An excerpt from the book The Vinland Millenium.
Where was Wineland? Where was Hóp, the country discovered by the Norsemen around the year 1000? Was it at New York?
Gathorne-Hardy maintained that Hóp was at New York. Let us consider whether this could be correct on the basis of Eirík's Saga.
The distance from the Bay of Fundy to New York is no problem. This is about 400 nautical miles, and they had the whole summer to make the journey - compared with the as-much-as 2,500 nautical miles they had sailed in the late summer of the previous year the 400 miles would not have been a problem. In addition, this journey took place entirely in coastal waters and mild conditions. Nonetheless, they might well be said to sail "a long time," as the distance was comparable to the "surprising" length of the Wonder Coast. Also, Eirík's Saga subsequently recounts a tale of a "long" journey westwards from Kjalarnes to Uniped Land, which may have been from Cape North on Cape Breton Island, to the area west of the Gaspé peninsula.

It is interesting that at Hóp they "built their settlement," and there is no mention of Leif's Houses at this location. From this one may infer that Leif's Houses were not at Hóp. On a map, one can compare conditions at New York to the description above. The Hudson river flows from the far north to form a lagoon at the coast: hóp is the Icelandic word for a lagoon. The lagoon is what is now New York harbour, called Upper Bay - rather bigger than a lagoon named Hóp in north Iceland, undoubtedly known to Thorfinn. This is where the Statue of Liberty now stands. The river then flows into the sea through the Narrows, which are justly named, being as they are one-and-half kilometres across. Beyond the river mouth is Lower Bay, which has great sandbars on each side. Sandy Hook, on the southern side, is 20 kilometres long, while another sand bar projects from the north and east, ending in Rockaway Point. The distance between the two points is about 10 kilometres; this entrance to the lagoon has had to be deepened by canals. The largest is the Ambrose Canal, 600 metres across and 12 metres deep, leading all the way into the harbour. During this century, the land has subsided by the equivalent of 60cm in a hundred years, so it may have been even shallower in the past.
The conditions at Hóp and at New York thus appear to have much in common. No comparable location, with sandbars and a lagoon, has been suggested anywhere on the coast from New York north to the Bay of Fundy. Mount Hope Bay in Rhode Island has been a candidate, but there are islands, not sandbars, in the bay, and weather conditions are considerably cooler than they appear to have been at Hóp. Babcock, who maintains that Hóp was at Mount Hope Bay, admits that there is no lock-like bay, no sand-bars, and that ships can sail in without difficulty. Chapter 10 continues:
Karlsefni and his men sailed into the estuary and named the place Hóp [Tidal Lake]. Here they found wild wheat growing in fields on all the low ground and grape vines on all the higher ground. Every stream was teeming with fish. They dug trenches at the high-tide mark, and when the tide went out there were holy fish trapped in the trenches. In the woods there was a great number of animals of all kinds.

They stayed there for a fortnight, enjoying themselves and noticing nothing untoward. They had their livestock with them.
Then the Native Americans made a silent visit, after which the saga says:
They stayed there that winter. There was no snow at all, and all the livestock were able to fend for themselves.
Around New York, self-sown wheat and grapes would be in plentiful supply, and the description of the conditions in which these plants grow is convincing, as will be discussed later. The story of the "holy fish" (some kind of flatfish), is also believable, as some species of flatfish swim some distance up large rivers, where they live in brackish water. One of these is the winter flounder (Pseudopleuronectes americanus), which is found between Georgia and Labrador, in water temperatures of 12-16°C. The winter flounder is 60 centimetres long in warm seas, and is excellent for eating. It is commonly found at depths between two and 37 metres, but it can sometimes be caught at depths of as little as 15cm, when it burrows into the sandy bottom, so only the eyes are visible. But it is unlikely that the fish would feel at home there today, where a peaceful beach has been replaced by piers and quays, beneath skyscrapers and the Statue of Liberty, and all the brooks covered by streets and buildings. Salmon is not mentioned at Hóp, and salmon was probably never common in the Hudson River, although the river was once the most southerly habitat of the fish. Salmon is no longer seen there, and is not found any farther south than the Connecticut river, as it does not thrive in warm seas. This is one of the factors indicating that Hóp was a different place from Leif's Wineland, where salmon was plentiful. The observation that no snow fell at Hóp indicates that it cannot, at any rate, have been farther north than New York. Snow falls there most winters, admittedly, but there are occasional years, such as 1953, when average monthly temperatures did not drop below 3°C. This is like the mildest of winters in southern Iceland, for instance the first months of 1964 in the Westman Islands, when hardly a flake of snow fell. To someone like Thorfinn, who came from northern Iceland where heavy snows are commonplace, this would be extremely mild. For comparison it is worth mentioning that at New Haven, Connecticut, a little north and east of New York, the temperature for the coldest month of the year, in the warm period from 1931 to 1960, averaged -1.3ºC, similar to the temperature in Iceland's chilly Strandir area, while precipitation was much higher at New Haven. So a snowless winter could not be expected there, and hence Hóp ought to be farther south. In view of this, together with the topographical description discussed above, the inference is that it is possible, indeed likely, that Hóp was at New York. Later I shall argue that Hóp could hardly be farther south, when we come to consider Thorfinn's expedition to search for Thórhall the Hunter.

It was on 10 September 1998 that I arrived in New York with my grandson, Hjalti Baldursson. As mentioned above, the description in Eirík the Red's saga of a river that flows off the land, through a lake and to the sea would indicate the Hudson river, and the sandbars and shoals at the entrance from the sea are also reminiscent of New York. But we were especially interested in exploring whether the specific conditions within the harbour might somewhere resemble those described in Eirík the Red's saga, when Thorfinn settled at Hóp.

The taxi driver who drove us from the airport told us that during the last winter there had only been one real snowfall. This, of course, is not much of a clue, but it would tend to support the idea that the statement in Eirík's saga, that there was no snow during the winter Thorfinn spent at Hóp, could apply to New York; at that time, the climate may be assumed to have been relatively warm. The following day we went on a short cruise of New York harbour, between Manhattan and Staten Island; our guide was Clayton Tinsley who had, earlier that summer, been working on an archaeological dig in Iceland. There was a southerly breeze off the ocean, roughening the surface of the sea. It must sometimes have looked just like this in the days of Thorfinn Karlsefni, but there is not much else in this city that has changed so little. To the south we saw the two headlands on either side of the Narrows, one projecting from the west, from Staten Island, the other from the east, from Brooklyn. Either one of them could have been the headland that features in Eirík the Red's saga, when the natives came "from the south by the point" then went away south around the point. Thorfinn's homestead ought thus to have been a short distance north of one or other of the headlands, at a place with good moorage, also providing a quick, safe entrance from the sea to the lake, if other qualities of the land were acceptable. This is why my attention was caught by a small inlet on the east, which we found was called Gowanus Bay. This probably existed a thousand years ago, although the sea level has risen considerably since then. I was interested to find out whether various other topographic descriptions in Eirík the Red's saga were consistent with this bay. This would not, of course, prove that Thorfinn had been here, but it would be interesting if the statements about Hóp in the saga were consistent with one real place.