Wineland Voyages: location of Helluland, Markland & Vinland

The Porcupine Strand continues along this coast for about twenty miles, and there is no other strand of such a length on the Labrador coast. It is composed of hard grit sand, fit for the old-fashioned hour-glass. Cape Porcupine is prominent, and well wooded on its eastern end. It juts out two miles from the Strand into the ocean, and is situated just midway in that sandy shore, but the fishermen often call it Sandy Beach Hill. I want you to remember particularly about this cape. Although it is not mentioned in this voyage, it is mentioned more than once in later voyages.

Wineland

Before reaching there, they sailed away upon the main, that is off to sea, and continued with a north-east wind for two days before sighting land. To determine these localities we must now resort to the Navigators well-known methods of "dead reckoning" to obtain reliable facts. In well authenticated voyages from Norway to Iceland a day's sailing with these old viking boats was reckoned at about 108 miles. So they sailed south in that time about 200 miles; then they came in towards the land, to an island which lay to the northward, off the land. They went ashore and looked about them, the weather being fine, and they observed there was dew upon the grass. About two hundred miles from Cape Porcupine brings us to the latitude of the Straits of Belle Isle. I believe when Leif started to come in towards the land, he was just south of Belle Isle at the break of day, and when he came to land, the island mentioned is the Sacred Island just to the North of Cape Onion. They went ashore at Lancey Meadows, as it is called to-day, where there is plenty of grass. Please notice particularly that there was dew on the grass, that means he was there in the early morning before the sun rose.