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The Icelandic sagas suggest that the Norse engaged in cultural exchanges with the Indigenous groups of North America34. If these encounters indeed occurred, the
by ilamont 5y ago
The Icelandic sagas suggest that the Norse engaged in cultural exchanges with the Indigenous groups of North America34. If these encounters indeed occurred, they may have had inadvertent outcomes, such as pathogen transmission7, the introduction of foreign flora and fauna species, or even the exchange of human genetic information. Recent data from the Norse Greenlandic population, however, show no evidence of the last of these.
Is it possible the Vikings were not in that location long enough for populations to mix? Or they were so remote (physically, culturally, and linguistically) that limited opportunities arose? Or something else?
- bjornsing 5y ago“Inadvertent exchange of human genetic information”… :)
- hprotagonist 5y agoI 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.
- simonklitj 5y agoI love that idea. "Man, this is just like back home, let's go boys."
- Apocryphon 5y agoNewiceland
- daveslash 5y agoNiceland.
- philwelch 5y agoAccording to some sources, one factor is that Newfoundland was so heavily populated with indigenous people that there wasn’t enough room for a Norse colony to grow. By the time the English made it back to Newfoundland, smallpox and other epidemics had devastated the indigenous population.
- datameta 5y agoThere is a Norse description in the Saga of Icelanders of what the indigenous skraelings looked like, as the norse called them, as well as accounts of repelling assaults from the native populations. > 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. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skr%C3%A6ling https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skr%C3%A6ling
- mig39 5y agoCan you cite one of these sources? The archeological record doesn't seem to show a large aboriginal population in Newfoundland around 1000 C.E. 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.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- philwelch 5y agoA good start is the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus by Charles Mann. That book fundamentally changed my understanding of the pre-Colombian Americas. > 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.
- irrational 5y agoThis is the part I don't get. These guys were awesome sailors. It didn't occur to them to sail down the coast until they got to the Florida Keys and set up a little surf shop?
- PeterisP 5y agoThey most likely had a family and a harvest to return to back home - viking raids generally were seasonal in between farming, so they had a built-in time limit.
- goodcanadian 5y agoThis was the extreme end of the supply chain so to speak. Iceland was sparsely populated, Greenland even more so. They simply didn't have the people to set up new colonies further west, or much need to. Perhaps, if they had stumbled on a particularly rich area, they may have done so, but to get any significant number of settlers, they would have had to go all the way back to Scandinavia.
- pvaldes 5y agoThe major sea currents run towards north here
- kzrdude 5y agoAnd they had no base nearby to launch from. Go back home and stock up? Noo.. home was Greenland, there's no riches there, and they went to Vinland to try to stock up.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoGreenland wasn't a frozen wasteland back then. The climate was warmer. Climate change is a large part of what drove the Norse out of Greenland.
- kzrdude 5y agoIt was no paradise
- ravenstine 5y ago"On second thought, let's not stay in America. It is a silly place."
- mig39 5y agoSounds like my summer vacation in Newfoundland in July 2021. 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.
- 999900000999 5y agoI can imagine an indigenous woman having a fling with a viking and just rasing the kid in her village. No one the wiser. It would be impossible to know if this happened. Even if you found someone with both indigenous and Viking genetics, you don't know if it's because his great grandfather came from Norway in the 1920s. The history of early American immigration is absolutely fascinating, there was a story of a Chinese man who just told everyone he was an indigenous American in order to avoid discrimination. I've actually met people from Eastern Europe who ended up working at Telemundo, no one can tell that they're not ethnically Hispanic. In fact, who to say what Hispanic is. There are plenty of Asians in Latin America, if some decide to migrate to America are they not still Hispanic ?
- wolverine876 5y ago> Even if you found someone with both indigenous and Viking genetics, you don't know if it's because his great grandfather came from Norway in the 1920s. Are you sure? My impression is that genetics are used to determine when humans spread across the world and how populations mixed.
- Tagbert 5y agoThose findings are based on the genetics of larger populations and specific samples of ancient DNA. If there were a only a handful of children born of both groups, that genetic trace would likely have faded out over time.
- hobs 5y ago> I can imagine an indigenous woman having a fling with a viking and just rasing the kid in her village. No one the wiser. Except everyone who saw the kid?
- 999900000999 5y agoMany mixed raced people can pass as being completely apart of one race. I imagine a Norwegian/Indigenous American kid could just look Indigenous American.
- sb057 5y agoGenetic research suggests American Indian descendants in modern day Iceland. https://phys.org/news/2010-11-vikings-brought-amerindian-iceland-years.html https://phys.org/news/2010-11-vikings-brought-amerindian-ice...
- zw123456 5y agooops just saw you post, you are way ahead of me. https://phys.org/news/2010-11-vikings-brought-amerindian-iceland-years.html https://phys.org/news/2010-11-vikings-brought-amerindian-ice...
- LudwigNagasena 5y ago> the exchange of human genetic information This sounds like a parody of scientific jargon. Why do people write like this?..
- hn_throwaway_99 5y agoBecause of context. They're not just talking about "sex", the entire research is concerned with evidence of the exchange of "stuff" between societies": objects, pathogens, culture, and, yes, "human genetic information".
- arrosenberg 5y agoReminds me of the all time great line from the Simpson's House of Horrors episode where Kang and Kodos impersonate Bill Clinton and Bob Dole - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgBFiCmYedc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lgBFiCmYedc