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Island Realms's District of
Markland
District Leader:
Position is currently vacant
 Black spruce forest, Markland
Markland, Norse for "forestland" or "borderland", is known to be north of Vinland and south of Helluland and during the Viking journey to the America's, part of the shoreline of Labrador in Canada was given this name by Leif Eriksson when he landed there around AD 1000.
It was a land of black spruce and birch tree forests and it is known that the Vikings harvested timber here to take back with them to Greenland which was needy of the timber. Although it was never apparently settled by Norsemen, there were probably several later expeditions from Greenland to gather timber there. As with an entry from the Icelandic Annals from A.D. 1347 which refers to a small Greenlandic vessel with an 18 man crew aboard that arrived in Iceland while attempting to return to Greenland from Markland with a load of timber. However, the Vinland sagas do tell us of some chance meetings with skraelings in Markland, but as with Vinland, there is little archeaological evidence for such contacts. One oddity though, is an arrowhead that was found in a Norse cemetery at Sandnes in Greenland at the farm in the Western Settlement owned by Erik the Red. It is made in the same style and stone material as the arrows of the Point Revenge culture of Labrador. Could it have been a souvenir brought back by some Viking or the arrow that wounded or killed him? We may never know. But later on in the 15th Century around AD 1499, another person to reach Markland was the Portuguese explorer Joćo Fernandes (known also as Joćo Fernandes Lavrador) after whom came the modern place name Labrador. Fernandes also, was granted title to much of the lands he had discovered and is considered to be the first European landowner in Labrador. |
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