Norse Colonization of The Americas - Vinland and L'Anse Aux Meadows

Vinland and L'Anse Aux Meadows

According to the Icelandic sagas ("Eirik the Red's Saga" and the "Saga of the Greenlanders"—chapters of the Hauksbók and the Flatey Book), the Norse started to explore lands to the west of Greenland only a few years after the Greenland settlements were established. In 985 while sailing from Iceland to Greenland with a migration fleet consisting of 400-700 settlers and 25 other ships (14 of which completed the journey), a merchant named Bjarni Herjólfsson was blown off course, and after three days' sailing he sighted land west of the fleet. Bjarni was only interested in finding his father's farm, but he described his discovery to Leif Ericson who explored the area in more detail and planted a small settlement fifteen years later.

The sagas describe three separate areas discovered during this exploration: Helluland, which means "land of the flat stones"; Markland, "the land of forests", definitely of interest to settlers in Greenland where there were few trees; and Vinland, "the land of vine" (or as suggested by modern linguists "the land of meadows"), found somewhere south of Markland. It was in Vinland that the settlement described in the sagas was founded.

All four of Erik the Red's children visited the North American continent: his sons Leif, Thorvald and Thorstein and their sister Freydis. Thorvald died there.