NORSEMEN IN NORTH AMERICA— BR0NDSTED 373 



Baflan Island) and "Markland" (which may be the Labrador coast, or 

 Newfoundland, or Nova Scotia) ; he saw Thorvald's "Keel Ness" too. 

 But after that he came to two new localities: "Stream Fjord" (in- 

 cluding "Stream Island") and, after having "traveled long," the land 

 of "Hop," southernmost of all. It is possible that Stream Fjord was 

 in the vicinity of Leif 's camp in Vinland, but scarcely Hop, which 

 must have been more to the south. First, then, let us examine what 

 is written about Leif 's Vinland. 



It was a well-timbered land with large sycamores good for house 

 building. There was no winter frost: the grass withered but little. 

 There were vines and grapes. They cut the vines down (why, I 

 wonder ? ) . They caught big salmon in both river and sea. Thorvald 

 explored the west coast of the land, which was wooded and had white 

 sandy beaches, many islands, and shallow waters; there he found a 

 native's granary of wood. In the following summer he discovered 

 to the east wooded fiords and fair land, where he decided to settle, 

 but was slain while fighting Scraelings in skin boats. About Freydis's 

 sojourn in Vinland we are told that one winter's night, when the 

 grass was wet with much dew, she sat on a tree trunk outside the 

 house, talking to Finnboge. 



So Vinland was timbered and had a mild climate. Otherwise, the 

 land is characterized too little to permit of identification; and this 

 also applies to its inhabitants. But it is important, as A. W. Br0gger 

 points out, that it has both salmon and vines. On the North American 

 east coast the southern range of the salmon is Connecticut, approxi- 

 mately latitude 41° N., and the most northerly area on the same coast 

 where the vine grows passably well is Massachusetts, in latitude 42°. 

 Following this line we obtain at length an approximate location on 

 Vinland in the region around New York, and rather south than north 

 of that place, if we are to satisfy more or less the condition of absence 

 of winter frost. From this angle perhaps Chesapeake Bay in north- 

 ern Virginia is preferable ; for in localizing we must allow a certain 

 elasticity, in view of the fact that there may have been slight climatic 

 fluctuations in the thousand years that have elapsed since our events. 



But in this case, where were "Stream Fjord" and "Hop"? The 

 saga relates that Karlsefni first found Thorvald's "Keel Ness" and 

 near it a fiord, where his Scottish runners discovered vines and self- 

 sown wheat, the latter undoubtedly being maize. Then they turned 

 into another fiord, "Stream Fjord," with an island, "Stream Island," 

 off its mouth, and there an unknown species of whale drifts in to the 

 starving explorers, probably a southern kind, possibly a cachalot. 

 Where these coast lands may have been we cannot say ; possibly not 

 so very far from Vinland. The vines and the maize, the unfamiliar 

 whale, and the circumstance that seals apparently are lacking (they 



