SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Observations on the Disccceries of the Norsemen r87
For a very long time men have tried to identify the
lands which the Vikings found in North America but they
have not exactly reached the same conclusions. It is
generally agreed that Helluland is the southern part of
Baffin Land and Markland is the Labrador Coast and even
the northern part of Newfoundland, while Vinland has
been placed anywhere between the northernmost tip of
Newfoundland and New York - or even farther to the
south.
About A.D. 990 Norsemen found the Labrador coast and
probably reached a point south of the 50" parallel (i.e. the
St. Lawrence estuary or White Bay in Newfoundland).
They saw wide lands, ever more fertile, stretching away to
the south and they called this Vinland, either as an
advertisement or because a German on board (Tyrkir ­
probably from Thuringia) thought the land looked like the
wine-producing districts of south Germany. The name
was enough to cause legends about the isles of bliss to be
attached to it. Adam of Bremen tells of the vines there
and of cornfields that are self-sown. Towards the end of
the twelfth century, when the Gra:nlendinga saga was
composed, the Icelanders knew very little of the geography
of Vinland. It is equally clear that the author of the
Eiriks saga, writing a century later, also knew very little
about it, even though he may have been reasonably well
informed about the geography of Greenland and the route
to Markland. What Vinland geography we find in the
Eiriks saga must, in fact, have been built up on the basis
of the meagre information given in the older Gra:nlendinga
saga. The author of Eiriks saga thus appears to have
made two places, Hop and Straumfjoror, out of the
Leifsbuoir of the older text. The changes made by the
author of the Eiriks saga were some inspired by Christian
piety and some by a desire to bring his descriptions into
line with the concepts of classical geography. According
to the accepted world-picture of his time, the outer ocean
lay like a belt around all the lands of the world, and the