Vinland, Vineland,Laurence Marcellus Larson in Canute the Great: 995 (circ.)-1035 and the Rise of Danish Imperialism During the Viking Age, New York: Putnam, 1912 p. 17Elizabeth Janeway in The Vikings, New York, Random House, 1951 throughout or Winland () was an area of coastal North America explored by Vikings. Leif Erikson landed there around AD 1000, nearly five centuries before the voyages of Christopher Columbus and John Cabot. The name appears in the Vinland sagas and describes a land beyond Greenland, Helluland, and Markland. Much of the geographical content of the sagas corresponds to present-day knowledge of transatlantic travel and North America.
In 1960, Helge Ingstad and Anne Stine Ingstad discovered the remains of Norse buildings at L'Anse aux Meadows, on the northern tip of the island of Newfoundland.Ingstad, Helge; Ingstad, Anne Stine (2001). The Viking Discovery of America: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland. Checkmark Books. . Before the discovery of archaeological evidence, Vinland was known only from the sagas and medieval historiography. The 1960 discovery further proved the pre-Columbian Norse exploration of mainland North America. Archaeologists found butternuts at L'Anse aux Meadows, which indicates voyages into the Gulf of Saint Lawrence as far as northeastern New Brunswick. L'Anse aux Meadows has been hypothesized to be the camp Straumfjörð mentioned in the Saga of Erik the Red.Significance of the discovery of butternut shells at L'Anse aux Meadows: Birgitta Wallace, "The Norse in Newfoundland: L'Anse aux Meadows and Vinland", The New Early Modern Newfoundland: Part 2 (2003), Vol. 19, No. 1. "Many scholars have dismissed L’Anse aux Meadows as peripheral in the Vinland story (Kristjánsson 2005:39). I myself held that view for a long time. I am now contending that L’Anse aux Meadows is in fact the key to unlocking the Vinland sagas. Two factors crystallized this idea in my mind. One was my subsequent research into early French exploitation outposts in Acadia (Wallace 1999) and the nature of migration (Anthony 1990) [...] The second signal was the identification of butternut remains in the Norse stratum at L’Anse aux Meadows. Here was the smoking gun that linked the limited environment of northern Newfoundland with a lush environment in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, where wild grapes did indeed exist. The mythical Vinland had a basis in archaeological fact." Birgitta Wallace, "L’Anse aux Meadows, Leif Eriksson's Home in Vinland", Norse Greenland: Selected Papers from the Hvalsey Conference 2008 Journal of the North Atlantic, 2009, 114-125.
Name Vinland was the name given to part of North America by the Icelandic Norseman Leif Eriksson, about 1000 AD. It was also spelled Winland, as early as Adam of Bremen's Descriptio insularum Aquilonis ("Description of the Northern Islands", ch. 39, in the 4th part of Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum), written circa 1075. Adam's main source regarding Winland appears to have been king Svend Estridson, who had knowledge of the "northern islands". The etymology of the Old Norse root vin- is disputed; while it has usually been assumed to be "wine", some scholars give credence to the homophone vin, meaning "pasture" or "meadow". Adam of Bremen implies that the name contains Old Norse vín (cognate with Latin vinum) "wine" (rendered as Old Saxon or Old High German wīn): "Moreover, he has also reported one island discovered by many in that ocean, which is called Winland, for the reason that grapevines grow there by themselves, producing the best wine."Praeterea unam adhuc insulam recitavit a multis in eo repertam occeano, quae dicitur Winland, eo quod ibi vites sponte nascantur, vinum optimum ferentes. Some manuscripts have the gloss id est terra vini. M. Adam Bremensis Lib. IV, Cap. XXXVIIII, ed. B. Schmeidler 1917, p. 275 . This etymology is retained in the 13th-century Grœnlendinga saga, which provides a circumstantial account of the discovery of Vinland and its being named from the vínber, i.e. "wineberry", a term for grapes. According to Birgitta Wallace, theories that the sagas' vínber refers to other berries such as cranberries or currants are insupportable. Kirsten Seaver also rejects the "Pastureland" interpretation and has written "The notion that the first syllable was vin with a short vowel (meaning ~ 'green meadow') has been so thoroughly discarded that we are left with the incontrovertible, long-vowelled vin or 'wine'."
There is also a long-standing Scandinavian tradition of fermenting berries into wine. The discovery of butternuts at the site implies that the Norse explored Vinland further to the south, at least as far as St. Lawrence River and parts of New Brunswick, the northern limit for both butternut and wild grapes (Vitis riparia).
Another proposal for the name's etymology, was introduced by Sven Söderberg in 1898 (first published in 1910)."Professor Sven Söderberg om Vinland", Sydsvenska Dagbladet Snällposten, Nr. 295, 30 October 1910. "On a philological basis it can hardly be determined whether the first member is to be interpreted as "vine", as most have done, or as "pasture, meadow"." Sverre Marstrander, "Arkeologiske funn bekrefter sagaens Vinlandsberetninger", Forskningsnytt, XIX:3 (1974), 2-11. This suggestion involves interpreting the Old Norse name not as vín-land with the first vowel spoken as /iː/, but as vin-land, spoken as /ɪ/; a short vowel. Old Norse vín (from Proto-Norse winju) has a meaning of "meadow, pasture".It remains a common place-name element in Scandinavia, e.g. in Bjørgvin and Granvin, also "possibly in a kenning for Sjaelland, viney, where we have no means of knowing exactly what it implies" (Haugen 1977). A cognate name also existed in Old English (Anglo-Saxon), in the name of the village Woolland in Dorset, England: this was written "Winlande" in the 1086 Domesday Book, and it is interpreted as "meadow land" or "pasture land". This interpretation of Vinland as "pasture-land" rather than "wine-land" was accepted by Vainö Tanner (1941) and by Valter Jansson in his classic 1951 dissertation on the vin-names of Scandinavia. It was rejected by Einar Haugen (1977), who argued that the vin element had changed its meaning from "pasture" to "farm" long before the Old Norse period. Names in vin were given in the Proto Norse period, and they are absent from places colonized in the Viking Age."Was Vinland in Newfoundland", Proceedings of the Eighth Viking Congress, Arhus. 24–31 August 1977, ed. Hans Bekker-Nielsen, Peter Foote, Olaf Olsen. Odense University Press. 1981.. See also Kirsten A. Seaver, Maps, Myths and Men. The story of the Vinland Map, Stanford University Press, p. 41. Erik Wahlgren rejected the "Pastureland" interpretation, writing "The simple fact is that Soderberg's thesis is quite untenable.""The Vikings and America," Erik Wahlgren, 1986, pp.141-143
There is a runestone which may have contained a record of the Old Norse name slightly predating Adam of Bremen's Winland. The Hønen Runestone was discovered in Norderhov, Norway, shortly before 1817, but it was subsequently lost. Its assessment depends on a sketch made by antiquarian L. D. Klüwer (1823), now also lost but in turn copied by Wilhelm Frimann Koren Christie (1838). The Younger Futhark inscription was dated to c. 1010–1050. The stone had been erected in memory of a Norwegian, possibly a descendant of Sigurd Syr. Sophus Bugge (1902) read part of the inscription as:
This is highly uncertain; the same sequence is read by Magnus Olsen (1951) as:
The Vinland sagas
The main sources of information about the Norse voyages to Vinland are two Icelandic sagas: the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders. These stories were preserved by oral tradition until they were written down some 250 years after the events they describe. The existence of two versions of the story shows some of the challenges of using traditional sources for history, because they share a large number of story elements but use them in different ways. A possible example is the reference to two different men named Bjarni who are blown off course. A brief summary of the plots of the two sagas, given at the end of this article, shows other examples.
The sagas report that a considerable number of Vikings were in parties that visited Vinland. Thorfinn Karlsefni's crew consisted of 140 or 160 people according to the Saga of Erik the Red, 60 according to the Saga of the Greenlanders. Still according to the latter, Leif Ericson led a company of 35, Thorvald Eiriksson a company of 30, and Helgi and Finnbogi had 30 crew members.Vinland and Ultima Thule. John Th. Honti. Modern Language Notes Vol. 54, No. 3 (Mar., 1939), pp. 159-172 Jstor.org
According to the Saga of Erik the Red, Þorfinnr "Karlsefni" Þórðarson and a company of 160 men, going south from Greenland traversed an open stretch of sea, found Helluland, another stretch of sea, Markland, another stretch of sea, the headland of Kjalarnes, the Wonderstrands, Straumfjörð and at last a place called Hóp, a bountiful place where no snow fell during winter. However, after several years away from Greenland, they chose to turn back to their homes when they realized that they would otherwise face an indefinite conflict with the natives.
This saga references the place-name Vinland in four ways. First, it is identified as the land found by Leif Erikson. Karlsefni and his men subsequently find "vín-ber" near the Wonderstrands. Later, the tale locates Vinland to the south of Markland, with the headland of Kjalarnes at its northern extreme. However, it also mentions that while at Straumfjord, some of the explorers wished to go in search for Vinland west of Kjalarnes.
Saga of the Greenlanders