Historiography

Well the hoaxes didn't start with Maine or Kensington though but really have their roots in the uncritical historiography of the 19th century Scandinavian historians. Most notable here is the Danish historian Carl Christian Rafn who published Antiqvitates Americana in 1937, which popularized the idea of Norse exploration and discovery of the new world, and is also responsible for some of the more extreme claims like the [Newport Tower](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Newport_Tower_(Rhode_Island)) in Rhode Island being a Norse structure and Dighton Rock in Massachusetts also being Norse, nether of which claims are considered to have any credibility whatsoever today.

In 1911, the Norwegian explorer Fridtjof Nansen published "In Northern Mists - Arctic Exploration in Early Times" (online: v1, v2) where he scrutinized the Vinland Sagas, made comparisons to other medieval myths and while he didn't dismiss them entirely, he took a much more skeptical attitude towards their truthfulness. This came at the same time as the beginning of a broader movement in Scandinavian historiography towards a much more skeptical attitude towards Saga literature, a seminal work being Lauritz Weibull's Kritiska undersökningar i Nordens historia omkring år 1000 (also 1911).

To put the new attitude as simply as possible, a much greater emphasis was put on contemporaneity. Sources written many centuries after the events they purport to describe couldn't be taken seriously. The problem was not that they couldn't be based off real events, but that it was not possible to identify what elements - if any - were true. Which is also almost verbatim what Danish archaeologist Knud Krogh (1982, p26) has said about the Vinland Sagas specifically and more recently.

Weibull's approach is distinct from the 19th century and very early 20th century historians where it was taken for granted that these stories all had some historical basis, and the job of the historian was to give historical interpretations to the more obviously fantastical elements, or disregard them competently.

Weibull was of course not the first skeptic though. The Swedish chronicler Olaus Petri wrote in the early 1500s that he considered the Gesta Danorum, Historia Norwegiæ and other medieval chronicles writing about things 1,000 years before hand as a load of rubbish. But in the early 1900s it was a sea change. Well into the 1920s or so you'll find historians of Scandinavia debating which Yngling kings lived when based of clues they think they found in Beowulf and so on, whereas from the mid-20th century until present, the whole dynasty has largely been written off as fairy-tale.

Sources

Now in the case of Vinland there is actually a near-contemporaneous (1070 or so) account by Adam of Bremen in his chronicle of the bishops of Hamburg-Bremen, which is one of the most well-known sources on and from the Viking Age. Adam was at least writing within living memory of the supposed journeys, but does not say much about Vinland though other than that grapes grow there, hence the name. Although Adam's book spread, it's not a surprise knowledge of Vinland did not attract greater attention as it does not really exactly stand out among medieval stories of mythical, bountiful islands in the Atlantic.

It is only a full 200 years after Adam that we have the Vinland Sagas being composed (1220-1250). Adam's writings were known in contemporary Iceland and it's possible if not probable that they influenced or reinforced the Vinland saga tradition.

There are however a couple of other and earlier references to Vinland and Markland. So although Vinland itself was never written off completely, the credibility of the Vinland Sagas was pretty much at their nadir when the site at L'Anse-aux-Meadows was found and excavated in the early 1960s.

Since then, other finds have been made (primarily by Patricia Sutherland who's a rather controversial persona) of later medieval Norse objects in Baffin Island as well, showing that the Norse Greenlanders went there or at least had contacts, and there is a late reference of them going to Markland as well, as two Icelandic chronicles mention 17 Greenlanders returning from Markland landing in Iceland after going off course.

The Vinland Sagas are contemporary but the two stories they record are problematic in how very different they are. Nordal (1953) believes they represent two contemporary but distinct traditions, recorded around the same time in different parts of Iceland.

They disagree on basic facts; one voyage in the Saga of Eric the Red (SER) and multiple of them in the Saga of the Greenlanders (SG). SER has more fantastical elements than SG, like unipeds, ships sinking due to being eaten by worms in the 'sea of worms' (Maðksjó). Yet GR has things like Freydís Eiriksdottir committing a massacre on fellow Norsemen which the former says nothing about. GS is also not preserved as a single saga; what we have is a reconstruction of separate fragments.

The people who wrote these hadn't been to these places; possibly not even Greenland. (It's been pointed out that the contemporary Fóstbrœðra Saga, which takes place in Greenland, gets the geography wrong)

Anyway, so it should be said that as far as most historians are concerned, these stories are not considered to have enough credibility for them to put much stock in the details about sailing times and such. The finds at L'Anse verified Norse presence in North America beyond Greenland, but do not really correspond well to the saga descriptions.

Places

But we do have three named major places from multiple sources, ordered from chronologically (or north-to-south); namely Helluland, Markland and Vinland.

Helluland means "land of rocks". Hellu is genitive plural of hallr meaning rock, usually big smooth rocks, outcroppings particularly on shores.. (These are hallar) Described as full of barren rocks and glaciers, this is commonly associated with Baffin Island and/or the northern coast of Labrador.

Markland - "Forested land". 'Mark' or 'mǫrk' means 'forested land, wilderness', (like in Heimskringla "Svíþjóð er markland mikil" - "Sweden is a great forested country"). This is usually interpreted as the Labrador coast (note that forests stretched farther north in the medieval warm period) some (e.g. Wallace, 2008) have more specifically pointed to the forested Hamilton Inlet area. It's described as having forest and sandy beaches. The later Greenlanders who visited are likely to have been doing so to collect wood, which was in short supply on Greenland.

Vinland - As said the etymology given by Adam and the sagas relate it to grapes. Old Norse "vín" is literally "wine" but as grapes were only known through wine they had derived names - vínber (wine-berry) for 'grape' and as vínviðr (wine-wood) for the plant. So "vín-" can refer to any of the above. (Old Norse also did not use the accent to distinguish vowel length, so from the written form it could also be "vinland" meaning "friend-land" or all sorts of other things; but you'd need a good argument to depart from the traditional interpretation) Although various attempts at botanical angle have been made too (Fernald).

Theories

We're not sure about Vínland. There's nothing saying it couldn't refer to L'Anse-aux-Meadows area itself, a position taken for instance by Lönnroth (1996). On the other hand there's Mats G Larsson (1992, 1999), who it should be said is a historian who values the saga literature more highly as a source than most (and not just in this matter). He's revived a 19th century theory by Storm (1887) and argues that the details do not match well enough and that Vinland was in Nova Scotia. He even conducted a few expeditions there in an attempt to find Norse sites, without luck. Birgitta Wallace (2008) on the other hand argues in favor of the general Gulf of Saint Lawrence area.

So to summarize; I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the fact that many historians and archaeologists consider it a bit of a fool's errand to try to match the saga accounts to actual locations. They are simply too late, too unreliable and too vague. On the other hand there's no denying there's also a great appeal in trying to do so anyway! Invariably those who attempt it pick elements they can match, while finding reasons to disregard those that don't. That said, I'm not saying those works should be disregarded, just that their strongly speculative nature should be recognized. If you want to go into more detail, Wallace's chapter and references therein should be a decent starting place (google found a PDF link below).

(PS: For my money the Furðustrandir would be the beaches south of the Hamilton Inlet and north of Sandwich Bay)

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Sigurdur Nordal, Sagalitteraturen in Nordisk Kultur VIII:B, Copenhagen, 1953

Knud Krogh, Erik den rødes Grønland, Nationalmuseum Copenhagen, 1982

M. L. Fernald, Notes on the Plants of Wineland the Good, Rhodora 12, p17-38, 1910

Erik Lönnroth, The Vinland problem. Scandinavian Journal of History, 21(1), p39-47, 1996

Mats G. Larsson, The Vinland Sagas and Nova Scotia: A Reappraisal of an Old Theory, Scandinavian Studies, Vol. 64, No. 3, p305-335, 1992

Mats G Larsson, Vinland det goda: nordbornas färder till Amerika under vikingatiden, Atlantis, 1999

Birgitta Wallace, The Discovery of Vinland, in The Viking World, eds Stefan Brink, Neil Price, Routledge, 1998 (PDF)

Gustav Storm, Studier over Vinlandsreiserne, Vinlands geografi og ethnografi, Aarbøger for nordisk Oldkyndighet og Historie 2:2, p293-372, 1887