WHERE IS THE VIKING SETTLEMENT OF VINELAND?
Vinland is described in old Norse writings which were mostly oral stories written down two centuries after the Vikings sailed to Newfoundland shortly after 1000AD. Carbon dating at L’Anse aux Meadows proves that there was some truth to the stories. The Vikings explored the new world five hundred years before Christopher Columbus discovered America. Vinland was a nice place with huge amounts of Salmon in the River and lots of grapes for making wine – Hence the name Vinland (WINELAND). It was also a sheltered place good to spend a winter and was described as having “A Lake in a River”.
Adam of Bremen, a German cleric, was the first European to mention Vinland. In a text he composed around 1073, he wrote that:
He [the Danish king, Sven Estridsson] also told me of another island discovered by many in that ocean. It is called Vinland because vines grow there on their own accord, producing the most excellent wine. Moreover, that unsown crops abound there, we have ascertained not from fabulous conjecture but from the reliable reports of the Danes
When Helge and Anne Ingstad found the L’Anse aux Meadows ruins and proved it was a Viking archaeological site it was believed that Vinland was found. It was a viking site in the right place in the right time period. They studied the old stories and were familiar with the type of activity that Vikings were engaged in. They knew that Vinland should be somewhere in Northern Newfoundland. They went to the tip of the Northern Peninsula and randomly interviewed people wondering if they knew of any unusual old ruins. They were in Ship Cove and somebody told them something along the lines of “There are some odd mounds across the bay in L’Anse aux Meadows”. After going to L’Anse aux Meadows a fellow by the name of George Decker showed them the mounds of dirt that locals referred to as an “Old indian camp” and the rest is history. Vinland was found right where it was supposed to be.
However, while a viking site was found soon questions arose about wither it was actually Vinland as described in the old norse sagas. There was no river big enough to sail a large ocean going boat and the river was not teeming with Salmon. Moreover, the Vikings stayed the winter at Vinland. L’Anse aux Meadows is a open barren area completely exposed to northerly winds ands the worst of the elements that Northern Newfoundland winters have to offer. It would be hard to find a worse place to stay the winter. There have been many proposed explanations as to what the Vikings were doing. One is that L’Anse aux Meadows was a summer camp that was used for a time (Up to twenty years suggested by some historians) as a summer camp to do things like repair boats and fish ( L’Anse aux Meadows was one of the top commercial fishing places in the world for several hundred years). To explain the lack of grapes its been suggested that Vinland has to have been much further South – probably into what is today the United States. Other schollers have even suggested that Vinland is a general name that describes all of the areas in Newfoundland where the Vikings were at or that it represented multiple sites.
But the sagas don’t say that. Vinland was a specific place where the Vikings spent the winter and had specific features. Lots of Salmon in the river and a very specific detail of geography and a wonderful ability to acquire the ingredients to make wine. It is a specific spot. And it is somewhere near L’Anse aux Meadows. T hats why the Ingstad’s found L’Anse aux Meadows in the first place. After studying old writings he knew where to look. So while L’Anse aux Meadows is not Vinland it is somewhere in the area.
Unfortunately I havent been home in decades and am no longer able to go search but I am confident that I know where Vinland is located. A river with Salmon in an area easy to find ingredients to make wine in a place with a very odd looking river. Don t underestimate how harsh winters are in the area. And also near L’Anse aux Meadows where it is supposed to be. I wish that I had come up with this idea myself but the idea was proposed by one of my school teachers forty years ago.
About twenty miles away (Double that by boat) is a river called Easter Brook three miles from a small town called Raleigh. Its big and deep enough to sail a big boat. Tons of Salmon, trout and smelts n the river. There is a big hill at the mouth of the river and a couple hundred meters from the mouth of the river is a huge lake type area. It is very easy to describe this as “A Lake in a River”. At the back of the lake is a natural flat area to wait out the winter with shelter and hills on all four sides. A few decades ago it was occasionally used as a place to cut and dry grass for the winter for people who had cows. And boy was it easy to get berries for making wine. No grapes but we had Dogberries. They are everywhere around Easter Brook. I am not sure if they have a real name or if its a local name but Dogberries are small Orange berries the size of Blueberries and grow in bunches in clusters on large trees. They are very easy to pick and you can fill a five gallon bucket with them in 15 minutes flat. And they are everywhere. And they taste horrible. I have never herd of anybody actually eating one. Even with half the population starving nobody would ever eat dogberries.
However, they have a high sugar content and are very easy to acquire. And in spite of (Or maybe because of – since nobody ate them) they are great to go and harvest in the summer and put in a bucket behind the stove to ferment for a while and then just before Christmas get some copper wire and a big steel vat and hope that the cops don’t show up. Not that the moral church going people of the Northern Peninsula have ever thought about doing such things of course.
So if you want to make wine you don’t need grapes that only grow in warmer climates. I am sure that the Vikings would have very quickly figured out how to make wine (And/or Moonshine) from Dogberries. The sagas were written two hundred years after the settlement. You can easily imagine the writer using the word grapes to describe the berries when wine was being made..
The back of Easter Brook Lake fits all the descriptions of Vinland, is where Vinland is supposed to be located and probably the most perfect and obvious sheltered spot you can imagine to wait out the winter. It has to be there. If I still lived in the area I would go search for something. Somebody should go look. Easter Brook is the most obvious place to search for Vinland.