Vinland

Vinland was the name given to a part of North America by the Icelandic Norseman Leifr Eiríksson, about the year (AD) 1000. In 1960 archaeological evidence of Norse settlement in North America was found at L'Anse aux Meadows on the island of Newfoundland, in what is recently now termed the Canadian Province of Newfoundland and Labrador. Although this proved conclusively the Viking's pre-Colombian discovery of North America, whether this exact site is the Vinland of the Norse accounts is still a subject of debate. It must be recognised that the Vikings did not perceive the exploration and settlement of Greenland and Vinland as any different from that of founding Iceland. It was merely an extension of their homeland, and notions of a different world only surfaced upon meeting the natives, noticeably different from Irish monks in Iceland.

There is a consensus among scholars that the Vikings encountered North America before Christopher Columbus, although the continent was already inhabited for over 11,000 years by what are now called the First Nations people in Canada, or Native Americans in the United States.

Historical accounts

Vinland was first recorded by Adam of Bremen, a geographer and historian, in his book Descriptio insularum Aquilonis of approximately 1075. To write it he visited king Svend Estridson, who had knowledge of the northern lands.

The main source of information about the Viking voyages to Vinland can be derived from two Icelandic sagas, The Saga of Eric the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders. These sagas were written down approximately 250 years after the settlement of Greenland and are open to significant interpretation. Combining those two, it seems that there were a few separate attempts to establish a Norse settlement in Vinland, including one led by Þorfinnr Karlsefni, none of which lasted for more than two years. The disbandment of the small Viking colony probably had several causes. Disagreements among the men about the few women that followed on the trip, and fighting with the skrælingar (Native Americans) already living in the area, are both indicated in the written sources.

The story tells that after the settlement of Greenland by the Vikings a merchant by the name of Bjarni Herjólfsson set sail from Iceland to Greenland to visit his father, a new settler in Greenland. His ship was blown off course by a storm and thus accidentally discovered the east coast of America in 985 or 986. He then afterwards told the story and sold the ships to Leifr Eiríksson, who, according to the stories, sailed back to those areas. It was late in the summer, and he did not want to stay over winter in this new land, which he noted was covered with forests, so he did not land and managed to reach Greenland before winter fell. With wood being in very short supply in Greenland, the settlers there were eager to explore the riches of this new land. Some years later Leifr Eiríksson explored this coast, and established a short-lived colony on a part of the coast that he called Vinland.

The first discovery made by Leifr was according to the stories Helluland ("flatstone land"), possibly Baffin Island. Markland ("wood land"), possibly Labrador, was discovered next (there is some evidence that the tree line in northern Labrador has been diminished or eroded since circa 1000) and lastly Vinland (commonly interpreted as "wine land", but interpreted as "pasture land" by others, see localization discussion below), possibly Newfoundland. The expedition included both families and livestocks and the aims were to begin new settlements. Straumfjörðr was the name of the northern settlement and Hóp was the name for the southern settlement. Only two Viking leaders actually overwintered in Vinland, the second being Thorvald Eiríksson, Leifr's brother, who was killed the second summer. However, according to the stories, the idea was soon abandoned due to conflicts with the "skrælingar" (possibly the later Beothuks, or Dorset people). New voyages for woodcutting etc. seem to have been discussed even as late as the 1300s.

Until the 19th century, the idea of Viking settlement in North America was considered by historians to be the product of mere folk tales. The first scholarly theory for the idea was put forth in 1837 by Danish literary historian and antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn in his book Antiquitates Americanæ. Rafn had made an exhaustive examination of the sagas, as well as potential settlement sites on the North American coast and concluded that Vinland was a real place in North America that had been settled by the Norse.

Localization debate

Historians do not agree on the location of Vinland. Rafn and Erik Wahlgren believed that Vinland was probably in New England. In the 1960s a Viking settlement was discovered and excavated at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, and many historians believe that this was Leifr's settlement, thus connecting Vinland to Newfoundland. Others have followed Rafn in sharing the belief that Vinland was farther to the south. In this view, L'Anse aux Meadows was perhaps part of an undocumented later attempt at settlement.

Viking colonisation site at L'Anse-aux-Meadows, Newfoundland

L'Anse-aux-Meadows, Newfoundland

Those who believe Newfoundland is the location of Vinland generally think that settlements farther south are unlikely, because maintaining such a distant lifestyle from the Norse homelands would have been far too difficult for the Vikings of the time. Iron and other European convenient resources would have been too difficult to sustain on any workable level, as the later English settlers in New England would find. Costly fights with native populations so far from supply lines would have been another deterrent.

An argument for placing Vinland farther south is Adam of Bremen's account. In his Descriptio insularum Aquilonis he wrote that the name Vinland comes from huge amounts of grapes growing there (Praeterea unam adhuc insulam recitavit a multis in eo repertam occeano, quae dicitur Winland, eo quod ibi vites sponte nascantur, vinum optimum ferentes). He received this information from king Svend Estridson. However, grapes do not grow in the sites commonly seen as possible locations of Vinland.

There are a number of theories to explain this discrepancy:
*It was an early marketing attempt, something like the naming of Greenland by Erik the Red. In this theory, Leifr's naming of Markland and Vinland was to encourage others to explore and settle there.
*A theory subject to much debate among scholars is that there was a misinterpretation of short-i Vinland as long-i Vinland (Viinland). In this theory Vinland's naming is based on the Old Norse word (short-i) 'vin' meaning 'meadow; pasture'. Vin is a common name on old farms from Norse times in Norway, and present-day use of the word are Bjorgvin, the Norse (and Icelandic) name of Bergen, Norway, and Granvin, where "-vin" translates into "pasture" in both. A poetic Norse name of the Danish island of Sjælland (Zealand) was Viney 'pasture island'. The actual word also existed in Old English, and an interesting parallel to the Norse name Vinland is the name of the village Woolland in Dorset: This was written "Winlande" in 1086, and it is interpretted as 'meadow land'. This theory can be combined with the previous one: Estridson might have embellished Adam's mistake if he believed it would increase the fame of Vinland for joint-financed ventures he would no doubt claim for himself. One problem with this theory is why the sagas outside of Adam of Bremen's account also refer to double-i Viinland and mention vines as well. Since the sagas were written later, an explanation for this could be that the sagas were somehow influenced by Adam of Bremen's account.
*Alternatively Estridson was joking or lying, or even referring to similarly sounding Wendland instead in an earlier account, where grapes did grow, and this was later confused with Vinland by Adam of Bremen.
*Another theory is that we have not discovered the true location of Vinland yet, and it is further south, where grapes do grow. More subtly Vinland could be seen as a gateway or northern part, in reach of more temperate areas where grapes grew.
*Another possibility is that later, longer voyages further south, reporting Concord style grapes confused the story told about the settlement, as there were individuals of the crews who had ventured out on their own to return with tales.
*Still another possibility is that the reference is to any of the abundant berries in Newfoundland, including gooseberries or blueberries, which are both abundant near L'Anse-aux-Meadows and are both suitable for winemaking.
*Finally it has been speculated that grapes did in fact grow in Newfoundland (47-51°N) in the past, but not any more due to climatic changes. The time period of the Vinland settlement corresponds with the Medieval Warm Period (from about the 10th century to about the 14th century). Water temperatures in the northern hemisphere during this time were up to 1°C warmer, allowing the planting of vineyards as far north as the coastal zones of the Baltic Sea (ca. 56°N) and southern England (ca. 51°N).

While the theory that Vinland was further south is a legitimate line of inquiry, for some the motivation to search Vinland further south could have been more personal to justify or romanticize the later (post-Columbian) history of Scandinavian colonization of areas in the present-day United States. There have been several instances where evidence of pre-Columbian presence of Norse explorers in the United States has been considered to be fake by most researchers, such as for example the Kensington Runestone. So far, the only evidence of the Norse in the United States that is generally accepted is the Maine Penny.

Possible Locations

Including some of the possibilities mentioned above, popular locations for the possible site of Vinland generally include, in order from north to south:
*Newfoundland (the location generally accepted among mainstream historians)
*Anticosti Island
*Gaspé Peninsula
*Cape Breton Island
*Nova Scotia
*northeast coast of New Brunswick. Supported by finding a few hickory nut shells at L'Anse aux Meadows. See The Norse Atlantic Sagas by Gwyn Jones.
*coastal Maine (see Maine Penny)
*Cape Cod, Massachusetts
**Follins Pond, between Dennis and Yarmouth
**Waquoit Bay, between Falmouth and Mashpee
*Nantucket
*Martha's Vineyard
*Nomans Land (Massachusetts)
*Narragansett Bay, Rhode Island (see Newport Tower)

Other usages

Vinland is also the symbolic name for the cultural landscape of Canada (Upper Vinland) and America (Lower Vinland) which some adherents of modern Germanic Heathenry and some Neopagan groups use to distinguish themselves from other ethno-cultural groups who share the same geographical areas of North America. Some Neo-Nazis also use the name Vinland to describe all or part of North America, and the Vinland flag has become a popular symbol among white supremacist groups.

External links

*Vikings: The north Atlantic saga; Searching for archeological evidence of Vikings in Labrador and Newfoundland - from The Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History
*Images from L'Anse aux Meadows
*http://www.newfoundlandandlabrador.com/archives/events/vikings_2000.asp
*"Was Vinland in Newfoundland?"- Paper by Einar Haugen, (1906-1994) Professor emeritus of Scandinavian Studies, Harvard University
* The Vikings in Newfoundland
* Source for vin meaning grass

Vinland: Encyclopedia BETA

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