There are multiple accounts indicating the Norse settlers on Greenland were, in fact, settlers more than anything else. Erik the Red settled on Greenland after

There are multiple accounts indicating the Norse settlers on Greenland were, in fact, settlers more than anything else. Erik the Red settled on Greenland after being exiled, after all. Adam of Bremen's mentions about Vinland indicates that knowledge about the area was wide-spread amongst the Norse. Still, no major settlements had been attemted in his time despite the fact that he wrote it down no less than 75 years after Vinland had been discovered. That being said, the Norse seem to have grasped how vast the North American continent is, if nothing else by describing the various natural features they found noteworthy. They also apparently got into a conflict with the locals. My guess: L'anse aux Meadows was a logging and resource gathering operation. Logs are not easy to come by on Greenland and shipping them from Europe would have taken longer than getting them from Newfoundland. Does any of this exclude that the Norse explorers went further than we could ever imagine? No, but a litterate explorer from 990's Scaninavia would most likely have used the younger Futhark rather than the old one. The inscription in the article uses the old one.