The one you may have heard about, that is pretty widely agreed to be Viking, is L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland. But what I didn’t know is there is a second potential colony mentioned in the Icelandic saga of Erik the Red. Intrepid explorer Thorfinn Karlsefn travels to a land called Hóp, where he finds grapes, plentiful supplies of salmon, barrier sandbars and natives who use animal-hide canoes. But not one has ever found Hóp. Unfortunately, the Icelandic sagas were not big on directions.
Now, an archaeologist is speculating that Hóp is in New Brunswick, south of L'Anse aux Meadows. The only area on the Atlantic seaboard that accommodates all the saga criteria is northeastern New Brunswick, the archaeologist argues, and particularly the Miramichi-Chaleur bay area.
Northeastern New Brunswick is the northern limit of grapes. It has plentiful salmon, unlike more southern candidates like Maine or Massachusetts. It has barrier sandbars. And hide canoes were used by the Mi’kmaq people in the Miramichi-Chaleur bay area. Some evidence for Hóp’s proposed site also comes from L'Anse aux Meadows, where the remains of butternuts and parts of linden trees have been found – species which are native only to New Brunswick.
