Hi all,
Found an interesting passage in Bill Bryson's book Made in America:-
"We know beyond doubt that Greenland - and thus, technically, North
America - was discovered in 982 by one Eric the Red, father of Leif
Ericson (or Leif Eiriksson), and that he and his followers began
settling it in 986. Anyone who has ever flown over the frozen wastes
of Greenland could be excused for wondering what they saw in the
place. But in fact Greenland's southern fringes are further south
than Oslo and offer an area of grassy lowlands as big as the whole of
Britain. Certainly it suited the Vikings. For nearly five hundred
years they kept a thriving colony there, which at its peak boasted
sixteen churchased, two monasteries, some 300 farms and a population
of 4,000. But the one thing Greenland lacked was wood with which to
build new ships and repair old ones - a somewhat vital consideration
for a seagoing people. Iceland, the nearest land mass to the east,
was known to be barren. The most natural thing would be to head west
to see what was out there. In about 1000, according to the sagas,
Leif Ericson did just that. His expedition discovered a new land
mass, probably Baffin Island, far up in northern Canada, over a
thousand miles north of the present-day United States, and many other
places, most notably the region they called Vinland.
Vinland is one of history's more tantalizing posers. No one knows
where it was. By careful readings of the sagas and calculations of
Viking sailing times, various scholars have put Vinland all over the
place - on Newfoundland or Nova Scotia in Massachusetts or even as
far south as Virginia. A Norwegian scholar named Helge Ingstad
claimed in 1964 to have found Vinland at a place called L'Anse au
Meadow in Newfoundland. Others suggest that the artefacts Ingstad
found were not of Viking origin at all, but merely the detritus of
later French colonists. No one knows. The name is no help.
According to the sagas, the Vikings called it Vinland because of the
grape-vines they found growing in profusion there. The problem is
that no place within a thousand miles of where they must have been
could possibly have supported grapes. One possible explanation is
that Vinland was a mistranslation. Vinber, the Viking word for
grapes, could be used to describe many other fruits - cranberries,
gooseberries and red currants, among them - that might have been
found at these northern latitudes. Another possibility is that
Vinland was merely a big of deft propaganda, designed to encourage
settlement. These were after all the people who thought up the name
Greenland. Where they went or what became of them is unknown. The
tempting presumption is that they found a more congenial life in
North America."
Well I think I know where they went!
Jacqueline