After it was governed by the kingdom of Norway in the thirteenth century, the Norse colonization of south-west Greenland faded away under the attacks of the Eskimo, until it ceased completely in the fifteenth century.

When Denmark united herself with the kingdom of Norway in 1397, the Danish king became also the ruler of Iceland.

In the eighteenth century the Norwegian and Danish settlements were re-established along the south-east and south-west coasts of Greenland, mainly on account of the value of the whale, seal, and cod fisheries in the seas around this enormous frozen island; and all Greenland is now regarded as a Danish possession.
But the adventurous Norsemen who first reached Greenland from Iceland attempted to push their investigations farther to the south-west, in the hope of discovering more habitable lands; and in this way it was supposed that their voyages extended as far as Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but in all probability they reached no farther than Newfoundland and Nova Scotia.

This portion of North America they called "Vinland", more from the abundance of cranberries (_vinbaer_) on the open spaces than the few vines to be found in the woods of Nova Scotia.[3] [Footnote 3: The grapes and vines so often alluded to by the early explorers of North America ripened, according to the species, between August and October.

They belong to the same genus--_Vitis_--as that of the grape vines of the Old World, but they were quite distinct in species.