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That's really interesting! Of course, if the native population died off around them, the Vikings would probably have expanded their settlements and perhaps rul

That's really interesting! Of course, if the native population died off around them, the Vikings would probably have expanded their settlements and perhaps ruled North America instead.

Symmetry 5y ago
I dunno, the Norse settlers were apparently getting a lot out of trading red died cloth for native produce and if it hadn't been for the altercation that somehow grew up around that cow or bull the possibility of trade might have drawn a lot more Norse in, the way the fur trade did in French North America. But then again farming populations can expand really fast with low population pressure. The 13 colonies were seeing their populations double every generation just from natural fertility even before immigration.
munk-a 5y ago
It depends if they kept coming back. Smallpox worked to the settlers' advantage because colonizers were establishing themselves in the carribean and south america before any serious ventures into north america got going - so there was time for a pandemic to actually spread before folks really started getting serious about settling. I think with statistics and spread rates and all that it's likely that viking settlers would need to stick around for a decade or two to really see the effects in terms of population thinning.
lifeisstillgood 5y ago
I don't think it works like that. There seems to be a need for a minimum primary settler population and a decent amount of native assistance- it's fairly easy to build a new town 10 miles from your last but I am not aware of any long distance unsupported settlers. So if the natives around the Mayflower had all died, so would the Founding Fathers. If the Norse diseases had killed off the locals they might not have made it through winter.
- vintermann 5y ago
  I agree with this. It's about economic and social support. Leif Eriksson was the son of the notorious murderer Eric the Red. Eric was twice outcast, first from Norway to Iceland, then from Iceland to Greenland. On top of that, Leif was an enthusiastic convert to Christianity, which somewhat alienated him from his still pagan father. They lived on a fringe of a fringe of the European economic, cultural and religious community. They didn't even really have the economic support to sustain a settlement on Greenland (where they were more by necessity than opportunity, due to Eric's crimes), let alone Nova Scotia.
- eesmith 5y ago
  > long distance unsupported settlers There were 18 years between the European settlement of Pitcairn island and the next visitors - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_Islands#European_settlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_Islands#European_sett... . Your constraints are pretty strict. There aren't many places which could be settled (in recorded history) where there weren't already people living there, and where there was a reason for not continuing contact with the place of origin. Another possibility is Te Pito O Te Kainga / Rapa Nui / Easter Island. The first explorers met one person already there (Nga Tavake), then they go back to Hiva, and a double canoe returns to Easter Island carrying the settlers. They left "because a rising tide was destroying their land" and/or a power struggle with the Hanau Eepe, if I read http://archive.hokulea.com/rapanui/hotu.html http://archive.hokulea.com/rapanui/hotu.html correctly. In either case, the oral history suggest little continued connection with Hiva.
- adolph 5y ago
  Some interpretations of the socio-political context of what is now New England see tribes more affected by disease presumably spread by earlier European contact as aiding incoming Europeans in order to ward off other tribes. The Narragansetts were the most powerful tribe in the southern area of the region when the English colonists arrived in 1620, and they had not been affected by the epidemics. Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoags to the east allied with the colonists at Plymouth Colony as a way to protect the Wampanoags from Narragansett attacks. In the fall of 1621, the Narragansetts sent a sheaf of arrows wrapped in a snakeskin to Plymouth Colony as a threatening challenge, but Plymouth governor William Bradford sent the snakeskin back filled with gunpowder and bullets. The Narragansetts understood the message and did not attack them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narragansett_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narragansett_people
- BurningFrog 5y ago
  This is very far from my expertise, but surely you can also live off the land? Hunting and fishing shouldn't be very different in Newfoundland compared to Norway/Iceland. Bring a few chickens along, and you have another food source. I assume/guess the vikings were better at this stuff than the Mayflower crowd.
  - vintermann 5y ago
    They didn't want to live like that. It's one of the things Jared Diamond argues in Collapse: sure, they could have survived longer in Greenland if they adopted more of the customs of the Inuit, but this went against everything they considered important and valuable in life. They wouldn't be themselves any more if they did (and for all we know, a few of them may have been assimilated into the native population and stopped being Norse in any sense recognizable to us). Not least of all, Leif Eriksson was a Christian, a Catholic in modern terms. It's reasonable to assume most of his followers were, too. He had gained the epithet "the lucky" due to his habit of coming across and rescuing castaways at sea. To the Norse, luck was evidence the cosmos was on your side, and one of the most important attributes a leader offered to potential followers was a share in this cosmic luck. This probably helped Leif the missionary securing a lot of conversions! But the heart of Christianity at the time was in Rome. They were already profoundly cut off from the mystical fellowship of believers, the communion. How much worse wouldn't it be for their sense of self if they were not only to go off in an impossibly distant land, but to live as the savages there?
    - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
      I think you're giving the connection to Rome too much weight. Consider: [ ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansgar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansgar
      - vintermann 5y ago
        I don't quite understand. Ansgar was quite connected to Rome, as much as you would expect from a missionary in a foreign country. There was, as I understand it, correspondence between Ansgar and the pope, at the very least there had to be a letter appointing him as bishop. Think of how much harder it would have been to send a letter from Vinland.
runarberg 5y ago
I doubt it. The distances are simply too large to maintain a supply lines needed for a self sufficient colonies to thrive. The Norse needed the natives both to trade with and to learn from if they were to settle these lands, they couldn’t do it on their own. Now you might think of Iceland and Norse Greenland as a counter example. But Norse Greenland never really thrived, and was eventually abandoned. Iceland however thrived, but it is so much closer to Norway about 7 days at see with the potential to stop at the Faeroe Islands. The voyage between Greenland and Iceland is similar (only a bit longer + sailing up the west coast of Greenland). And finally you need another week or two to cross the Labrador sea from Greenland. However that route is much harder in the winter then between Iceland and Norway, and Greenland is not nearly as populated as Iceland or Norway and don’t generate enough surplus food which they can supply to a potential colonies on the North American mainland. So the logistics of supplying a colony in North America without help from the people already living there must include a summertime only supply line from Iceland with enough supplies to last the whole year. Where each voyage from Iceland is going take maybe a month, maybe more, just one way. These ships are still pretty small and not a lot of room for cargo, so you’ll need a few of them. I’m not sure the economy on Iceland could have afforded such an expensive endeavor.
- vintermann 5y ago
  Not to mention that the ships, while nice by 11th century standards, were not exactly airline level safety. A significant number of would-be traders (and raiders for that matter) ended up on the bottom of the sea, with the implications that would have for prices.
gremloni 5y ago
Maybe but the Viking’s modus operandi seemed like it was pillage/rape/kidnap the best looking women and then head out. I can only think of one settlement the Vikings set up in Gaul.
- vintermann 5y ago
  Not even close. For one thing, Leif was a Christian. For another, his father, who more lived up to the stereotype of the murderous psycho Viking, had been twice banished for murder already, which was why he found himself in Greenland in the first place. The Norse were never a lot like the rapey pagan party Vikings they're portrayed as in popular culture, and certainly not by 1021.
- HarryHirsch 5y ago
  Not really - they had a three-pronged business model based on ranching sheep, trading and, yes, raiding. Wasn't it Erik the Red who had two brothers, and their father asked all three what they were going to be when they had grown up. Says the first he is going to be a farmer and his sheepflock is going to be so large that he will have to dig another waterhole. Says the second he will go trading and he will have to build another barn to keep his wares in. Says Erik, who was the youngest, he is going to be a Viking and he is going to raid both of them.
- munk-a 5y ago
  There were norse settlments all over the place - Russia, Normandy, Lower and Central Germany, England (the Danelaw was a thing for a while), Ireland and, famously, Byzantium. For settling uninhabited locales you've got Shetland, Mann, the Isles, Iceland and some seasonal settlements on Greenland.
  - gremloni 5y ago
    Byzantium? I would love some reading material on that.
    - AnimalMuppet 5y ago

That's really interesting! Of course, if the native population died off around them, the Vikings would probably have expanded their settlements and perhaps ruled North America instead.

Symmetry 5y ago

I dunno, the Norse settlers were apparently getting a lot out of trading red died cloth for native produce and if it hadn't been for the altercation that somehow grew up around that cow or bull the possibility of trade might have drawn a lot more Norse in, the way the fur trade did in French North America. But then again farming populations can expand really fast with low population pressure. The 13 colonies were seeing their populations double every generation just from natural fertility even before immigration.

munk-a 5y ago

It depends if they kept coming back. Smallpox worked to the settlers' advantage because colonizers were establishing themselves in the carribean and south america before any serious ventures into north america got going - so there was time for a pandemic to actually spread before folks really started getting serious about settling. I think with statistics and spread rates and all that it's likely that viking settlers would need to stick around for a decade or two to really see the effects in terms of population thinning.

lifeisstillgood 5y ago

I don't think it works like that. There seems to be a need for a minimum primary settler population and a decent amount of native assistance- it's fairly easy to build a new town 10 miles from your last but I am not aware of any long distance unsupported settlers. So if the natives around the Mayflower had all died, so would the Founding Fathers. If the Norse diseases had killed off the locals they might not have made it through winter.

vintermann 5y ago
I agree with this. It's about economic and social support. Leif Eriksson was the son of the notorious murderer Eric the Red. Eric was twice outcast, first from Norway to Iceland, then from Iceland to Greenland. On top of that, Leif was an enthusiastic convert to Christianity, which somewhat alienated him from his still pagan father. They lived on a fringe of a fringe of the European economic, cultural and religious community. They didn't even really have the economic support to sustain a settlement on Greenland (where they were more by necessity than opportunity, due to Eric's crimes), let alone Nova Scotia.
eesmith 5y ago
> long distance unsupported settlers There were 18 years between the European settlement of Pitcairn island and the next visitors - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_Islands#European_settlement https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pitcairn_Islands#European_sett... . Your constraints are pretty strict. There aren't many places which could be settled (in recorded history) where there weren't already people living there, and where there was a reason for not continuing contact with the place of origin. Another possibility is Te Pito O Te Kainga / Rapa Nui / Easter Island. The first explorers met one person already there (Nga Tavake), then they go back to Hiva, and a double canoe returns to Easter Island carrying the settlers. They left "because a rising tide was destroying their land" and/or a power struggle with the Hanau Eepe, if I read http://archive.hokulea.com/rapanui/hotu.html http://archive.hokulea.com/rapanui/hotu.html correctly. In either case, the oral history suggest little continued connection with Hiva.
adolph 5y ago
Some interpretations of the socio-political context of what is now New England see tribes more affected by disease presumably spread by earlier European contact as aiding incoming Europeans in order to ward off other tribes. The Narragansetts were the most powerful tribe in the southern area of the region when the English colonists arrived in 1620, and they had not been affected by the epidemics. Chief Massasoit of the Wampanoags to the east allied with the colonists at Plymouth Colony as a way to protect the Wampanoags from Narragansett attacks. In the fall of 1621, the Narragansetts sent a sheaf of arrows wrapped in a snakeskin to Plymouth Colony as a threatening challenge, but Plymouth governor William Bradford sent the snakeskin back filled with gunpowder and bullets. The Narragansetts understood the message and did not attack them. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narragansett_people https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Narragansett_people
BurningFrog 5y ago
This is very far from my expertise, but surely you can also live off the land? Hunting and fishing shouldn't be very different in Newfoundland compared to Norway/Iceland. Bring a few chickens along, and you have another food source. I assume/guess the vikings were better at this stuff than the Mayflower crowd.
- vintermann 5y ago
  They didn't want to live like that. It's one of the things Jared Diamond argues in Collapse: sure, they could have survived longer in Greenland if they adopted more of the customs of the Inuit, but this went against everything they considered important and valuable in life. They wouldn't be themselves any more if they did (and for all we know, a few of them may have been assimilated into the native population and stopped being Norse in any sense recognizable to us). Not least of all, Leif Eriksson was a Christian, a Catholic in modern terms. It's reasonable to assume most of his followers were, too. He had gained the epithet "the lucky" due to his habit of coming across and rescuing castaways at sea. To the Norse, luck was evidence the cosmos was on your side, and one of the most important attributes a leader offered to potential followers was a share in this cosmic luck. This probably helped Leif the missionary securing a lot of conversions! But the heart of Christianity at the time was in Rome. They were already profoundly cut off from the mystical fellowship of believers, the communion. How much worse wouldn't it be for their sense of self if they were not only to go off in an impossibly distant land, but to live as the savages there?
  - LargoLasskhyfv 5y ago
    I think you're giving the connection to Rome too much weight. Consider: [ ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansgar https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansgar
    - vintermann 5y ago
      I don't quite understand. Ansgar was quite connected to Rome, as much as you would expect from a missionary in a foreign country. There was, as I understand it, correspondence between Ansgar and the pope, at the very least there had to be a letter appointing him as bishop. Think of how much harder it would have been to send a letter from Vinland.

runarberg 5y ago

I doubt it. The distances are simply too large to maintain a supply lines needed for a self sufficient colonies to thrive. The Norse needed the natives both to trade with and to learn from if they were to settle these lands, they couldn’t do it on their own. Now you might think of Iceland and Norse Greenland as a counter example. But Norse Greenland never really thrived, and was eventually abandoned. Iceland however thrived, but it is so much closer to Norway about 7 days at see with the potential to stop at the Faeroe Islands. The voyage between Greenland and Iceland is similar (only a bit longer + sailing up the west coast of Greenland). And finally you need another week or two to cross the Labrador sea from Greenland. However that route is much harder in the winter then between Iceland and Norway, and Greenland is not nearly as populated as Iceland or Norway and don’t generate enough surplus food which they can supply to a potential colonies on the North American mainland. So the logistics of supplying a colony in North America without help from the people already living there must include a summertime only supply line from Iceland with enough supplies to last the whole year. Where each voyage from Iceland is going take maybe a month, maybe more, just one way. These ships are still pretty small and not a lot of room for cargo, so you’ll need a few of them. I’m not sure the economy on Iceland could have afforded such an expensive endeavor.

vintermann 5y ago
Not to mention that the ships, while nice by 11th century standards, were not exactly airline level safety. A significant number of would-be traders (and raiders for that matter) ended up on the bottom of the sea, with the implications that would have for prices.

gremloni 5y ago

Maybe but the Viking’s modus operandi seemed like it was pillage/rape/kidnap the best looking women and then head out. I can only think of one settlement the Vikings set up in Gaul.

vintermann 5y ago
Not even close. For one thing, Leif was a Christian. For another, his father, who more lived up to the stereotype of the murderous psycho Viking, had been twice banished for murder already, which was why he found himself in Greenland in the first place. The Norse were never a lot like the rapey pagan party Vikings they're portrayed as in popular culture, and certainly not by 1021.
HarryHirsch 5y ago
Not really - they had a three-pronged business model based on ranching sheep, trading and, yes, raiding. Wasn't it Erik the Red who had two brothers, and their father asked all three what they were going to be when they had grown up. Says the first he is going to be a farmer and his sheepflock is going to be so large that he will have to dig another waterhole. Says the second he will go trading and he will have to build another barn to keep his wares in. Says Erik, who was the youngest, he is going to be a Viking and he is going to raid both of them.
munk-a 5y ago
There were norse settlments all over the place - Russia, Normandy, Lower and Central Germany, England (the Danelaw was a thing for a while), Ireland and, famously, Byzantium. For settling uninhabited locales you've got Shetland, Mann, the Isles, Iceland and some seasonal settlements on Greenland.
- gremloni 5y ago
  Byzantium? I would love some reading material on that.
  - AnimalMuppet 5y ago