Hóp (Tidal Estuary Lagoon) in “Eirik the Red’s Saga”

[Karlsefni’s and Gudrid’s expedition]

Chapter 10

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Karlsefni headed south around the coast, with Snorri and Bjarni and the rest of the company. They sailed a long time, until they came to a river which flowed into a lake and from there into the sea. There were wide sandbars beyond the mouth of the river, and they could only sail into the river at high tide. Karlsefni and his company sailed into the lagoon and called the land Hop (Tidal pool). There they found fields of self-sown wheat in the low-lying areas and vines growing on the hills. Every stream was teeming with fish. They dug trenches along the high-water mark and when the tide ebbed there were halibut in them. There were a great number of deer of all kinds in the forest.

They stayed there for a fortnight, enjoying themselves and finding nothing unusual. They had taken their livestock with them. [...]

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[...] The group had built their booths up above the lake, with some of the huts farther inland, and others close to the shore.

They remained there that winter. There was no snow at all and the livestock could fend for themselves out of doors. [...]

Chapter 11

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[...] She followed them into the forest [...]

[After leaving Hóp] They then entered Straumsfjord, where they found food in plenty. Some people say that Bjarni and Gudrid had remained behind there with a hundred others and gone no farther, and that it was Karlsefni and Snorri who went further south with some forty men, stayed no more than two months at Hop and returned the same summer.

Source: Keneva Kunz, trans., "[Hóp (Tidal Estuary Lagoon) in] Eirik the Red’s Saga" in The Sagas of Icelanders: A Selection, preface by Jane Smiley, introduction by Robert Kellogg, (New York, London, Victoria (Australia), Toronto, Auckland: The Penguin Group, 2000), 653-674. Notes: Translations first published in "The Complete Sagas of Icelanders," volumes I-V (forty-nine tales), Leifur Eiriksson Publishing, Ltd., Iceland, 1997.

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