also Vinland appeared in Latin in Adam of Bremen's Descriptio Insularum Aquilonis, an appendix to his Gesta Hammaburgensis Ecclesiae Pontificum, dated around 1080.¹⁸ Thus the name was known in written literature in the century before Wace was writing. The fact that it is known to occur only slightly in the vernacular is hardly a reason for rejecting it.

Sayer's second objection is also open to question. He holds that “were Vinland intended by the poet, Greenland would doubtless also have figured among Arthur's acquisitions.”¹⁹ He means, of course, that it would have so figured in Wace, but Wace's holograph is not extant, and if Greenland were missing, there is no way to know why Wace omitted it. But the statement is relevant when applied to a text which has both Greenland and Wenelande in the list of lands conquered by Arthur. The passage in the Leges Edwardi is just such an account and was compiled only a half century after Wace. Liebermann gives Wendland as a possible meaning for Wynelandia, but then he suggests that Vinland would be the best choice if Wynelandia had been placed before Greenland in the list instead of after it.²⁰ This hardly seems an objection, however, since medieval law writers are not often orderly. The appearance of Wynelandia and Grenelandia together in the same account strongly indicates that Wynelandia is Vinland. De Lincy's suggestion is most probably right. In view of the passage in the Leges Edwardi, Wenelande is Vinland. That the author inserted his account in a legal text is probably why it remained unknown to later chroniclers and to writers of Arthurian romance.

The identification of a geographical name is a matter of having sufficient data. The answer to the question of whether or not Wace omitted Greenland has to be pure speculation, but such speculation may be justified by the rather curious treatment of Wenelande by some recent and some not so recent commentators. The form Genelande occurs in Ms. B. N. fr. 794.²¹ Several other manuscripts have the variant Guenelande. All editors and most commentators take Genelande/Guenelande to be a variant of Wenelande because of their phonological relationship, but two names phonologically related do not of necessity have to refer to the same place or person. We may thus speculate that Wenelande and Guenelande refer to two distinct places and then, for reasons that follow, that Guenelande is Greenland.

This notion gains some support from the treatment of these names by Louis-Fernand Flutre in his Table de noms propres. Flutre lists Wenelande as occurring only in Wace and Guenelande as occurring only in Partenopeus de Blois. However brief his remarks are in the Table, this means that he considers them different countries. He suggests Wendland or Vinland for Wenelande and does not identify Guenelande.²² Sayers in his comment on Guenelande in the Partenopeus says that it “appears as a Norse kingdom.”²³ This shows that he thinks of it as different from the Wenelande of Wace. Thus, two commentators have made a distinction between Wenelande and Guenelande.

This distinction necessitates the identification of Guenelande. Mention has been made above that one manuscript of the Partenopeus has the form Grunelande where the others have Guenelande (note 11). Obviously the scribe of MS. G interpreted the Guenelande of his source to mean Greenland, and the identification of it by Sayers as a “Norse kingdom” does not rule out Greenland, but rather supports it. Furthermore, R. H. Fletcher in one instance identified Wace's Guenelande as Greenland. While in his general discussion of Wace he identified Wenelande as Wendland, in his appendix when he referred to an article by A. C. L. Brown in which the form Guenelande appeared, he parenthetically identified it as Greenland. He says, “I am glad to transcribe also from [Brown's] article … two minor points. (1) Layamon's form Winetlonde for Wace's Guenelande (Greenland) as the country of one of Arthur's subject kings, seems to show that Layamon thought Gwynedd (North Wales) to be meant.”²⁴ Unfortunately, he offered no explanation for this identification. Nevertheless, like Flutre and Sayers, Fletcher makes a distinction between Guenelande and Wenelande, and like the medieval scribe, identifies Guenelande as Greenland.

This leads to the final speculation. Wace's lost holograph possibly had both Wenelande and Guenelande in the list of lands conquered by Arthur. In the same tradition as that noted in the Leges Edwardi, Arthur was thought to have conquered both Vinland and Greenland. But the scribes, believing the two names to be a redundancy, “corrected” the text by omitting one or the other. This would explain how Wenelande can mean Vinland although Greenland is not in the list.

Notes

1. Ivor Arnold, ed., Le Roman de Brut de Wace, SATF (Paris, 1930), II, v. 9710.

2. Margaret Houck, Sources of the Roman de Brut of Wace (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1941), pp. 257-59.

3. Leroux de Lincy, ed., Le Roman de Brut, II (Rouen, 1938), 147-48.

4. F. Liebermann, ed., Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen, I (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1903), 659-60. A detailed study is in two monographs by Liebermann: Über die Leges Edwardi Confessoris (Halle, 1896) and Über die Leges Anglorum … Londoniis collectae (Halle, 1894). On the third recension see also G. D. G. Hall, ed. and trans., The Treatise on the Laws and Customs of the Realm of England Commonly Called Glanvill (London: Nelson, 1965), pp. xxix, xxx, xxxiv, n. 2; Sir Frederick Pollock and F. W. Maitland, The History of the English Law, 2nd ed. (Washington, D. C.: Lawyers' Literary Club, 1959), I, 103-104.

5. Die Gesetze, I, 659.

6. Über die Leges Anglorum, p. 43.

7. Die Gesetze, I, 659, n. m); Arthurian Chronicles, Everyman's Library, ed. Ernest Rhys (New York: Dutton. n.d.), p. 55.

8. J. S. P. Tatlock, The Legendary History of Britain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1950), p. 473, n. 34. Madden had suggested Wendland as early as 1847. See note 15 below.

9. William Sayers, “Rummaret de Wenelande: A Geographical Note to Wace's Brut,” RPh, 8 (1964), 46-53. Sayers also rejects Finland unless by that name is meant the land of the Quaines.

10. Die Gesetze, I, 659, n. g); Reinhold Schmid, Die Gesetze der Angelsachsen (Leipzig, 1858), p. 513.

11. In the Robert-Crapelet edition of Ms A (Paris, 1834) the form Guenelande appears, vv. 2078-79. Grunelande occurs in Ms. G. See Sayers, p. 48.

12. De Lincy, I (Rouen, 1836), 72-73.

13. Ivor Arnold, II, 809.

14. I. D. O. Arnold and M. M. Pelan, eds., La Partie arthurienne du Roman de Brut, Bibliothèque Française et Romane (Paris: Librairie C. Klincksieck, 1962), p. 72.

15. Sir Frederic Madden, ed., Layamons Brut (1847; rpt. New York: AMS Press, 1970), III, 382-83.

16. Sayers, p. 51.

17. Francis Berry, trans., I Tell of Greenland (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1977), p. xiii.

18. According to Julius E. Olson (Encyclopaedia Brittanica, 11th ed., 28, 1911; see Vinland), the Descriptio of Adam of Bremen tells of his visit to the court of the Danish monarch Svend Estridsson, who “spoke of an island (or country) in that ocean discovered by many, which is called Vinland because of the wild grapes … that grow there.” Sayers (p. 49) attributes this story to the Gesta, in which the name Winland is used, but he does not equate this with Vinland.

19. Sayers, p. 51.

20. Die Gesetze, I, 659, n. k).

21. I. D. O. Arnold and M. M. Pelan, p. 73.

22. Louis-Fernand Flutre, Table des noms propres, CESCM (Poitiers, 1962); see Guenelande and Wenelande.

23. Sayers, p. 48.

24. R. H. Fletcher, The Arthurian Material in the Chronicles (1906; rev. New York: Burt Franklin, 1958), p. 281.