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According 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 g

According 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 ago
There 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 ago
Can 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
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- philwelch 5y ago
  A 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.

datameta 5y ago

There 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 ago

Can 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 ago
A 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.