The importance of the information, meagre as it is, lies in the fact that Adam received from the lips of kinsmen of the explorers (as the Danes in a sense were) certain characteristic facts (the finding of grapes and unsown grain) that support the general reliability of the Icelandic sagas which tell of the Vinland voyages (in which these same facts are prominent), but which were not put into writing by the Norsemen until later - just how much later it is not possible to determine.
It was a year in which all agriculture was remitted, in which the fields lay unsown and the vines grew unpruned, only the spontaneous yield of the land might be gathered.
Moreover, that grain unsown grows there abundantly [fruges ibi non seminatas abundare] ' is not a fabulous fancy, but is based on trustworthy accounts of the Danes."
