What effects might there have been if the Viking Colony known as Vinland had been more successful, perhaps with more support from home or maybe with some Viking Lords fleeing from the might of Christiandom? Or any other what if that might have made it more of a success, even if only for a short period of time?
WI: Successful Vinland?
- Thread starter Kayin Dreemurr
- Start date
They might have been cut off by the 14th century coldperiod and plagues similar to the fate of the Greenlanders. Otherwise, I guess there would have been a 500 years or so period of earlier contact ´between Europe and America. In the early middleages, Scandinavians were the mariners of the age but they settled here and there in europe.
So, in the north Normans (French, English, or Norwegian) would colonize and trade. But would Portugal, and the Spanish reqonquista-kingdoms have the resources to sail west and south?
The Arabs and the Italians might have but perhaps then they would have clashed in the south.
So, in the north Normans (French, English, or Norwegian) would colonize and trade. But would Portugal, and the Spanish reqonquista-kingdoms have the resources to sail west and south?
The Arabs and the Italians might have but perhaps then they would have clashed in the south.
At the least there'd be early introduction of horses,pigs,cattle,sheep and goats that could trickle throughout the continent. Same goes for steel tools and weapons and new religious ideas. Possibly and likely a hybrid culture brought about through intermarriage and alliances. Definitely some warfare as is typical of all culture clashes.
katchen
Banned
There is iron and wood for charcoal in Newfoundland. The Beothuk or the Micmaq can bounce back from the Norse diseases as long as they let a smith or two join the tribe and pass on his knowledge. Cattle, pigs and horses will be helpful, especially cattle and horses which can pull a moluldboard plough, as well as chickens, but all of them also carry diseases that the Beothuk and Miqcaq have no resistance to.
Perhaps one way to achieve this is having the followers of the old gods flee to Vinland as a sanctuary from the Christian kings? While the power centers in the Norse Kingdoms at this time were christian, there was a significant amount of pagans in the back woods. A seer could start the message that Freyr drove the Christians away from Vinland so that it could be a sanctuary for his followers to grow strong again.
A religious exodus would provide a reason for enough Norse to move to Vinland in a critical amount to be able to stay. Religious differences would also create a reason for Vinland to not fall back to Greenland if things got tough.
A religious exodus would provide a reason for enough Norse to move to Vinland in a critical amount to be able to stay. Religious differences would also create a reason for Vinland to not fall back to Greenland if things got tough.
This is a cool idea, but renegade vikings fleeing their kings would probably be absorbed by the native american culture if contact with europe is broken, as in the Vinlanders are hiding.
This has crossed my mind a few times, at the most logical step I see is this:
OTL - Leif invited his father (Erik the Red) on the voyage to Vinland, but according to legend, Erik fell off his horse on his way to the ship and took this as a bad sign, leaving his son to continue without his company.
TTL, have it so that Erik doesn't fall off his horse and have a good sign present itself. When he lands in Vinland, unlike his sons he takes the natives as neutral and seeing their ways not that much unlike their Viking rituals.
OTL - Leif invited his father (Erik the Red) on the voyage to Vinland, but according to legend, Erik fell off his horse on his way to the ship and took this as a bad sign, leaving his son to continue without his company.
TTL, have it so that Erik doesn't fall off his horse and have a good sign present itself. When he lands in Vinland, unlike his sons he takes the natives as neutral and seeing their ways not that much unlike their Viking rituals.
I'm not so sure. I think if the circumstances had been just a little bit different (a friendlier local chief, a better harvest, a second wave of immigrants, etc) they might have pulled it off. As has been pointed out upthread, Newfoundland isn't that different from Scandanavia in terms of climate, and if they had managed to get a foothold I think the Vinlanders could have thrived.
Now, what the culture would have looked like is anyone's guess.
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They would have to learn to get along with the natives for quite a while for this to happen. Apparently never happened in Greenland, or at least never mentioned in any surviving records. And the Greenland indians only have stories of fighting with the Norse. I wonder if anyone has done any DNA checking/tracing in Greenland graves of both Norse and native.
I don't think there will be a good chance of peaceful relations between the Norse and the Beothuks. Here's why:
-They have little to trade with eachother (It's thought that the Norse traded primarily for Ivory with the Dorset, but the main import from Vinland was lumber, which they logged themselves instead of traded). Precious metals and whatnot were primarily mined further south, and there's no evidence a trade network carrying reached all the way to Newfoundland. If the Norse colonies are moved further south, this could be different; OTL PEI would provide access to the Great Lakes and it's only a short hop from there to the bustling trade routes of the Missisipi culture.
-Slave raiding; the Norse at the time had a massively important slave-trade (which is why slave's root word is slav) that in many ways served as a backbone of their economy. The slave trade declined because it became verboten for Christians to hold slaves of their own faith, or to sell Christians into slavery. Based on this, I can't imagine them not at least trying to sell native americans into bondage in Europe.
-Basic innate human xenophobia
Based on this, I think a more realistic Vinland colony would be established further south than Newfoundland and Labrador. It would subsist on agriculture and fishing (the norse anti-fish taboo seems to have been disproven, at least where Greenland is concerned). They're probably highly intermarried with local Mi'kmaq peoples, and the majority take native american wives. They're a waystation on a trade route that connects to that of the Mississippi Culture's, exchanging slaves and precious metals for European goods. The trade route continues on to Greenland and Iceland. The settlers probably trade lumber and ivory to Europeans in addition to slaves and previous metals.
Eventually, the trade route gets disrupted by the little ice age. The Greenlanders migrate en-masse to Vinland or integrate into the Dorset. The trade route however picks back up as European demand for furs and fish increases; at this point direct trade is possible with Europe as naval technologies change. At this point the Vinlanders probably have a very distinct culture and their own Christian sect (Greenland was never part of the Catholic Church so far as I know) and probably have colonies all over the Maritimes, and also trade all the way down the east coast.
There will be massive butterflies though. Basically the Columbian Exchange will happen early. By the time Columbus visits the America's (which if would probably be a voyage of trade up to Newfoundland rather than a voyage of discovery to the Caribbean) you'd end up with native american cultures with entirely different lifestyles, loan words, technology (I imagine iron production might not have spread very far, but the technology required to rework iron into whatever tools the native americans want will have) and possibly different religious beliefs, depending on whether or not Vinland has a missionary perogative (I suspect it doesn't). Europe would have had many crops from the Americas for centuries by that point.
A list of potential goods delivered by trans-atlantic trade to Europe:
-slaves
-precious metals
-tobacco
-sugarcane (depending on whether or not the natives adopt it)
-furs
-ivory (from tusks of artic animals)
-cocaine/marijuana (NEVER underestimate the drug trade, as any Chinese historian will tell you)
-much more that I haven't thought of
I don't think this will lead to colonization, though. If anything it might retard the progress of colonization. Europeans will come to conquer, convert and to trade, but large-scale settling won't be on the agenda; it'll be more like the relationship between Kongo and Portugal, I think, although with a side of conquistador. Settlement will happen eventually, I think, but it will likely be under native american sovereignity; European North American settlement will be akin to Jewish settlement in Russia in terms of status, although there will likely be a lot more intermarriage.
With the exception of regions that don't support large-scale civilizations, that is. It's unclear at this point if Amazonia is in for a rough time or not. Whether it is or not depends on if you believe the rain forces can be inhabited by large-scale civilizations before modern technology or not (I lean towards the former).
So essentially, butterflies on butterflies, North America and Europe both look entirely different. I imagine Britain gets a leg up on the competition in terms of wealth since it's closer to the original trade route, which either makes it more powerful but also makes its culture dramatically different (a long-standing slave owning tradition and a culture rich in drug use, for example). Massive butterflies for basically all of Northern and Western Europe. It'd be one heck of a TL to write thoroughly, when you factor in all the cultural/technological shifts and how this affects geopolitics.
-They have little to trade with eachother (It's thought that the Norse traded primarily for Ivory with the Dorset, but the main import from Vinland was lumber, which they logged themselves instead of traded). Precious metals and whatnot were primarily mined further south, and there's no evidence a trade network carrying reached all the way to Newfoundland. If the Norse colonies are moved further south, this could be different; OTL PEI would provide access to the Great Lakes and it's only a short hop from there to the bustling trade routes of the Missisipi culture.
-Slave raiding; the Norse at the time had a massively important slave-trade (which is why slave's root word is slav) that in many ways served as a backbone of their economy. The slave trade declined because it became verboten for Christians to hold slaves of their own faith, or to sell Christians into slavery. Based on this, I can't imagine them not at least trying to sell native americans into bondage in Europe.
-Basic innate human xenophobia
Based on this, I think a more realistic Vinland colony would be established further south than Newfoundland and Labrador. It would subsist on agriculture and fishing (the norse anti-fish taboo seems to have been disproven, at least where Greenland is concerned). They're probably highly intermarried with local Mi'kmaq peoples, and the majority take native american wives. They're a waystation on a trade route that connects to that of the Mississippi Culture's, exchanging slaves and precious metals for European goods. The trade route continues on to Greenland and Iceland. The settlers probably trade lumber and ivory to Europeans in addition to slaves and previous metals.
Eventually, the trade route gets disrupted by the little ice age. The Greenlanders migrate en-masse to Vinland or integrate into the Dorset. The trade route however picks back up as European demand for furs and fish increases; at this point direct trade is possible with Europe as naval technologies change. At this point the Vinlanders probably have a very distinct culture and their own Christian sect (Greenland was never part of the Catholic Church so far as I know) and probably have colonies all over the Maritimes, and also trade all the way down the east coast.
There will be massive butterflies though. Basically the Columbian Exchange will happen early. By the time Columbus visits the America's (which if would probably be a voyage of trade up to Newfoundland rather than a voyage of discovery to the Caribbean) you'd end up with native american cultures with entirely different lifestyles, loan words, technology (I imagine iron production might not have spread very far, but the technology required to rework iron into whatever tools the native americans want will have) and possibly different religious beliefs, depending on whether or not Vinland has a missionary perogative (I suspect it doesn't). Europe would have had many crops from the Americas for centuries by that point.
A list of potential goods delivered by trans-atlantic trade to Europe:
-slaves
-precious metals
-tobacco
-sugarcane (depending on whether or not the natives adopt it)
-furs
-ivory (from tusks of artic animals)
-cocaine/marijuana (NEVER underestimate the drug trade, as any Chinese historian will tell you)
-much more that I haven't thought of
I don't think this will lead to colonization, though. If anything it might retard the progress of colonization. Europeans will come to conquer, convert and to trade, but large-scale settling won't be on the agenda; it'll be more like the relationship between Kongo and Portugal, I think, although with a side of conquistador. Settlement will happen eventually, I think, but it will likely be under native american sovereignity; European North American settlement will be akin to Jewish settlement in Russia in terms of status, although there will likely be a lot more intermarriage.
With the exception of regions that don't support large-scale civilizations, that is. It's unclear at this point if Amazonia is in for a rough time or not. Whether it is or not depends on if you believe the rain forces can be inhabited by large-scale civilizations before modern technology or not (I lean towards the former).
So essentially, butterflies on butterflies, North America and Europe both look entirely different. I imagine Britain gets a leg up on the competition in terms of wealth since it's closer to the original trade route, which either makes it more powerful but also makes its culture dramatically different (a long-standing slave owning tradition and a culture rich in drug use, for example). Massive butterflies for basically all of Northern and Western Europe. It'd be one heck of a TL to write thoroughly, when you factor in all the cultural/technological shifts and how this affects geopolitics.
I've had similar thoughts in the past. My suggestion for a more viable Viking colony in North America would the site of Halifax.
Faeelin
Banned
If you presume the Norse make it to the Great Lakes by 1200 or so, then they'll arrive just as Cahokia is getting hit with some major crises. Hrm...
They might make a novelty asset, but I can't see widespread slavery; North America is already underpopulated, and too poor.
We know there was a Christian Church, at least.
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Indians mostly didn't survive long enough to be slaves, no resistance to disease.