Davis believes that Vinland had no precise location, but was a wide term for agricultural land along the east coast of America. It was also a place where wild grapes grew, which does not seem to be any area in North America.
According to the author, L’Anse Aux Meadows doesn’t fit the description of Vinland – it was simply a staging post on the way to this land.Ĭontemporary reports tell of Vinland being a huge place, which some people believed extended to Africa. The fabled Vinland, told of in Viking songs and sagas, has intrigued historians for centuries, with many people guessing where the land was. The fourth chapter of the book is concerned with exploring where in America the land of Vinland was. The absence of any burials here suggests, says Davis, suggests that no one ever saw the base as home. Most archaeological experts believe that L’Anse Aux Meadows was a temporary site, suitable for over-wintering or replenishing supplies, rather than for permanent living. One thousand miles south of Greenland, a sail of around ten days, was L’Anse Aux Meadows, a Viking settlement which was excavated in the 1960s. Graeme Davis advises that a Viking ship could manage 125 miles when sailing conditions were ideal, which makes the claim that Vikings did reach America a credible one. From here, believes Davis, the Vikings found their way to Baffin Island, Canada, on to Labrador and thence to Newfoundland. Their Greenland colony, created late in the tenth century, enabled them to settle and trade on the island, and the settlement was so successful, it lasted around 500 years.ĭespite this success, however, a lack of timber on Greenland led an impulse for explorers to investigate the seas around this area, to find wood for boats and houses.
However, the Vikings were also keen explorers, who, over the centuries, explored further and further from their home countries. The Viking Colony of Greenlandĭuring the early Middle Ages, Vikings were well known as sea traders, and sometimes as attackers who arrived by sea, plundered an area, then returned home by boat, taking the treasure they had stolen. Author Graeme Davis claims that in a process of travelling from island to island, starting in Scandinavia, the Vikings gradually made their way to America by way of Iceland and Greenland. Vikings in America is a new book which aims to challenge the view that America was discovered by Christopher Columbus in the fifteenth century. The author of ‘Vikings in America’ claims that around 1,000 years ago, Vikings crossed the Atlantic and settled in America.
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