[6] Among the other settlers to Vinland was Freydis, the sister or half-sister of Leif Eriksson, who may have accompanied Karlsefni's voyage (Eir.)

records that Karlsefni left Greenland with 60 men and five women, following the route taken by Leif and Thorvald Eiriksson.

Excavations of Thorfinn's home in Greenland in 1930 revealed a deposit of anthracite coal identified as having originated in the vicinity of Rhode Island.

shifts over to Karlsefni the credit for naming numerous geographic features, from Helluland and Markland to Kjalarnes "Keel Ness", though "this flatly contradicts the Grœnlendinga saga and is assuredly wrong".

[16] Helluland (Baffin Island) and Markland were named by Leif; Kjalarness was where Thorvald had wrecked his ship, and the keel was left to stand as a monument,[17] and not an anonymous shipwreck as Eir.

Eirik the Red's Saga depicts Thorfinn Karlsefni as a successful merchant from Reynines, Skagafjord, in the north of Iceland.

Karlsefni embarks on a trading expedition with 40 men, and arrive at Brattahlid, Greenland where they are hosted by Eirik the Red.

Karlsefni's expedition winter on a piece of land, where two scouting slaves found grapes and wild grain.

Karlsefni and his men are saved by Freydis, who scares the natives off by slapping her bare breast with a sword taken from one of the fallen Greenlanders.

The adult Skraelings disappear into the earth, while the children are taken by Karlsefni to Greenland, where they are taught to speak Norse and are baptized.

[22] This estate was located in the Skagafjord bay area,[22] which is also where Thorfinn's great-grandfather established roots, at his farm of Hofdi [is] in Hofdastrand [is].

[13] However, Haukr's ancestral trace before Karlsefni's great-grandfather Thord of Hofdi deviates from other sources, and the Landnámabók version[20] is deemed more reliably accurate.

[24] In the early twentieth century, Icelandic sculptor Einar Jónsson was commissioned by Joseph Bunford Samuel to create a statue of Thorfinn Karlsefni through a bequest that his wife, Ellen Phillips Samuel, made to the Fairmount Park Art Association (of Philadelphia, now the Association for Public Art).

[28][29] In the early morning hours of October 2, 2018, police were called to the statue's location and found it had been toppled from its stone base and dragged into the nearby Schuylkill River.

[32] The 1967 comedic science fiction novel The Technicolor Time Machine by Harry Harrison reveals at its ending that the character named Ottar—an 11th-century Viking hired by a film studio as consultant and actor—is indeed Thorfinn Karlsefni.

As an old woman, Gudrid recounts her childhood in Iceland, her family's harrowing voyage to Greenland, her marriages, and the trip to Vinland led by Thorfinn Karlsefni.

A fictionalized version of Thorfinn Karlsefni is the protagonist of the 2005 manga series Vinland Saga, which was adapted into an anime in 2019.