I think the consensus has been for some time that they showed up, caught some fish, logged a few trees, decided it sucked, and left, all in probably less than a decade.
Not much has changed! Kidding.
Unless they were fishing for cod (usually offshore), they weren't doing so well on the Northern Peninsula of Newfoundland. And the trees in that area of Newfoundland are skinny, short, and useless for most construction.
I think they just landed on the part of Newfoundland that has the least to offer. It's still that way 1000 years later.
Had they landed in one of the bays on the East Coast of Newfoundland, they might have enjoyed better weather, better shelter, better fishing, and more contact with the local aboriginal population.
> They were short in height with threatening features and tangled hair on their heads. Their eyes were large and their cheeks broad.
> despite everything the land had to offer there, they would be under constant threat of attack from its prior inhabitants.
I don't think the Beothuk, for example, were ever very numerous, certainly not as numerous as other aboriginal people in Labrador and Greenland at the time.
It wasn't just the Norse that had a hard time living in Newfoundland at the time. It wasn't very hospitable to any humans.
> It wasn't just the Norse that had a hard time living in Newfoundland at the time. It wasn't very hospitable to any humans.
I don’t think it was as crowded as, say, New England (early explorers of the coast of New England, IIRC, wrote that there wasn’t enough open shoreline to even make landfall on). However much or however little of Newfoundland was habitable, though, was already inhabited by the time the Norse got there.