Geographical Implication of the Narrative
In spite of plain geographical indications in the above recital, Estotiland has been located by some random or oversubtle conjectures in the strangest and most widely scattered places, including even parts of the British Isles. But a region a thousand miles west of the Faroes or any other Atlantic islands can be nothing but American, and the restriction of its commerce to Greenland, apparently as a next neighbor, points very clearly (as Estotiland) to that outjutting elbow of North America, which culminates in Cape Race, south of Greenland and thrust out toward Europe. The clear definition of it in the tale as an island, largely explored by the narrator, approximating the size of Iceland but more fertile, with mountainous interior, great forests (such as gave the name Markland to Norse tradition), and rivers flowing several ways, clearly indicates Newfoundland. The Zeno map accords with this, and most of the later maps accept that identification—though often with a great extension of territory. Thus a French map in the United States National Museum,[219] having 1668 for an entry of discovery and perhaps dating from about 1700, presents the whole region southeast of Hudson Bay in an inscription as called Estotiland by the Danes, Nouvelle Bretagne (New Britain) by the English, Canada Septentrionale by the French, and Labrador by the Spanish; but here again Labrador and Newfoundland may have been chiefly in mind.