Labrador as Markland
Some have urged that the southern part of Labrador may have been Markland; but its trees of any considerable size are to be found only by following up inlets far into the interior where the Arctic current has less power to chill; there is nothing to indicate that conditions were very different then in this regard; and to judge by the narrative itself we must not conceive of the Norse visitors as pausing to explore deeply without allurement, but rather as hastening down the shore in quest of warmer regions and ampler pasturage for their stock which they carried with them, also of a good warm site for settlement, such as Leif had already reported. They were primarily colonists, not explorers of the disinterested or glory-seeking type. It was most natural to sail on; noting only what they could discern from the sea, or by a brief boat-landing. This would hardly give them the idea of a forest land in any part of hard-featured, ice-battered Labrador.
It is probable that, like some later navigators, they would not think of the Strait of Belle Isle as other than a fiord or inlet, after the pattern of the great Hamilton Inlet farther north; and if they guessed Markland to be an island it would be on quite different grounds—chiefly the natural tendency (which persisted until long after their time) to consider every western discovery insular; but they would at least be alive to the distinction between treelessness and an ample forest cover, and we see that in point of fact they did distinguish the regions on just this score.