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Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by BurningFrog on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @03:51PM (#28935393)
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.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by munk-a on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @04:07PM (#28935695)
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.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by runarberg on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @05:33PM (#28936997)
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.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by vintermann on Thursday October 21, 2021 @04:10AM (#28941714)
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.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by lifeisstillgood on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @04:36PM (#28936135)
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.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by adolph on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @07:06PM (#28938020)
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

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by eesmith on Thursday October 21, 2021 @06:08AM (#28942430)
> 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_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 correctly. In either case, the oral history suggest little continued connection with Hiva.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by vintermann on Thursday October 21, 2021 @03:37AM (#28941494)
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.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by BurningFrog on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @08:02PM (#28938511)
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.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by vintermann on Thursday October 21, 2021 @03:52AM (#28941594)
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?

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by LargoLasskhyfv on Monday October 25, 2021 @05:21AM (#28985903)
I think you're giving the connection to Rome too much weight. Consider: [ ] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ansgar
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by vintermann on Tuesday October 26, 2021 @04:07AM (#28997648)
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.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by s1artibartfast on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @08:18PM (#28938628)
Simply put, living off the land is HARD, even with an established settlement and some trade, mass starvation is a pretty likely outcome.

Reality is more complex and challenging than Farmville or AnimalCrossing.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by PeterisP on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @11:50PM (#28940003)
I'm just wondering why the same process how vikings settled Greenland would not work in the (IMHO much more hospitable) North America.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by jcranmer on Thursday October 21, 2021 @12:59AM (#28940463)
That's an excellent question. The answer I would give is that the process by which the Norse settled Greenland did not actually ultimately work out in the first place. Colonization isn't a simple matter of gathering enough people to form a colonizing party, staking out an empty(-ish) piece of land, and building a new settlement there. Once that settlement is built, there needs to be a steady stream of consumable goods being provided, and until the new settlement can produce or trade for those goods on its own right, the colonizers are effectively subsidizing that settlement.

The settlements in Greenland never really reached that point. The leading hypothesis at this point for why Greenland collapsed was that the Arctic trade routes dropped far-off Greenland from their destinations--and without that trade, the settlements couldn't sustain themselves and collapsed. Newfoundland may be a more hospitable place than Greenland, but from a trade situation, it's even worse: it's not offering any trade goods to Europeans that Greenland or Iceland could be providing (at much shorter journeys), but it's still probably not able to tap into the North American trade network--I think you have to make it to Nova Scotia or New Brunswick to do that.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by BurningFrog on Thursday October 21, 2021 @09:37AM (#28944151)
The Greenland settlements had 2000+ people between 1000-1350. Last written record is from 1408.

Ten generations is completely sustainable by my standards.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Greenland#Norse_set...

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by runarberg on Thursday October 21, 2021 @12:30PM (#28946949)
Stories of Norse Greenlanders visiting Iceland mention their poverty. They would come to Iceland and taste beer and bread for the first time in their lives. They lived, yes, but they definitely did not thrive over there. Perhaps they were sustainable, but they were on the very edge of being so, and when conditions worsened (worse climate, lost trade routes, competition, etc.), they weren’t any more and these settlements were abandoned.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by vintermann on Thursday October 21, 2021 @03:57AM (#28941627)
The Norse mostly settled Greenland because they had to, not because it was such a great place to be. It was a frontier, settled by desperate people. Leif's father, the chieftain Eric the Red, had moved there because he had been banished from Iceland over a murder.

And of course the Greenland colony wasn't really sustainable, which is why it died out when a couple of hard turns came their way (climate change and getting cut off from trade for a few years).

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by acjohnson55 on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @08:46PM (#28938844)
In Animal Crossing, you've got Tom Nook, a whole commercial infrastructure, and an airport to help you out.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by RhodesianHunter on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @08:44PM (#28938826)
Provided you're fit and capable it's not too hard until winter rolls around.

Surviving winter solo or in a small group is damned near impossible.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by s1artibartfast on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @09:04PM (#28938975)
That really depends on the location, tools you have, and familiarity with the environment.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by Symmetry on Thursday October 21, 2021 @11:29AM (#28945865)
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.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by gremloni on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @06:04PM (#28937381)
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.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by HarryHirsch on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @06:44PM (#28937789)
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.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by munk-a on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @07:31PM (#28938231)
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.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by gremloni on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @08:40PM (#28938797)
Byzantium? I would love some reading material on that.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by acjohnson55 on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @08:52PM (#28938894)
Here's a short podcast series that talks about the Normans, including Bohemond, who set up a crusader state in Antioch, which had been Byzantine territory not long before: https://normancenturies.com/

You might also check out the podcast History of Byzantium. Although you'll have to go many hours before encountering the Norse, in the form of the Varangians.

And I also recommend the excellent book Children of Ash and Elm for a very recent overview of Viking history.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by gremloni on Thursday October 21, 2021 @01:01AM (#28940484)
Awesome, thank you.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by AnimalMuppet on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @08:55PM (#28938920)
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by acjohnson55 on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @08:47PM (#28938860)
Don't forget Southern Italy and Sicily!
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by munk-a on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @11:14PM (#28939784)
Hrm - I'd avoided including those because the Normans were sooooorta not what you'd call Vikings at that point - but yup those Normans got everywhere.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by acjohnson55 on Saturday October 23, 2021 @04:48AM (#28966753)
I mentioned it because you said Norse, and while I'd agree that the Normans weren't vikings (the Viking Age is typically bookended by the Norman conquest of England in 1066), I would definitely consider them Norse.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by vintermann on Thursday October 21, 2021 @04:02AM (#28941666)
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.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by boomboomsubban on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @07:34PM (#28938255)
> I can only think of one settlement the Vikings set up in Gaul

Are you calling Normandy one settlement? As they certainly spent most of the Viking age colonizing from Iceland to Sicily.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by gremloni on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @08:43PM (#28938814)
Most of the “colonizing” happened in prehistory. It was also based out of Ukraine, don’t know if you can attribute that to the Vikings.
Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by acjohnson55 on Wednesday October 20, 2021 @08:56PM (#28938923)
I think you may be misinformed.

Viking was a lifestyle or temporary occupation, not a people. The people were the Norse, and they did a massive amount of settling in the Viking Age.

Re:Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by boomboomsubban on Thursday October 21, 2021 @12:21AM (#28940224)
This is akin to saying "most of the pillaging in history happened by people besides vikings, so you can't really attribute that to them." Yes, others colonized the areas. The Vikings also did during the Viking age.