Editing Vinland (section)

==Medieval geographers==

=== Adam of Bremen ===
{{Main|Adam of Bremen#Vinland}}
The oldest commonly acknowledged surviving written record of Vinland appears in ''Descriptio insularum Aquilonis'' by Adam of Bremen written in about 1075. Adam was told about "islands" discovered by Norse sailors in the Atlantic by the Danish king [[Svend Estridsen]].<ref>{{cite web|title=Where is Vinland?|url=https://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/vinland/whereisvinland/writtenclues/4125en.html|website=www.canadianmysteries.ca|access-date=26 February 2019|archive-date=16 November 2023|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231116194137/https://www.canadianmysteries.ca/sites/vinland/whereisvinland/writtenclues/4125en.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

=== Galvano Fiamma ===
{{Main|Galvano Fiamma#Writings}}
The nearby Norse outpost of Markland was mentioned in the writings of Galvano Fiamma in his book, ''Cronica universalis''. He is believed to be the first [[Southern Europe]]an to write about the [[New World]].''<ref>{{Cite news|date=2021-09-25|title=A monk in 14th-century Italy wrote about the Americas|newspaper=The Economist|url=https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2021/09/25/a-monk-in-14th-century-italy-wrote-about-the-americas|access-date=2021-09-30|issn=0013-0613}}</ref>''

=== Sigurd Stefansson ===
The earliest map of Vinland was drawn by Sigurd Stefansson, a schoolmaster at Skalholt, Iceland, around 1570, which placed Vinland somewhere that can be Chesapeake Bay, St. Lawrence, or Cape Cod Bay.<ref>Merrill, William Stetson. “The Vinland Problem through Four Centuries.” The Catholic Historical Review 21, no. 1 (April 1935):26.JSTOR.</ref>

In the early 14th Century, a geography encyclopedia called ''Geographica Universalis'' was compiled at [[Malmesbury Abbey]] in England, which was in turn used as a source for one of the most widely circulated medieval English educational works, ''Polychronicon'' by [[Ranulf Higden]], a few years later. Both these works, with Adam of Bremen as a possible source, were confused about the location of what they called ''Wintland''—the Malmesbury monk had it on the ocean east of Norway, while Higden put it west of Denmark but failed to explain the distance. Copies of ''Polychronicon'' commonly included a world map on which ''Wintland'' was marked in the Atlantic Ocean near Iceland, but again much closer to the Scandinavian mainland than in reality. The name was explained in both texts as referring to the savage inhabitants' ability to tie the wind up in knotted cords, which they sold to sailors who could then undo a knot whenever they needed a good wind. Neither mentioned grapes, and the Malmesbury work specifically states that little grows there but grass and trees, which reflects the saga descriptions of the area round the main Norse expedition base.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Michael |last=Livingston |title=More Vinland maps and texts |journal=Journal of Medieval History |volume=30 |issue=1 |date=March 2004 |pages=25–44 |doi=10.1016/j.jmedhist.2003.12.001|s2cid=159749720 }}</ref>

[[File:Erikr-is.png|thumb|upright=1.3|Medieval Norse sailing routes and geography of the North Atlantic, based on the saga texts (after Árni Ibsen, ''Svart á hvítu'', 1987)]]
More geographically correct were Icelandic texts from about the same time, which presented a clear picture of the northern countries as experienced by Norse explorers: north of Iceland a vast, barren plain (which we now know to be the Polar ice-cap) extended from [[Bjarmaland|''Biarmeland'']] (northern [[Russia]]) east of the [[White Sea]], to Greenland, then further west and south were, in succession, [[Helluland]], [[Markland]] and Vinland. The Icelanders had no knowledge of how far south Vinland extended, and they speculated that it might reach as far as Africa.<ref>translations in: B.F. de Costa, [http://www.northvegr.org/lore/precolumbian/002.php#The Pre-Columbian Discovery of America by the Northmen] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080705165326/http://www.northvegr.org/lore/precolumbian/002.php#The |date=2008-07-05 }}, Albany NY, Munsell, 1890</ref>

The "[[Historia Norwegiæ|Historia Norwegiae]]" (History of Norway), compiled around 15th–16th century, does not refer directly to Vinland and tries to reconcile information from Greenland with mainland European sources; in this text Greenland's territory extends so that it is "almost touching the African islands, where the waters of ocean flood in".<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.vsnrweb-publications.org.uk/Text%20Series/Historia%26Passio.pdf|title=Historia Norwegiae}}</ref>