Southern New England

The coast of Vinland

General orientation as it is today.

Many of these features will be correlated with those of the Sagas.

This and the following maps are shown as a high oblique to approach that perspective seen by seamen, as  the "bird's eye" view of ordinary maps is not that visualized by the man on shipboard.

In general, from the sea, the entire coastline seems "low and wooded" as was described by Bjarni Herjolfsson near AD 986, but it takes on more complexities as one approaches closer.  Outer (North jutting) Cape Cod is a low lying sandy feature with low forest covering it.  It is a geographic feature resulting from sea currents, mainly the North flowing Gulf Stream which sweeps Northward some miles offshore.

Westward the country rises and is entirely forested but never seems from the sea as what would be called "mountainous".  But so far as the Connecticut River, it does have low mountains - the terrain near Thames River being sometimes quite precipitous.  See Freydis' map for a perspective on the terrain.

The coast is the southern terminus of a great glacier of eons ago and is extremely rocky from the inner coast Northward.  Strangely,  the base sub-terrain is subsiding slowly - 18 inches in the past 1000 years -  the expected, but absent "spring-back" in these conditions is apparent only so close as the Maine coast (over ten feet rise!), which is to the Northward of this map.

For more detail, refer to any road map or topographic map.  If one is serious about examining detail nautical charts are helpful.

The extended and narrow archipelago between buzzard's Bay and Marthas Vinyard are the Elizabeth Islands, even today not very well settled.  They have confused currents and. being small, unreliable water supply.  They, and NoMansLand Island are seldom visited.  The original name of the island was apparently "Normans Land"

Pawcatuck River has little relevance to this study and is included here to define the  western edge of the current State of Rhode Island. 

Thames River has a significance to us from the fact that there was a colonial settlement there whose Governor was one John Winthrop, son of a Governor of Massachusetts Colony.  Records of the two places and individuals are sometimes confused by historians to seem that Rhode Island was surrounded by the Massachusetts Colony.  It is compounded by added confusion of there being another Connecticut settlement along the Connecticut River, further west.  This Thames River settlement had great bearing upon the history of the Narragansetts.  (see; People Page) 

Next: The coast as it may have been in olden times.                                         Home