Hóp

Hóp is the lagoon-settlement Karlsefni's people made in Vínland — the high-water mark of the Norse attempt to settle North America. Here, where wild wheat grew on the low ground and vines on the hills and the rivers ran thick with fish, the Greenlanders built houses and wintered, trading at first with the Skrælingar who came out of the forests; and here Guðríð bore Snorri, the first child of European descent born in the new world. But trade turned to violence, the Skrælingar came in force, and the settlers were too few and too far from home to hold a hostile land. Hóp is the corpus's image of the foothold that could not be kept — the rich lagoon-settlement where the Norse came closest to taking root in America, built, defended, and at last abandoned at the edge of the western world.