Editing Vinland (section)

==Controversy over the location of Vinland==
[[File:Skálholt map 1690 copy (cropped).png|alt=map with Vinland, Greenland, and other areas shown as a parts of a large continent bordering the western and northern edges of the Atlantic, full text at link |thumb|upright=1.3|The [[Skálholt Map]] showing Latinized Norse placenames in the North Atlantic:<ref>{{cite book |last1=Campbell |first1=Gordon |title=Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth |date=25 March 2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-260598-6 |url=https://www.google.com/books/edition/Norse_America/RIskEAAAQBAJ |language=en}}</ref>

{{bulleted list
| ''Iotun-heimar'' ([[Jötunheimr]])
| ''Riseland'' (Land of the [[Risi (folklore)|Risi]])
| ''Grönlandia'' ([[Greenland]])
| ''Helleland'' ([[Helluland]])
| [[Markland]]
| ''Skrælinge Land'' (Land of the [[Skræling]])
| ''Promontorium Winlandiæ'' (Promontory of Vinland)
}}
]]
The definition of Vinland is somewhat elusive. According to a 1969 article by Douglas McManis in the ''Annals of the [[Association of American Geographers]]'',<ref>McManis D. 1969. The Traditions of Vinland. ''Annals of the Association of American Geographers'' 59(4) DOI:10.1111/j.1467-8306.1969.tb01812.x</ref> {{blockquote|The study of the early Norse voyages to North America is a field of research characterized by controversy and conflicting, often irreconcilable, opinions and conclusions. These circumstances result from the fact that details of the voyages exist only in two Icelandic sagas which contradict each other on basic issues and internally are vague and contain nonhistorical passages.}}

This leads him to conclude that "there is not a Vinland, there are many Vinlands". According to a 1970 reply by Matti Kaups in the same journal,<ref>Kaups M, Some Observations on Vinland, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Volume 60, Issue 3, pages 603–609, September 1970. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8306.1970.tb00746.x</ref> {{blockquote|Certainly there is a symbolic Vinland as described and located in the ''Groenlandinga saga''; what seems to be a variant of this Vinland is narrated in ''Erik the Red's Saga''. There are, on the other hand, numerous more recent derivative Vinlands, each of which actually is but a suppositional spatial entity. (...) (e.g. [[Carl Christian Rafn|Rafn]]'s Vinland, Steensby's Vinland, [[Helge Ingstad|Ingstad]]'s Vinland, and so forth).}}

In geographical terms, Vinland is sometimes used to refer generally to all areas in [[Atlantic Canada]]. In the sagas, Vinland is sometimes indicated to not include the territories of [[Helluland]] and [[Markland]], which appear to also be located in North America beyond Greenland. Moreover, some sagas establish vague links between Vinland and an island or territory that some sources refer to as ''[[Great Ireland|Hvítramannaland]]''.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/14061/12.01.09.html|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130730052254/https://scholarworks.iu.edu/dspace/bitstream/handle/2022/14061/12.01.09.html|url-status=dead|archive-date=2013-07-30|title=A review of the book ''Isolated Islands in Medieval Nature, Culture and Mind''|last=Jørgensen|first=Dolly|date=2009-01-12|publisher=The Medieval Review}}</ref>

Another possibility is to interpret the name of Vinland as not referring to one defined location, but to every location where ''vínber'' could be found, i.e. to understand it as a [[proper noun|common noun]], vinland, rather than a [[toponymy|toponym]], Vinland. The [[Old Norse language|Old Norse]] and [[Icelandic language]]s were, and are, very flexible in forming [[compound word]]s.

Sixteenth century Icelanders realized that the "New World" which European geographers were calling "America" was the land described in their Vinland Sagas. The [[Skálholt#Skálholt Map|Skálholt Map]], drawn in 1570 or 1590 but surviving only through later copies, shows ''Promontorium Winlandiae'' ("promontory/cape/foreland of Vinland") as a narrow cape with its northern tip at the same latitude as southern Ireland. (The scales of degrees in the map margins are inaccurate.) This effective identification of northern Newfoundland with the northern tip of Vinland was taken up by later Scandinavian scholars such as bishop Hans Resen.

Although it is generally agreed, based on the saga descriptions, that Helluland includes [[Baffin Island]], and Markland represents at least the southern part of the modern Labrador, there has been considerable controversy over the location of the actual Norse landings and settlement. Comparison of the sagas, as summarized below, shows that they give similar descriptions and names to different places. One of the few reasonably consistent pieces of information is that exploration voyages from the main base sailed down both the east and west coasts of the land; this was one of the factors which helped archaeologists locate the site at [[L'Anse aux Meadows]], at the tip of Newfoundland's long northern peninsula.

Erik Wahlgren examines the question in his book ''The Vikings and America'', and points out clearly that L'Anse aux Meadows cannot be the location of Vínland, as the location described in the sagas has both salmon in the rivers and the 'vínber' (meaning specifically 'grape', that according to Wahlgren the explorers were familiar with and would have thus recognized), growing freely.
Charting the overlap of the limits of wild vine and wild salmon habitats, as well as nautical clues from the sagas, Wahlgren indicates a location in Maine or New Brunswick. He hazards a guess that Leif Erikson camped at [[Passamaquoddy Bay]] and Thorvald Erikson was killed in the [[Bay of Fundy]].<ref>{{cite book |last1=Wahlgren |first1=Erik |title=The Vikings and America |date=1986 |publisher=Thomas and Hudson |page=157}}</ref>

On the other hand, [[Wilfred Grenfell|Sir Wilfred Grenfell]], a medical missionary and scholar living in Newfoundland and Labrador in the early 20th century wrote of the issue of the location of Vinland that,<ref>{{Cite book |last=Grenfell |first=Sir Wilfred Thomason |title=The Romance of Labrador |date=1934 |publisher=[[Macmillan Publishers]] |edition=1st |location=New York |pages=61}}</ref>

{{Blockquote|text=No reason has ever been shown why the Vikings would want to fare any farther than our beautifully wooded bays, with their endless berries, salmon, furs, and game, except that most people think of the east coast of Labrador as all barren, forbidding wastes, and forget that no part of it lies north of England and Scotland.|title=The Romance of Labrador|source="The Pageant of the Vikings", page 61}}

Other clues appear to place the main settlement farther south, such as the mention of a winter with no snow and the reports in both sagas of grapes being found. A very specific indication in the Greenlanders' Saga of the latitude of the base has also been subject to misinterpretation. This passage states that in the shortest days of midwinter, the sun was still above the horizon at "dagmal" and "eykt", two specific times in the Norse day. [[Carl Christian Rafn]], in the first detailed study of the Norse exploration of the New World, "Antiquitates Americanae" (1837), interpreted these times as equivalent to 7:30&nbsp;a.m. and 4:30&nbsp;p.m., which would put the base a long way south of Newfoundland. According to the 1880 Sephton translation of the saga, Rafn and other Danish scholars placed ''Kjalarnes'' at [[Cape Cod]], [[Straumfjörð]] at [[Buzzards Bay]], [[Massachusetts]], and Straumsey at [[Martha's Vineyard]].<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.gutenberg.org/files/17946/17946-h/17946-h.htm|title=The Project Gutenberg eBook of Eirik The Red's Saga:, by The Rev. J. Sephton.|website=www.gutenberg.org}}</ref>

An Icelandic law text gives a very specific explanation of "eykt", with reference to Norse navigation techniques. The eight major divisions of the compass were subdivided into three hours each, to make a total of 24, and "eykt" was the end of the second hour of the south-west division. In modern terms this would be 3:30&nbsp;p.m.  "Dagmal", the "day-meal," is specifically distinguished from the earlier "rismal" (breakfast), and would thus be about 8:30&nbsp;a.m.<ref>R. Cleasby & G. Vigfusson [http://lexicon.ff.cuni.cz/texts/oi_cleasbyvigfusson_about.html An Icelandic-English Dictionary] (1874) via the Germanic Lexicon Project</ref>

A 2012 article by [[Jónas Kristjánsson]] in the scientific journal ''[[Acta Archaeologica|Acta Archeologica]]'', which assumes that the headland of ''Kjalarnes'' referred to in the Saga of Erik the Red is at L'Anse aux Meadows, suggests that [[Straumfjörð]] refers to [[Sop's Arm, Newfoundland and Labrador|Sop's Arm, Newfoundland]], as no other fjord in Newfoundland was found to have an island at its mouth.<ref name="Jónas Kristjánsson 2012 pp. 145-177">Jónas Kristjánsson et al. (2012) Falling into Vínland. ''Acta Archeologica'' 83, pp. 145-177</ref>

===L'Anse aux Meadows===

[[File:Authentic Viking recreation.jpg|thumb|Viking colonization site at L'Anse-aux-Meadows, Newfoundland]]
[[File:Carlb-ansemeadows-vinland-02.jpg|thumb|L'Anse-aux-Meadows]]
Newfoundland marine insurance agent and historian William A. Munn (1864–1939), after studying literary sources in Europe, suggested in his 1914 book ''Location of Helluland, Markland & Vinland from the Icelandic Sagas'' that the Vinland explorers "went ashore at Lancey {{sic}} Meadows, as it is called to-day".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Munn |first1=William A. |title=Location of Helluland, Markland, and Vinland from the Icelandic Sagas |date=1914 |publisher=Gazette Print |location=[[St. John's, Newfoundland and Labrador|St. John's, Newfoundland]] |page=11 |url=https://archive.org/details/locationofhellul00munn/page/n3/mode/2up |access-date=18 April 2020 }}</ref> In 1960, the remains of a small Norse encampment<ref name="Parks Canada 2018"/> were discovered by [[Helge Ingstad|Helge]] and [[Anne Stine Ingstad]] at that exact spot, [[L'Anse aux Meadows]] in northern Newfoundland, and excavated during the 1960s and 1970s. It is most likely this was the main settlement of the sagas, a "gateway" for the Norse Greenlanders to the rich lands farther south. Many wooden objects were found at L'Anse aux Meadows, and radiocarbon dating confirms the site's occupation as being confined to a short period around 1000 CE. In addition, small pieces of [[jasper]], known to have been used in the Norse world as [[Fire striker|fire-strikers]], were found in and around the different buildings. When these were analyzed and compared with samples from jasper sources around the North Atlantic area, it was found that two buildings contained only Icelandic jasper pieces, while another contained some from Greenland; a single piece from the east coast of Newfoundland was found. These finds appear to confirm the saga claim that some Vinland exploration ships came from Iceland and that they ventured down the east coast of the new land.<ref>[http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/vinland/lanseauxmeadows/ancillary/4071en.html Where is Vinland: L'Anse aux Meadows] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160304051432/http://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/vinland/lanseauxmeadows/ancillary/4071en.html |date=4 March 2016 }} at canadianmysteries.ca</ref> In 2021, wood from the site was shown to have been cut in 1021, using metal blades, which the local Indigenous people did not have.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Dunham|first=Will|date=2021-10-20|title=Goodbye, Columbus: Vikings crossed the Atlantic 1,000 years ago|language=en|work=Reuters|url=https://www.reuters.com/lifestyle/science/goodbye-columbus-vikings-crossed-atlantic-1000-years-ago-2021-10-20/|access-date=2021-10-21}}</ref>

Although it is now generally accepted that L'Anse aux Meadows was the main base of the Norse explorers,<ref>{{cite magazine |last=Regal |first=Brian |date=November–December 2019 |title=Everything Means Something in Viking |magazine=[[Skeptical Inquirer]] |publisher=[[Center for Inquiry]] |volume=43 |issue=6 |pages=44–47}}</ref> the southernmost limit of Norse exploration remains a subject of intense speculation. [[Gustav Storm]] (1887) and [[Joseph Fischer (cartographer)|Joseph Fischer]] (1902) both suggested [[Cape Breton]]; [[Samuel Eliot Morison]] (1971) the southern part of Newfoundland; Erik Wahlgren (1986) [[Miramichi Bay]] in [[New Brunswick]]; and Icelandic climate specialist Pall Bergthorsson (1997) proposed [[New York City]].<ref>Gisli Sigurdsson, "The Quest for Vinland in Saga Scholarship", in William Fitzhugh & Elizabeth Ward (Eds.) ''Vikings: the North Atlantic Saga'', Washington DC, [[Smithsonian Institution]] (2000) {{ISBN|1-56098-995-5}}</ref> The insistence in all the main historical sources that grapes were found in Vinland suggests that the explorers ventured at least to the south side of the [[St. Lawrence River]], as [[Jacques Cartier]] did 500 years later, finding both wild vines and nut trees.<ref>{{cite book |last=Cartier |first=Jacques |title=Voyage de J. Cartier au Canada |year=1863 |url=https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/12356 }}</ref> Three butternuts were found at L'Anse aux Meadows, another species which grows only as far north as the St. Lawrence.<ref name="Vinland"/><ref>[http://www.sof.eomf.on.ca/Ecosystem_Condition_and_Productivity/Biotic/Case_Studies/Diseases/Butternut_Canker/Documents/sr_butternut_e.pdf.pdf COSEWIC report on Juglans cinerea (butternut) in Canada]{{Dead link|date=August 2019 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}{{year needed|date=January 2015}}{{dead link|date=January 2015}}</ref>

The vinviðir (wine wood) the Norse were cutting down in the sagas may refer to the vines of ''[[Vitis riparia]]'', a species of wild grape that grows on trees. As the Norse were searching for [[lumber]], a material that was needed in Greenland, they found trees covered with ''Vitis riparia'' south of L'Anse aux Meadows and called them vinviðir.<ref name="Wallace"/>
<!--It should be remembered regional [[climate change]], such as the [[Medieval Warm Period]] and the [[Little Ice Age]], complicates conclusions derived from the Norsemen's observations of vegetation. It should also be kept in mind adding "complications" to Wikipedia by hand-waving rather than by citing secondary literature is itself a "complication".-->

L'Anse Aux Meadows was a small and short-lived encampment;<ref name="Parks Canada 2018"/> perhaps it was primarily used for timber-gathering forays and boat repair, rather than permanent settlements like those in Greenland.<ref>Frakes, Jerold C., “Vikings, Vínland and the Discourse of Eurocentrism.” The Journal of English and Germanic Philology 100, no. 2 (April, 2001):197</ref>

===Vinland in Colonial Discourses===
Sverrir Jakobsson notes that there are no contemporary written records of journeys to Vinland - pointing out that the earliest mentions of the location occurred in 1070 and 1120.<ref name=Sverrir>{{cite journal |last1=Jakobsson  |first1=Sverrir |date=Winter 2012 |title=Vínland and Wishful Thinking: Medieval and Modern Fantasies |journal=Canadian Journal of History |volume=47 |issue=3 |pages=493–514 |doi=10.3138/cjh.47.3.493}}</ref> {{cn span|date=February 2025|Jakobsson points out that there are contradictions between Eiriks saga rautha and the Graenlandinga saga and that their textual history suggests they were composed independently of each other and he is highly critical of treating the sagas as a cohesive unit. He also suggests that attempts at "harmonizing the evidence of the sagas with the modern belief that journeys were directed towards North America" has led to gaps in the scholarship surrounding the sagas. He notes references to Vinland in Icelandic manuscripts from around 1300 indicated Vinland as being in Africa. He treats this as being the influence of the medieval Catholic epistemology which only supported the existence of three continents. Based on this textual interpretation Jakobsson considers that the Norse travels to Vinland failed to discover America as they did not bring about the paradigmatic shift in Christian geography of later voyages to the New World.}}

According to Christopher Crocker, the search for Vinland is appropriately contextualized as a form of colonial construction of history. He suggests that centering Norse expeditions to North America play into the [[Vanishing Indian]] trope and allow for the continued centering of European historical narratives farther back into the history of North America, at the expense of Indigenous people. He points out that the claims of [[Beothuck]] extinction which the Vinland narrative supported were used by British setlers to deny [[Mi'kmaq]] land claims.<ref name=Crocker>{{cite journal |last1=Crocker |first1=Christopher |date= Spring–Autumn 2020|title=What We Talk about When We Talk about Vínland: History, Whiteness, Indigenous Erasure, and the Early Norse Presence in Newfoundland  |journal=Canadian Journal of History |volume=55 |issue=1-2 |pages=91–122 |doi= 10.3138/cjh-2019-0028|doi-access=free }}</ref> Anette Kolodny suggests that attempts to situate Vinland in New England "owed much to the fact that, by 1850 and the decades beyond, New England was in decline, and this effort reflected the attempt to recapture glory for the region.<ref name=Kolodny>{{cite book |last=Kolodny |first=Anette |date=May 29, 2012 |title=In Search of First Contact: The Vikings of Vinland, the Peoples of the Dawnland, and the Anglo-American Anxiety of Discovery |location=Durham, NC |publisher=Duke University Press |page= |isbn=9780822352860}}</ref>