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Right, there’s no archaeological evidence of some ancient Scandinavian migration because… they were so eager to get to Oklahoma? You really have to be committe

Right, there’s no archaeological evidence of some ancient Scandinavian migration because… they were so eager to get to Oklahoma? You really have to be committed to some weird Viking romanticism (and to hate those gross Southern European Catholics) to buy something like this.

bpodgursky 4y ago
I don't think it's completely impossible that some kind of wild trip like this happened -- maybe the Norse were captive, sailed around the coast, whatever. Weirder things have happened. Reading any kind of greater significance into that is of course nonsense. The Vikings didn't settle NA in any meaningful way. If this happened, it's fascinating but just a weird quirk of history. (to be clear, it's almost certainly a fraud)
- AlotOfReading 4y ago
  I try to avoid framing things this way as a (former) archaeologist. Most human activities are possible in theory. If we don't limit our consideration to "things that are plausible given x, y, and z", the discussion either explodes with combinatorial possibilities or more commonly, we allow our imaginations to take flights of fancy towards the things we find interesting. The latter can be totally fine, but it's rarely (if ever) truth-seeking. As an aside, these sorts of "mysterious inland viking runes" are a common tale in the US. I've heard of similar claims from Washington, most of the Northeast, Minnesota, Georgia, and even Arizona.
  - doodlebugging 4y ago
    >As an aside, these sorts of "mysterious inland viking runes" are a common tale in the US. I've heard of similar claims from Washington, most of the Northeast, Minnesota, Georgia, and even Arizona. I've also seen some of these stories. I think one could use Mandan tribal members to help determine whether there is a possibility that Vikings or Norsemen traveled to the mid-continent and left some runestones along their paths. Since later European explorers reported finding blonde members of the Mandan tribe one could have DNA analyzed to discover whether there is a link to Scandinavia. Personally I see no reason why those who settled and lived at L'Anse aux Meadows would've spent their entire lives holed up in the longhouses there instead of hopping in their boats and sailing the bays and rivers scoping out the territory. We know that they were explorers or they wouldn't have been there in the first place. We also know that it is not difficult for a person to cover a lot of ground if they decide to move somewhere else. They were there for several hundred years and since it only takes a matter of months to travel on foot from the east coast into the interior I see no reason to discount the possibility that it happened. People moved all the time for any number of reasons. Our problem today is that these people, both the Norse settlers in Newfoundland and the Native Americans or First Nations people they encountered, did not keep detailed written records like later European explorers did in their travels. This introduces a bias in the information used today to reconstruct the history of the exploration of North America. We know that the Spanish went all over the central and western US since they traveled with a large group of people and documented what they found. They even returned later to flesh out early discoveries and built a network of churches to serve as fortresses and supply points for future exploration. The record of anything that L'anse aux Meadows settlers did exists only in some sagas and a few royal records. Like the natives they encountered, the story of their travels would have been mostly an oral history to be recounted later to descendants and others who needed to know. I agree that most human activities are possible in theory and that we need to consider the likelihood as part of a well-formed conclusion. I see no reason why someone traveling with an eye to discovering what the world looks like over that far hill couldn't have covered the entire US on foot in a lot less than a lifetime. It would've been easier then than now especially if you travel in a small party.
    - AlotOfReading 4y ago
      I don't know any archaeologists that think Norse greenlanders spent their entire lives farming in the fjords. We shouldn't discount that the medieval Norse were among the most prolifically literate societies of their day. They wrote a lot, which is why we have so much information about Norse Greenland. It was primarily a local subsistence economy focused on extracting marine resources to trade back east. Greenland and the high north was therefore the center of Norse activities. L'anse aux meadows seems to have been a comparatively minor, sporadically occupied staging point. The Norse were expert expeditionists, but expeditions are hard and continental North America very remote. Declaring it "not difficult" to travel inland (for unclear / no obvious reasons) is premature. It probably happened to some extent, but we're not talking anything remotely close to the midwest, or even the modern US in all likelihood. Moreover, the basic model for preservation we use involves exponential decay terms. The odds are huge against us finding anything left by a minuscule population sporadically present for a short time (almost certainly <200 years). As for genetic studies, Native Americans are relatively well-surveyed. Genetics is hard, but it's pretty clear to everyone that the white tribe myth has its roots in colonial cultural narratives, not lost Norse explorers.
    - 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
      There are multiple accounts indicating the Norse settlers on Greenland were, in fact, settlers more than anything else. Erik the Red settled on Greenland after being exiled, after all. Adam of Bremen's mentions about Vinland indicates that knowledge about the area was wide-spread amongst the Norse. Still, no major settlements had been attemted in his time despite the fact that he wrote it down no less than 75 years after Vinland had been discovered. That being said, the Norse seem to have grasped how vast the North American continent is, if nothing else by describing the various natural features they found noteworthy. They also apparently got into a conflict with the locals. My guess: L'anse aux Meadows was a logging and resource gathering operation. Logs are not easy to come by on Greenland and shipping them from Europe would have taken longer than getting them from Newfoundland. Does any of this exclude that the Norse explorers went further than we could ever imagine? No, but a litterate explorer from 990's Scaninavia would most likely have used the younger Futhark rather than the old one. The inscription in the article uses the old one.

bpodgursky 4y ago

I don't think it's completely impossible that some kind of wild trip like this happened -- maybe the Norse were captive, sailed around the coast, whatever. Weirder things have happened. Reading any kind of greater significance into that is of course nonsense. The Vikings didn't settle NA in any meaningful way. If this happened, it's fascinating but just a weird quirk of history. (to be clear, it's almost certainly a fraud)

AlotOfReading 4y ago
I try to avoid framing things this way as a (former) archaeologist. Most human activities are possible in theory. If we don't limit our consideration to "things that are plausible given x, y, and z", the discussion either explodes with combinatorial possibilities or more commonly, we allow our imaginations to take flights of fancy towards the things we find interesting. The latter can be totally fine, but it's rarely (if ever) truth-seeking. As an aside, these sorts of "mysterious inland viking runes" are a common tale in the US. I've heard of similar claims from Washington, most of the Northeast, Minnesota, Georgia, and even Arizona.
- doodlebugging 4y ago
  >As an aside, these sorts of "mysterious inland viking runes" are a common tale in the US. I've heard of similar claims from Washington, most of the Northeast, Minnesota, Georgia, and even Arizona. I've also seen some of these stories. I think one could use Mandan tribal members to help determine whether there is a possibility that Vikings or Norsemen traveled to the mid-continent and left some runestones along their paths. Since later European explorers reported finding blonde members of the Mandan tribe one could have DNA analyzed to discover whether there is a link to Scandinavia. Personally I see no reason why those who settled and lived at L'Anse aux Meadows would've spent their entire lives holed up in the longhouses there instead of hopping in their boats and sailing the bays and rivers scoping out the territory. We know that they were explorers or they wouldn't have been there in the first place. We also know that it is not difficult for a person to cover a lot of ground if they decide to move somewhere else. They were there for several hundred years and since it only takes a matter of months to travel on foot from the east coast into the interior I see no reason to discount the possibility that it happened. People moved all the time for any number of reasons. Our problem today is that these people, both the Norse settlers in Newfoundland and the Native Americans or First Nations people they encountered, did not keep detailed written records like later European explorers did in their travels. This introduces a bias in the information used today to reconstruct the history of the exploration of North America. We know that the Spanish went all over the central and western US since they traveled with a large group of people and documented what they found. They even returned later to flesh out early discoveries and built a network of churches to serve as fortresses and supply points for future exploration. The record of anything that L'anse aux Meadows settlers did exists only in some sagas and a few royal records. Like the natives they encountered, the story of their travels would have been mostly an oral history to be recounted later to descendants and others who needed to know. I agree that most human activities are possible in theory and that we need to consider the likelihood as part of a well-formed conclusion. I see no reason why someone traveling with an eye to discovering what the world looks like over that far hill couldn't have covered the entire US on foot in a lot less than a lifetime. It would've been easier then than now especially if you travel in a small party.
  - AlotOfReading 4y ago
    I don't know any archaeologists that think Norse greenlanders spent their entire lives farming in the fjords. We shouldn't discount that the medieval Norse were among the most prolifically literate societies of their day. They wrote a lot, which is why we have so much information about Norse Greenland. It was primarily a local subsistence economy focused on extracting marine resources to trade back east. Greenland and the high north was therefore the center of Norse activities. L'anse aux meadows seems to have been a comparatively minor, sporadically occupied staging point. The Norse were expert expeditionists, but expeditions are hard and continental North America very remote. Declaring it "not difficult" to travel inland (for unclear / no obvious reasons) is premature. It probably happened to some extent, but we're not talking anything remotely close to the midwest, or even the modern US in all likelihood. Moreover, the basic model for preservation we use involves exponential decay terms. The odds are huge against us finding anything left by a minuscule population sporadically present for a short time (almost certainly <200 years). As for genetic studies, Native Americans are relatively well-surveyed. Genetics is hard, but it's pretty clear to everyone that the white tribe myth has its roots in colonial cultural narratives, not lost Norse explorers.
  - 2000UltraDeluxe 4y ago
    There are multiple accounts indicating the Norse settlers on Greenland were, in fact, settlers more than anything else. Erik the Red settled on Greenland after being exiled, after all. Adam of Bremen's mentions about Vinland indicates that knowledge about the area was wide-spread amongst the Norse. Still, no major settlements had been attemted in his time despite the fact that he wrote it down no less than 75 years after Vinland had been discovered. That being said, the Norse seem to have grasped how vast the North American continent is, if nothing else by describing the various natural features they found noteworthy. They also apparently got into a conflict with the locals. My guess: L'anse aux Meadows was a logging and resource gathering operation. Logs are not easy to come by on Greenland and shipping them from Europe would have taken longer than getting them from Newfoundland. Does any of this exclude that the Norse explorers went further than we could ever imagine? No, but a litterate explorer from 990's Scaninavia would most likely have used the younger Futhark rather than the old one. The inscription in the article uses the old one.