Both Norse sagas have Thorfinn beating a retreat north after some humbling battles with Native warriors. Thorfinn never went back to Vinland, but other Norse subsequently did. Evidence continues to accumulate that Norse traded with both Inuit and more southern tribes for skins, and that they regularly brought back wood and other items from the New World.
She and other Icelandic kids often play a game called Great Adventurer, in which they take on the roles of the saga heroes. Viking scholars have long debated the veracity of the Icelandic sagas. Are they literature or history, or both? The two conflicting versions of Freydis Eriksdottir, who was Erik the Red's daughter and the half sister of Leif Eriksson and who traveled to North America 1, years ago, are a case in point. When Natives attack their small colony, the Norse men run off.
But a pregnant Freydis stands her ground, shouting: "Why do you flee from such pitiful wretches, brave men like you? If I had weapons, I am sure I could fight better than any of you. When the danger had passed, Thorfinn came over to her and praised her courage. But in the Greenlanders' saga, Freydis is a murderer. Freydis and her husband do not travel with Thorfinn and Gudrid, but instead undertake an expedition with two Icelanders, known as Finnbogi and Helgi.
When they arrive in Straumfjord thought by some scholars to be the site in Newfoundland known as L'Anse aux Meadows , they quarrel over who will live in the longhouses Leif Eriksson has left behind. Freydis wins, rousing the Icelanders' resentment. After a hard winter in which the two camps become more estranged, Freydis demands that the Icelanders hand over their larger ship for the journey home.
She goads her husband and followers into murdering all the male Icelanders. When no one will kill the five women in the Icelanders' camp, she takes up an ax and dispatches them herself. Back in Greenland, word of the incident seeps out. Was Freydis a heroine? Or a homicidal maniac? Archaeologist Birgitta Linderoth Wallace, who directed much of the excavation of L'Anse aux Meadows, doesn't know for sure. What we do know is the writers were often anonymous. They were Christian priests.
This ahistorical notion of English settlers constituted of a fusion of Anglo-Saxon and Viking blood has been used to justify the appropriation of the homeland of indigenous peoples in the 19th century; the discrimination against Irish, Italian, and Jewish migrants in the 20th; and the continued marginalization of Americans of African and Latino origin in the 21st. The myth may be an old one, but the reasons to correct it are as timely as ever.
Contact us at letters time. Here's Why That Myth is Problematic. The myth of the Norse discovery of America is tied directly to the country's history of racial inequality.
By Gordon Campbell. TIME Ideas hosts the world's leading voices, providing commentary on events in news, society, and culture. We welcome outside contributions. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors. Such an increase in population is probably the main difference if America had been colonized years earlier.
Not too rosy a vision for our environmentalists, I suppose Dave Howery. Click to expand Dave Howery said:. Cotton would be important I think beavers are native to Europe as well as America, but were reduced to tiny numbers fairly early. Anaxagoras Banned. New World grapes make very bad wine disgusting, to be perfectly blunt about it.
Nor was it easy to transplant European grapes to the New World, because they were all killed by phylloxera- as Thomas Jefferson found out to his sorrow. It was only after people learned to graft European grapevines onto American rootstock that grapes worth making wine from were grown in America. Interesting sidebar: phylloxera spread from America to Europe in the s, nearly wiping up the French, Italian and Spanish wine industries.
Today, though they are loath to admit it, the Europeans make their wine from grapevines grown from grafted American rootstock from Texas, of all places! Could the metal tools used by our Viking in this ATL, start a new culture in the native American cultures? Would horses become part of the program? Just some ideas, or questions about Neo Viking in North American. Redbeard Banned. If the European countries which in OTL were the main target of Viking raids and later settlement had been more cohesive and with stronger defence, the Vikings might have sought towards NA instead.
In OTL Europe was rich, close and ready to pluck - change the last and other areas might become interesting. Regards Steffen Redbeard. Assuming there would be no major pandemics of European diseases in the New World from this low-intensity colonization quite possible given the low population densities and gradual time for adaptation , I would speculate the following: New World Norse settlement would gradually spread along the coast of Newfoundland and down the Northeastern seabord of the USA.
Additional voyages from Vinland might extend along coast into Hudson's Bay area and along eastern coast of north American possibly into Carribean, Gulf, and Meso-American areas. Norse would adapt to a susbsistence and settlement pattern suitable to the new world - as it became apparent North American could support them, they might even cease trips back to Iceland and Scandinavia and become a purely North American culture.
Probably the Vinland language would diverge fairly significantly from the evolution of other Germanic Scandinavian languages as isolation and the inevitable use of Native American loan words and maybe even grammatical structures were added. Effects on native cultures would include spread of metal tools first thru trade and then possibly indigenous manufacture , adoption of animal husbandry using whatever animals the Norse brought with them, and possibly cultural adaptations mirroring Viking political structures, especially if individual Norse settled among natives.
Possibly quasi-Norse mixed population Native chiefdoms would arise along the boundaries of Vinland and into the interior of the continent. Norse paganism might be reinvigorated or never abandoned by some of the Vinland settlements. Old World I suspect effects would be minimal for the reasons already mentioned. As a merchant, he was interested primarily in trading with established communities, not investing in risky and speculative efforts to establish new ones.
It was an attitude that would be shared years later by the merchants of Bristol. The Greenland colonists were not interested in immediately exploiting the new discovery, for they had just recently arrived in Greenland.
Because they were still busy establishing themselves, Bjarni's voyage did not inspire a return trip for nearly a decade. Then Leif, the son of Erik the Red, retraced Bjarni's route in reverse. He passed a land of rock and ice, which he called Helluland — probably Baffin Island — and then a country that was flat and wooded, which he called Markland. This was probably part of southern Labrador. He eventually reached a land which the sagas describe as a land of grassy meadows, with rivers full of salmon, and enough other resources to encourage over-wintering.
Leif gave this land the name "Vinland. When Leif and his crew returned to Greenland, their reports of this new land aroused interest in further exploration. One such expedition was led by Leif's brother, Thorvald, who was able to locate Leif's wintering place. Thorvald was eventually killed in a skirmish with local natives that the Greenlanders called "Skraelings. Another brother, Thorstein, attempted to sail to Vinland but spent much of the summer fighting contrary winds and seas before giving up and returning to Greenland.
The most ambitious effort was led by Thorfinn, and included women and livestock. This expedition apparently remained in Vinland for two or three years, but eventually abandoned the effort after hostilities broke out with the natives. Thus, the discovery of Vinland was not followed by successful settlement and exploitation of the New World. Where was Vinland? The location is difficult to determine because the details provided in the sagas often seem to conflict.
The sailing directions suggest Newfoundland, but descriptions of lush vegetation, including grain and self-sown wheat, together with the discovery at L'Anse aux Meadows of butternuts which have never grown further north than New Brunswick suggest a more southerly location.
The discovery of the Norse habitation at L'Anse aux Meadows gave powerful support for those who believed that Vinland was in Newfoundland. Yet L'Anse aux Meadows appears to have been a small settlement of about eight buildings and no more than 75 people, mostly sailors, carpenters, blacksmiths, hired hands and perhaps even serfs or slaves. It is probable therefore that the settlement was a base camp for repairing and maintaining Norseships.
One bloomery and one smithy have been identified, where local bog iron was apparently smelted into "sponge iron," then subsequently purified and made into nails, rivets, and other iron work.
The settlement was probably also a base camp for expeditions further south.
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