Leif Eriksson', son of Eric the Red, discoverer of Green land, voyaged south from Greenland in the year 1000. He landed first on a. Barren coast which he named Hellu land, and which is believed to have been Labrador. His next landfall was on the shores of a wooded country which he named Markland, and which may have been Newfoundland or Nova Scotia. Two days later he landed on a more hospitable coast, which he named Vinland, and where he spent the winter. He ascended a river, and some of his men found grapes, hence the name.
For years a controversy has raged around the identity of Vinland, but as the evidence is extremely meagre it is improbable, unless some convincing runic inscription should be discovered, that we shall ever know anything more than that it lay somewhere on the north Atlantic coast of America.