Vinland - Modern Geographers and The Location of Vinland

Modern Geographers and The Location of Vinland

Sixteenth century Icelanders realised that the "New World" which European geographers were calling "America" was the land described in their Vinland Sagas. The 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 summarised 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.

Other clues appear to place the main settlement farther south, such as the mention of a mild winter and the reports in both sagas of grapes being found nearby. 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 7.30am and 4.30pm, which would put the base a long way south of Newfoundland. However, 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, which in modern terms would be 3.30pm. "Dagmal", the "day-meal" which is specifically distinguished from the earlier "rismal" (breakfast), would thus be about 8.30am. The sun is indeed just above the horizon at these times on the shortest days of the year in northern Newfoundland - but not much farther north.