Where Is Vinland in ‘Vinland Saga’? Is It a Real Place?

Vinland Saga is a historical manga written and drawn by mangaka Makoto Yukimura. The series was published by Kōdansha in Weekly Shōnen Magazine in April 2005 before being moved to the monthly magazine Afternoon in December 2005. Several Icelandic sagas inspire the manga and refer to the discovery of North America by the Vikings, and if a manga can take pride in its historical accuracy, then Vinland Saga can definitely do it. Yukimura did an amazing job exploring the history behind his story, and although Vinland Saga is not a historical chronicle – it has a lot of original and fictional content – it is actually a story set within precise historical boundaries. We already know that this applies to many characters from the manga, but does it also apply to the locations? In this article, you will find out about Vinland from Vinland Saga and whether it is a real place.

Vinland is a real historical place that appears as the final destination in Vinland Saga and as an actual location in historical documents. It is actually the name of a small region located on the northeast coast of North America. Lief Eriksson, the actual historical explorer, seemingly landed there around 1,000 AD, and the name was supposedly named Vinland because of its alleged abundance of grapevines. It is the location where Thorfinn and his crew settled and established Arnheid Village to live in peace, without wars.

The rest of this article will tell you about the actual historical location of Vinland that is featured in the title and the plot of Vinland Saga. We will tell you about all the historical events that actually happened and are related to Vinland, some of which have been depicted in the story, while some are yet to be depicted. We won’t be going into the actual plot of the manga, so the info here cannot technically be classified as spoilers, but still, be careful how you approach it.

Vinland is a location that is present in historical documents

Every viewer and reader of Vinland Saga will have noticed the series’ realism and authenticity when depicting historical events. It is obvious that Yukimura did the necessary research and that Vinland Saga is not a piece of fiction simply inspired by Viking tales but rather a very accurate take on historical events. Thanks to numerous references and behind-the-scenes information, we know how much effort Yukimura put into creating Vinland Saga; he even traveled to Iceland and explored a lot of authentic documents to create the layout of his story.

And while we have already discussed the historical authenticity of some of the characters and plot elements, what about the locations? Well, we know that Scandinavia did exist, and while not every settlement and village depicted in the manga actually existed, what about the main location, the one from the title? What about Vinland? What is Vinland really, and was it a fictional or a real location? Let us first see what Vinland is in the manga.

Vinland is the name of a small region in North America on the northeast coast of that region. The manga’s Leif Ericson discovered that region around 1,000 AD and named Vinland for its alleged abundance of grapevines. The region was not uninhabited, and its native people, the Lnu or Mi’kmaq, were skrælings by the Norse and were the ancestors of Native Americans, as the manga states.

The actual location of Vinland is not known, but based on a map provided to us in Chapter 180 of the manga; it is somewhere around modern-day Newfoundland and Labrador, or, to be more precise, Prince Edward Island, as the bay that the characters enter appears based on a small harbor near North Rustico.

As for the importance to the plot of the manga, aside from being in the title, Vinland is also the location where Thorfinn and his crew want to go, i.e., where they land and establish the Arnheid Village, a place where they could live in peace, without all the wars and battles they had left behind in Scandinavia.

So, now that we know what Vinland is in the manga – we know that it exists, where it is, and why it is so important – we can finally elaborate on whether Vinland is a historical location. In case you did not know, Vinland is a location mentioned in historical documents, so it is an actual location related to Lief Eriksson’s voyages.

Vinland is mentioned for the first time by the German geographer and historian Adam of Bremen in his book Descriptio insularum Aquilonis (Description of the northern islands), written around 1075. The main source of information about Viking voyages in Vinland are two epic sagas, the Saga of Erik the Red and the Saga of the Greenlanders, written approximately two and a half centuries after the settlement of Greenland.

The combination of these two sagas shows that there were several separate attempts at Norwegian colonization of Vinland, including by Þorfinnr Karlsefni, none of which lasted longer than two years. There are probably several causes for the abandonment of these settlements by the Vikings. The written sources mention disagreements among the men over the few women on the expedition and conflicts with the indigenous (Amerindian) populations to whom the sagas give the name of Skrælings.

The story goes that after the settlement of Greenland by the Vikings, a trader named Bjarni Herjólfsson, on his way from Greenland to Iceland, accidentally discovered the east coast of America in 985 or 986 after being hijacked by a storm.

He then tells his story and sells his ships to Leif Erikson, who in turn leaves for these regions. The end of summer approaching, he left for Greenland, which he managed to reach before winter, but he gave up going to Vinland, not wanting to spend the winter stuck in this new land. He then describes a new land covered with forests (Markland).

The timber supply in Greenland was very limited. The settlers were attracted by the richness of this new land on this point. A few years later, Leif Erikson explored this coast even further and established a short-lived colony there on a part he called Vinland, and which he described as rich in food resources. According to the stories, the sequence of discoveries made by Erikson is first Helluland (“land of the flat stone”), which probably corresponds to Baffin Island, Canada.

Then Markland (“woodland”), probably Labrador, was discovered (there is archaeological evidence of a reduction or lessening of the tree line in northern Labrador around AD 1000), and Finally, Vinland, with a milder climate and numerous natural resources. Like the other names of discovered lands, Vinland covers a fairly large geographical area, probably surrounding the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

Vinland is generally translated as “land of the vine” Old Norse vinber may refer to the shore vine (Vitis riparia) or, according to other authors, to the edible viburnum (Viburnum edule), both plants growing in abundance in the St. Lawrence region. Some linguists interpret it as another word derived from Old Norse, wine with a short i, giving “pasture land” or “grass land”.