Repercussions of Norse mass settlement in the new world

[LaCroix]

This question was raised when my spouse and I were watching tv, an documentary regarding the vikings was shown. I apologize up front if that topic doesn't reach the high standards in this Forum.

The question is - since they had settlements on Greenland - what would have probably changed if they had relocated in mass from Iceland (and whole Scandinavia) to Greenland and then to the continent?

Let's assume that Iceland had (once again) a series earthquakes/volcano eruptions and they packed stuff and headed to Greenland, following Erik the Red. The Icelandic population was estimated at 15 to 20 thousands at that time, so let's assume 10 thousand make it over there initially. There must have been a huge loss of life to make them leave and enough destruction to make them give up big-scale settlement on Iceland, combined with the knowledge of better land further west. Iceland would retain some bigger settlements and act as a trade and transit haven, a first stop.

They were said to have had small temporary settlements in Maine already, and the mass of people would probably prefer the Continent to Greenland. Even more could have followed once news of the vast unsettled land reached Scandinavia, since the availability of unclaimed land in Iceland was the thing that spurred colonization, available arable land being sparse in Scandinavia. This could(would) cause a major exodus, coupled with the Viking custom that expansion usually happened by resettlement of families and single men, who sought wives from the local population. Such wives would be available, given the local tribes, and Vikings were said to get along with those tribes rather well - at least initially in this scenario, until the growing competition with the native population causes problems, which should be solvable, given the technological edge the Norse would have, even back then.

What would that change?

Possible retreat from England, since if you have lot's of land available for free somewhere, you don't have to die to get it.
Decline in raids to Europe.
Europeans would probably have wondered where they went off to/assumed Iceland, but glad that they are gone.

What would have changed worldwide? The time of Viking raids was mostly over at the time of this resettlement (around 1000, given the time frame of Greenland settlement)

Would this have an impact on later settlement in America? Would other Europeans try their luck and follow? Would they even be able to, since Norse seamanship was vastly superior to the contemporary European counterpart? I don't think so for many centuries to come. The safer route (Iceland and Greenland as in-between stops) is mainly frequented by Norse, so they would probably victims of good old-fashioned piracy if they tried, and an Atlantic crossing was highly dangerous even in 1492. It is even possible that most of this would stay hidden from most of Europe because of the nautical ineptitude in comparison to the Norse.

I also envision a healthy amount of trade between those settlements and Europe(most probably Scandinavia), given the seamanship of the Norse and their international trade routes they used since Frankish times. Also, Scandinavia would profit from the vast amounts of timber, ore and produce, thus making defense of the safe route highest priority. This could very well mean a global hegemony under Scandinavian rule, similar to Spain and Britain achieved later.

Would Columbus be greeted in Norse? I don't think this is probable. It would be possible that the Norse settled all along the coast by then, but the hot, humid weather would probably have kept them north of Florida.

Or would the Mayflower have found a big city with a harbor to dock in? Means, would 5-600 years be enough to have European style settlements? Conflict with Skræling (Loin-cloth people) would have made them fortify their settlements, so Palisades or walls would be possible. Given the head-up start, the colony could resemble a huge medieval country at the time Europeans made the voyage over the Atlantic.

[Darth Wong]

Why would this make a difference? They died off historically because of their inflexibility: they found evidence of Vikings who had starved to death while natives were thriving on fish on other parts of the same island. Why would that change if they moved to the American continent?

The early British settlers had such a fearsome mortality rate that the natives assumed they would simply die out on their own, and that would have happened if they had not been constantly reinforced by waves of replacement settlers from Britain. If actual hostilities had broken out, the natives could have easily wiped out the small floundering early settlements. So if small bands of Vikings had moved to America, why would they fare as well, never mind thriving, without that constant stream of reinforcements?

[LaCroix]

In my scenario, the Scandinavian countries would provide the reinforcements, most importantly due to the exodus of Iceland. This wouldn't be a single event, but more of a constant stream of boats ferrying between Scandinavia, Iceland and America.

I don't know about those starving Vikings - is there an article you could refer to?
Anyway - why would they starve if there was fish available? They were fishermen themselves and fishing isn't that different across the Atlantic.

I know that Greenland had the problem of being very dependent on imports and low on wood, which proved to be the final nail in the coffin, since they couldn't heat nor process ore without wood.

For the failure to settle the main continent, I heard that they just weren't many enough to hold their own against the natives. If they were forced to give up Iceland, they would have enough manpower to do that. Even more if they really do cease the conquest of Britain and move their assets there.

[LaCroix]

I found an article to what you were referring to. It says they failed to adapt to the way Inuit were living, harpoons, clothes and all.

Since in my scenario they would settle to the non-permanent frozen continent, and using Greenland and Iceland only as stepping stones, that lack of adaption to arctic settling wouldn't play as much of a role, since they would have enough wood to heat, and their lifestyle would be much more appropriate to Maine than Greenland.

[Pelranius]

I wonder what impact the introduction of Old World diseases by the Norse would have on Native American populations and immunity, say, about several centuries down the road?

[LaCroix]

I wonder what impact the introduction of Old World diseases by the Norse would have on Native American populations and immunity, say, about several centuries down the road?

It would probably happen the same way as originally, massive die-offs in single settlements, until they adapt. But given the relative isolation of tribes, living weeks apart, it wouldn't be a plague racing around the continent. I just cant see it spread that far, except if the Norse actively used bacteriological warfare (visits on purpose) to 'clean' the land. Even then, it is improbable that they would have had some wide-spread 'cleansing' done, since there isn't the population to settle and defend that area, even given a high rate of immigration and procreation. Maybe tribes would just stay clear of them if they don't bother them too much, avoiding disease, but I don't really think so.

Even in the original time line, settlement to the Americas was restricted to a rather slim strip of the eastern coastal area for a long time, the tribes further inland mostly undisturbed. So most probably, if the Spanish would land in 1492 like originally, the natives would be as curious of the strange newcomers, and as affected by disease. North of Florida, in the climate the Norse would prefer to the hot and humid climate southwards, I would assume that the natives know the white man already.

Still, the natives would hang around as long as they did originally, since it took relatively modern firearms to really finish them off.
But there would be a different type of horses running around, since the vikings had their own breeds, and the Icelandic horse would certainly have made transition to the Continent, too.

[Pelranius]

I was wondering if an early enough introduction to various Old World diseases would led to a larger immune population of Native Americans (though in OTL they were still pretty vulnerable well into the the 19th century and beyond, probably more so than non Natives, though I can't cite any studies for that off the top of my head).

[LaCroix]

I was wondering if an early enough introduction to various Old World diseases would led to a larger immune population of Native Americans (though in OTL they were still pretty vulnerable well into the the 19th century and beyond, probably more so than non Natives, though I can't cite any studies for that off the top of my head).

Of course. In the areas that are shared with the Norse, there will be an initial die-off, but the survivors will slowly gain resistance. So basically, they will gain immunity ~400 years earlier in that areas. From there, disease and immunity would spread slowly to neighbouring tribes. If the Norse make scout missions and have contact to tribes or do settle all over the coast, that will happen even faster.

That won't help tribes that live in far away areas, like the Aztecs, though. They are too far away to be plausibly contacted fom a civilisation whose settlement started in Maine.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Even under the proposed scenarion the situation of Norse civilization and the reduction in outward movement from Scandinavia, as well as the fact that Iceland would be sure to retain some population as a way-station, even if the trade routes between the new world and Norway quickly died and left the settlers isolated, would overall mean that the Norse would be very limited in overall numbers. They are a seafairing people and would not expand beyond areas easily accessible from the sea.

Also, unlike English settlers, giving them one advantage, they would like the French much more heavily intermarry with the natives, as there's nothing unique about them, and they'd follow the same patterns as they did in Russia, France, etc. So what we'd actually see is a Native-Norse fusion culture of small village scale fishing settlements, probably predominantly focused on Newfoundland, Nova Scotia/Cape Breton Island, Isle d'Anticosti, and Prince Edward Island, along with very limited penetration of coastal areas.

This Norse-Native fusion culture might well dominate the aforementioned islands, but would be unlikely to spread further inland even with the knowledge obtained from more extensive intermarriage and social exchange, and would probably just, beyond some some coastal communities, simply run a trading network up into the St. Lawrence Seaway and perhaps some distance down the coast with their ships. It's liable that a period of at least a couple hundred years would still pass before fishing boats from England encountered Norse vessels in the Grand Banks and a resumption of contact began, and it would likely have no impact whatsoever on the voyages of Columbus. On the other hand we might see a steady diffusion of iron tools/weapons and ironworking through North America, which would make early colonization more problematic, as well as increased disease resistance in the Northeast, with the same result.

Still, such a civilization would be relatively ripe for conquest by European powers, and would have the resources and cleared land to serve as a base for further penetration and conquest of North America. I don't see it as being able to survive English/French colonial efforts independent, but certainly people of partial European descent would be considered more favourably and could be used as soldiers by the colonial authorities with much better reliability.

[Simon_Jester]

The question is - since they had settlements on Greenland - what would have probably changed if they had relocated in mass from Iceland (and whole Scandinavia) to Greenland and then to the continent?

Let's assume that Iceland had (once again) a series earthquakes/volcano eruptions and they packed stuff and headed to Greenland, following Erik the Red. The Icelandic population was estimated at 15 to 20 thousands at that time, so let's assume 10 thousand make it over there initially. There must have been a huge loss of life to make them leave and enough destruction to make them give up big-scale settlement on Iceland, combined with the knowledge of better land further west. Iceland would retain some bigger settlements and act as a trade and transit haven, a first stop.

The trouble I see is that trips to America were more marginal for the Norse than they were for 16th century Europe, with its comparatively massive ships. They could do it, but I doubt it would have caught on the way it did after Columbus. Moreover, word of the available land in America would have had to propagate back through Iceland (which itself would offer some open land in the wake of the disaster); how much of the current would trickle through to Vinland is questionable.

So I think Her Grace has a point; the low total number of Norse settlers would tend to stop them from founding Scandinavia West in the New World. A fusion culture seems like a likely outcome to me.

[Elfdart]

Norse ships were able to travel on almost any body of water and were light enough to be carried over land from one body of water to another when necessary. If they were able to sail all over Europe from the Thames to the Volga, there's no reason they couldn't have done likewise in the Gulf of St Lawrence, the Great Lakes and most importantly, the Mississippi and its tributaries. That means they could have gone just about anywhere in the central part of the U.S.

I would imagine that they would have done in North America what they did in Europe: sail far and wide, trading/raiding as opportunities presented themselves.

This would all depend on three things:

1) the weather staying warm
2) the various wars and feuds remaining unresolved, meaning large numbers of Norse people would want or need to leave their homes
3) the Norse not being able to colonize lands closer to home (Ireland, England, France)

As long as Byzantium is paying gold and silver for all those Norse (and later, Saxon) mercenaries, and viking freebooters can set themselves up as kings among the Slavic tribes, displaced Norsemen have better prospects in the East.

That won't help tribes that live in far away areas, like the Aztecs, though. They are too far away to be plausibly contacted fom a civilisation whose settlement started in Maine.

The Aztecs and their predecessors carried out extensive trade with tribes and nations over 2000 miles away. When DeSoto spread swine cholera and other diseases in the Southeast, they traveled like wildfire throughout North America, killing vast numbers of people who had never seen a European.

[spaceviking]

As long as Byzantium is paying gold and silver for all those Norse (and later, Saxon) mercenaries, and viking freebooters can set themselves up as kings among the Slavic tribes, displaced Norsemen have better prospects in the East.

Assuming your referring to the Russians, hasn’t this been largely discredited? The Viking rulers I think are just a myth from the primary chronicle.

[LaCroix]

Norse ships were able to travel on almost any body of water and were light enough to be carried over land from one body of water to another when necessary. If they were able to sail all over Europe from the Thames to the Volga, there's no reason they couldn't have done likewise in the Gulf of St Lawrence, the Great Lakes and most importantly, the Mississippi and its tributaries. That means they could have gone just about anywhere in the central part of the U.S.

I would imagine that they would have done in North America what they did in Europe: sail far and wide, trading/raiding as opportunities presented themselves.

This would all depend on three things:

1) the weather staying warm
2) the various wars and feuds remaining unresolved, meaning large numbers of Norse people would want or need to leave their homes
3) the Norse not being able to colonize lands closer to home (Ireland, England, France)

As long as Byzantium is paying gold and silver for all those Norse (and later, Saxon) mercenaries, and viking freebooters can set themselves up as kings among the Slavic tribes, displaced Norsemen have better prospects in the East.

I would see them also in the great lakes primarily, and down along the Atlantic coast. But I do not agree on the prospect that gold for being mercenary would be preferable to get a big chunk of land somewhere. Most Vikings weren't THAT keen on fighting, or we would have seen barbarian migration, part II all over Europe. Having access to unlimited, relatively free resourceful land would be a big incentive to stop conquest and just move there.

The Aztecs and their predecessors carried out extensive trade with tribes and nations over 2000 miles away. When DeSoto spread swine cholera and other diseases in the Southeast, they traveled like wildfire throughout North America, killing vast numbers of people who had never seen a European.

I also assumed that disease would spread all over the Continent, but far slower, since the northern tribes did not have such vast road network and trade volume like in the Aztec hegemony. Once it reached the southern parts of North America, and the Aztec's sphere of influence, I agree that it would spread like wildfire.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

It's the dates on this that are really the problem.

'Viking' is an occupation, not a nationality or ethnic group- and if you look at Scandinavia during the ninth and tenth centuries, something fascinating is happening.

The pillage and plunder, the fruits of industrial grade robbery brought home- more contacts, ideas, awareness of options than physical loot, had a transforming effect on the political landscape.

Scandinavia organises itself during that time, I wouldn't go so far as to say an end of feudalism, but not far off it as individual ethnic groups and patchwork communities get hammered together as organised nation states.

The wildness of the late eighth, early ninth centuries was a product of a scarcity and desperation that had been successfully overcome by the early eleventh; much of the craziness and many of the individual crazies had been successfully exported and had settled far enough away not to be a problem any more. Or had ended up on top.

The later, after 1000 roughly, 'Viking' expeditions were really expressions of the national war effort, national means for political ends, not individual trader/raider/pirate expeditionary warfare.

By the time there are enough people on Iceland to start looking onwards, the vast majority of Scandinavia is looking southwards, as part of the European community of nations. An awkward part at times, but...

Iceland was where a high proportion of the remaining misfits ended up. Erik the Red (Eirikur Raudi) was a convicted murderer who was in Iceland effectively on the run from Norwegian law. His son Leif was at least a part time missionary who is credited with the introduction of Christianity to Greenland.

I'd loved to have heard them in the alehouse together; the family arguments would have been fascinating.

Anyway, the main thing the new world has that the scandinavian world was short of was timber. That was the resource that there was to exploit, Greenland being almost treeless and Iceland not being very much better- but who would have benefited?

Economically, granted pillage is cheaper than trade, but the logistics of shipping meaningful amounts of timber from Newfoundland to Iceland, when it can more easily be bought, and at less danger, from the Franks and Aengelsk, or the russians?

The only people exploitation of the new world would have served, and exploitation is the essential precondition for settlement, are the Icelanders and Greenlanders who didn't have the numbers and resources to pull it off.

There's a pet theory, amateur archaeology, that the reason the Greenland colony lasted as long as it did is due to this factor; that they were getting their builing materials from Newfoundland, playing the numbers game of survival that eventually caught up with them.


Spaceviking, the whole 'rus' thing, swedish traders- discredited is an overstatement, what has happened to the history of scandinavian trade in the territories that would later become russia and the ukraine is that it has become politicised.

Russian historians claim that the scandinavians were at best a contributing factor, at worst the threat the locals organised themselves against; scandinavian historians put forward the traditional explanation. The fault lines are pretty clearly defined by current affairs rather than evidence, which is thin either way.

My own best guess is that the mainly Swedish traders that went east were chasing profit, not politics, and if their net of trading posts and contacts achieved anything in the way of nation- building, which they may well have done, it was largely by accident.

[Spoonist]

Spaceviking, the whole 'rus' thing, swedish traders- discredited is an overstatement, what has happened to the history of scandinavian trade in the territories that would later become russia and the ukraine is that it has become politicised.

Russian historians claim that the scandinavians were at best a contributing factor, at worst the threat the locals organised themselves against; scandinavian historians put forward the traditional explanation. The fault lines are pretty clearly defined by current affairs rather than evidence, which is thin either way.

And the problem with this is that we know what will happen. It is only russia that has access to the possible archeological evidence and they have zero interest in revealing a Norse heritage.
So its a foregone conclusion.

Asfor the link someone asked for earlier, maybe this can give some clues?
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/4

[Simon_Jester]

The wildness of the late eighth, early ninth centuries was a product of a scarcity and desperation that had been successfully overcome by the early eleventh; much of the craziness and many of the individual crazies had been successfully exported and had settled far enough away not to be a problem any more. Or had ended up on top.

The later, after 1000 roughly, 'Viking' expeditions were really expressions of the national war effort, national means for political ends, not individual trader/raider/pirate expeditionary warfare.

Hmm. Interesting analysis.

Do you think there's any analogy to the shift in seafaring behavior shown by the English/British in the 1550-1800 period? In 1550 they were merchants and occasional pirates (or the other way around), mostly parasitic on the better established Spanish trade network. By 1800 they were a near-global thalassocracy.*

*During the 19th century they evolved from that into something more ambitious as they tried to press their control into the continental interiors away from the coasts, but that was another era.

[Eleventh Century Remnant]

Now that is a good question; the domestic circumstances were different, is the first major point that occurs to me. The Norse diaspora, to stretch a term, still had many trading and kinship ties to the home countries, which is not a factor that drove English expansion, and the Scandinavian home countries were even less settled than early Elizabethan England.

Christianity spreads throughout Scandinavia both from top and bottom; from the bottom up, because it's a trading advantage. It's easier to get a good deal out of the mostly Christian Europeans if you can at least pretend to be of the same faith. That and the role of alcohol in the process is greatly underrated. Monks had a reputation back then for brewing.

From the top down, because it made it easier for these force- established, newly in place and still uncertain ruling families to establish diplomatic ties with european powers, and because it would hopefully exert a calming influence on their still rather wild people.

Take the Danelaw. The Norse- controlled areas of north- east England were largely the result of chaotic individual settlement that started to put itself together after it had got there, but an organised English response under Alfred broke the back of the Danelaw as an organised state;

an organised Danish response under the chieftain Erik Bloodaxe won a good deal back, but that drew further English reaction that drew Bloodaxe out to fight and killed him (much to the relief of everyone that knew him, in all probability; you don't get a nickname like that by accident)- and that drew further Norse reaction that ended with Cnut and his descendants on the English throne. Briefly, unfortunately.

There are a couple of points of similarity, the best one I can think of being Britain in India, the wealth and cultural influences that flowed back being comparable to what the plundering of the coasts of Europe did for the Norse-

but the analogy breaks down fairly quickly, because there never really was an organised norse empire in the same manner as there was a British Empire, there was never an administration that went with expansion in the same way; there never was a Viking Navy that gave birth to a Civil Service in the same way that the Royal Navy did.

Knarrs and Drakkar were a minimal outgrowth, if at all, of what it took to get around Scandinavia in the pre- Viking (Vendel) period anyway, and there was a well organised naval militia system by the mid tenth century that Britain briefly enjoyed a variant of under the Danish kings;

the changes in Scandinavia were driven by the results of, I hate to have to admit this but it was, relatively primitive naval expeditionary warfare, in Britain the changes were riven by the effort relatively sophisticated naval warfare required. Output driven versus input driven.

Posting this before I drivel on interminably...

[Spoonist]

As long as Byzantium is paying gold and silver for all those Norse (and later, Saxon) mercenaries, and viking freebooters can set themselves up as kings among the Slavic tribes, displaced Norsemen have better prospects in the East.

Assuming your referring to the Russians, hasn’t this been largely discredited? The Viking rulers I think are just a myth from the primary chronicle.

I just read your statement again. In my mind it was the other way around, archeological evidence supports the islamic/greek/byzantine sources that support the primary chronicle. So I checked around and it seems that academia supports the concept of a Norse tribe Rus as the rulers of Kiev and Novgorod. These Norsemen where then just as the other Norse in other regions integrated and adapted into local culture.
http://books.google.se/books?id=hEawXSP ... q=&f=false

From where do you get your sources?

[Thanas]

As long as Byzantium is paying gold and silver for all those Norse (and later, Saxon) mercenaries, and viking freebooters can set themselves up as kings among the Slavic tribes, displaced Norsemen have better prospects in the East.

Assuming your referring to the Russians, hasn’t this been largely discredited? The Viking rulers I think are just a myth from the primary chronicle.

You have probably fallen prey to the (false) Russian school of history. They got rather slavocentric with the rise of panslavism and then were determined to prove that they were never ever conquered by anybody, especially not "stinking barbarians from the north". I kid you not. However, after the fall of the Soviet Union and them getting rightly trashed at conferences and in papers they have piped down, nobody seriously believes this anymore.

The Viking Rulers are real and anybody who believes otherwise can go get clobbered by the newest books in those areas.

[Thanas]

We had an earlier thread about this, in which I outlined why I think the perception of the norse being unwilling to adapt is not really that good of a theory.

That said, with regards to this proposal, it is an impossibility. How are you going to do the logistics of such an operation?

[Elfdart]

We had an earlier thread about this, in which I outlined why I think the perception of the norse being unwilling to adapt is not really that good of a theory.

The willingness of the Norse to adapt and assimilate appears to have been based on how many women they brought with them. In Normandy, Ireland and Russia, very few were brought along. These men (usually viking raiders and mercenaries) were absorbed into the host culture within a generation or two. For example, Rollo (the viking chief who was given Normandy) had a son who was thoroughly Frankish: almost total assimilation in one generation.

This was not the case in areas the Norse really were out to colonize, such as Iceland and the Danelaw. In those regions, the Norse brought everything with them: women, children, livestock, customs, you name it. They succeeded in Iceland because they only had to displace a few Irish monks. England was a special case because the area they colonized was inhabited by -and next door to- people who were already very much like themselves, the Anglo-Saxons.

That said, with regards to this proposal, it is an impossibility. How are you going to do the logistics of such an operation?

True. Greenland couldn't support many inhabitants today, let alone a thousand years ago. It's a tribute to the ingenuity of the Norse that they survived at all in a treeless environment when so much of their way of life depends on timber.

But let's assume the Greenlanders and a few hundred more Norse from Iceland and Norway doubled down and made the effort to colonize Labrador or Nova Scotia. It's certainly possible it could have succeeded for a while before being absorbed. But there simply isn't enough reason for large numbers of Scandinavians or Irish or whatever to cross the Atlantic, and without that, the chances are very small that this colony would continue to exist as a Norse colony. Let's face it, the kinds of people who were forced to move to Iceland were criminals and other undesirables, and those sorts of people have a habit of making themselves unwelcome no matter where they go.

Why would this make a difference? They died off historically because of their inflexibility: they found evidence of Vikings who had starved to death while natives were thriving on fish on other parts of the same island. Why would that change if they moved to the American continent?

The early British settlers had such a fearsome mortality rate that the natives assumed they would simply die out on their own, and that would have happened if they had not been constantly reinforced by waves of replacement settlers from Britain. If actual hostilities had broken out, the natives could have easily wiped out the small floundering early settlements. So if small bands of Vikings had moved to America, why would they fare as well, never mind thriving, without that constant stream of reinforcements?

Vikings probably would have succeeded (at least in the short term) where Norse colonists failed. They were very skilled at setting up temporary bases, then raiding/trading far and wide, and staying one step ahead of reprisals. This worked well enough against their contemporaries in Europe, who had comparable weapons or better.

However, they would have been absorbed by the locals just as surely as they were in Europe. The desire to copulate and reproduce is too strong to overcome. If you're a viking, why do you risk your neck sailing dangerous seas and fighting in foreign lands? While a few of the more powerful ones used their raiding to improve their standing back home, most were after fortune, glory, land and women. For the kind of desperate character who fled to Greenland or Iceland, two out of three ain't bad.

So the net result of all this? Maybe a few Northeastern Amerindians inherit red or blond hair from a viking ancestor. Maybe in a one-in-a-million chance, the Norse stick around long enough to bring metalworking and horses with them, and these find their way into the hands of the locals and they're dispersed all over the continent. But not only do you have to, in the words of Stephen Jay Gould "rewind the tape", you have to seriously tamper with it to get it to play back like that.

[LaCroix]

This szenario was spurred because the Tv show said that the settlements on continental America were too small to survive the pressure of the natives.

My wife then added she couldn't see why ten thousands of Norse stayed in Iceland, when there was so much 'better' land available. this led to the question what would have happened if about half the Icelanders, this would mean 10000 people would pack and move. A 10.000 people immigration is by no means a small settlement, and they would bring every several people of every profession with them.

They would have enough timber to build housing, boats and produce charcoal for forging. Land and climate would be good for their agriculture and husbandry, and hunting would be possible, too. I would think that this would be enough to build a viable colony able to sustain itself, and given that they were Norse, trade would soon follow.

So the main point of this thread is - if the Norse had settled continental America with 10.000 people instead of just a few handful, would that changed something? I believe that there would have been a Norse settlement around the great lakes and coastal Atlantic, with a healthy dose of native indian woman taken in, but the number of Norse and the difference in culture would mean that those women would be assimilated into the Norse culture. I could even see some tribes in the proximity adapting to Norse culture, becoming auxiliaries like some tribes in the french-british wars.

I certainly do not see a norse continent...

[Thanas]

The 10000 people starve on the way to Nova Scotia.

The willingness of the Norse to adapt and assimilate appears to have been based on how many women they brought with them. In Normandy, Ireland and Russia, very few were brought along. These men (usually viking raiders and mercenaries) were absorbed into the host culture within a generation or two. For example, Rollo (the viking chief who was given Normandy) had a son who was thoroughly Frankish: almost total assimilation in one generation.

This was not the case in areas the Norse really were out to colonize, such as Iceland and the Danelaw. In those regions, the Norse brought everything with them: women, children, livestock, customs, you name it. They succeeded in Iceland because they only had to displace a few Irish monks. England was a special case because the area they colonized was inhabited by -and next door to- people who were already very much like themselves, the Anglo-Saxons.

I find that argument to be a bit curious and would like to ask you for your sources. I mean, yeah, available women certainly play a part in cultural assimilation, but IMO it is more likely regarding what the cultures they settled in had to offer. The Scraelingers offered very little advantages unless it was too late. However, that does not mean that the decline of the Norse settlements is due to no assimilation.

[LaCroix]

Why would they starve on the way if they pack food and sail over to greenland and then nova scotia? Yes, there certainly would be some ships lost, but they did that travel more than once and did not starve outright. You seem to be of the impression that all would take of as one, which wouldn't be possible. A ship couldn't carry more than 40 people, probably less since they took everything they could with them, so assuming 20 + goods on each ship, they would have taken 500 ships to move as one. That would have happened over a time span, with about 20 to 50 ships ferrying, and later taking over the role of traders between N.S. and Iceland.

Some drown due to accidents? Yes, definitely.
Some starve on the continent while trying to find fishing grounds, planting crops and installing husbandry? Maybe, but not that many.
Starving on the way due to packing insufficient food? No way - they knew the distance, and had an in-between stop, and many ships would be going to and from on that route.

[hongi]

But there simply isn't enough reason for large numbers of Scandinavians or Irish or whatever to cross the Atlantic

Barring some Alien Space Bat reason like meteorite strike or Wanked Mongols Overruning Europe (haha..ha), I'd have to agree. I'm sorry, I just don't see why a massive population interchange would take place.