From Bjarneyjar they put to sea with a north wind. They were at sea, according to the saga, for two "dœgr."[300]
"There they found land, and rowed along it in boats, and examined the country, and found there [on the shore] many flat stones so large that two men might easily lie stretched upon them sole to sole. There were many white foxes there.[301] They gave the land a name and called it 'Helluland.'"
It may be the coast of Labrador that is here intended, and not Baffin Land, since the statement that they sailed thither with a north wind must doubtless imply that the coast lay more or less in a southerly and not in a westerly direction from Bjarneyjar. From Helluland
"they sailed for two 'dœgr' towards the south-east and south, and then a land lay before them, and upon it were great forests and many beasts. An island lay to the south-east off the land, and there they found a polar bear,[302] and they called the island 'Bjarney'; but the country they called 'Markland' [i.e., Wood-land] on account of the forest."
The name Markland suits Newfoundland best; it had forests down to the sea-shore when it was rediscovered about 1500, and even later.
"two 'dœgr' they sighted land and sailed under the land. There was a promontory where they first came. They cruised along the shore, which they kept to starboard [i.e., to the west]. It was without harbours and there were long strands and stretches of sand. They went ashore in boats, and found there on the promontory a ship's keel, and called it 'Kjalarnes' [i.e., Keel-ness]; they also gave the strands a name and called them 'Furðustrandir' [i.e., the marvel-strands or the wonderful, strange strands], because it took a long time to sail past them."[303]
This may apply, as Storm points out, to the eastern side of Cape Breton Island; but in that case they must have steered west-south-west from the south-eastern promontory of Markland (Newfoundland). Kjalarnes must then be Cape Breton itself. That they should have found a ship's keel there sounds strange; if this is not an invention we must suppose that it was driven ashore from a wreck; no doubt it happened often enough that vessels were lost on the voyage to Greenland. When Eric, according to the Landnámabók, sailed with twenty-five ships, many of them were lost. Wreckage would be carried by the currents from Greenland into the Labrador current, and by this southward past Markland. But it is more probable that the origin of the name was entirely different; that, for example, the promontory had the shape of a ship's keel, and that the account of the keel found has been developed much later.[304] This is confirmed by the fact that the "Grönlendinga-þáttr" gives a wholly different explanation of the name from that in Eric's Saga.