Vinland is the name given by the Icelandic sailor Leif Ericsson to the territory which he discovered around the year 1000. Excavations made it possible to find traces of the presence of the Viking S with the Handle in Meadows with Newfoundland, Canada. One continues to discuss if it is Vinland from Ericsson, in which the specialists located the various possible sites on a geographical surface energy of Labrador at Florida… The Vikings did not perceive, at the origin, the exploration and the colonization of the Greenland and Vinland like different from the foundation and the colonization of the Iceland. It was only a question for them of prolonging their territory. One will need the meeting of the Amerindian autochtones, very different from the monks of Ireland, so that on them the concept again world is essential.

History

Vinland is mentioned for the first time by the geographer and German historian Adam of Bremen in his book Descriptio insularum Aquilonis , written towards 1075. It returned visit, to write it, with the king Sven II of Denmark, which was informed of the Scandinavian grounds. The primary source of information on the voyages of the Vikings in Vinland comes from two Saga S Icelandic, the Saga of Érik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders written roughly two centuries and half after the colonization of the Greenland. The combination from these two sagas seems to show that there were some separate attempts at Norwegian colonization of Vinland, including by Þorfinnr Karlsefni, of which none lasted during more than two years. There are probably several causes at the beginning of the small colony Viking. The written sources mention dissension among the men about the few women belonging to forwarding as well as conflicts with the Skræling S (Amerindian) living already in the area.

The history says that after the colonization of Greenland by the Vikings, a trader of the name of Bjarni Herjólfsson, in way of Greenland towards Iceland, accidentally discovered the east coast of America in 985 or 986 after being diverted of his way by a storm. He told then his history and sold his vessels with Leif Ericsson which, according to the stories, turned over towards these areas. As it was the end of the summer, it set out again for Greenland which it succeeds in reaching before the winter, but renonça to be unloaded in Vinland, not wanting to spend the winter in this new ground, that it then described like glaze of forests. The supply wooden being very restricted in Greenland, the colonists were eager to explore the richness of this new ground. A few years later, Leif Ericsson explored this coast and establishes a colony of short duration on part of the coast which it called Vinland.

The first discovered one made by Leif was, according to the stories, the Helluland (“ground of the stone punt”), probably the island of Baffin. Then, the Markland (“ground of wood”), probably the Labrador, was discovered (there exist evidence of reduction or diminution of the limit of the trees in the north of Labrador around the year 1000) and to finish, Vinland (generally translated by “ground of the wine (of Airelle S)”, but interpreted by others like “ground of pasture”), probably Newfoundland, unless it is not of Quebec, Acadie or New England. Forwarding included/understood families and cattle in order to start a new colonization. The colony of north accepted the name of Straumfjörðr and that of the south of Hóp . Only two chiefs of Viking really wintered in Vinland, the second being Thorvald Ericsson, the brother of Leif, which was killed during the second summer. The idea of colonization was nevertheless quickly abandoned because of the conflicts with the Skrælings (perhaps of the Béothuks or the Dorset ). It seems that it was there question of new forwardings of deforestation until in the years 1300.

Until the 19th century, the idea of a colonization Viking of North America was regarded by the historians as concerning folklore, until the development in 1837 of a first serious assumption by the historian of the literature and archeologist Danish Carl Christian Rafn in his work Antiquitates Americanæ where he concluded, after an in-depth study of the sagas, as well as potential places of colonization of the North-American coast, that Vinland was a real place in North America which had been colonized by Norwegians.

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