Thanas wrote:The 10000 people starve on the way to Nova Scotia.
More likely they starve after they arrive. I doubt Nova Scotia or Labrador could support 10,000 people back then.
If they arrive at all: Eric the Red lost almost half his ships between Iceland and Greenland (11 of 25).
Elfdart wrote: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.
It's really just conjecture on my part, but Michael Wood's
In Search of the Dark Ages and Bill Bryson's
The Mother Tongue: A History of the English Language made the case that the Danes who invaded England started off as viking raiders just like ones who did smash-and-grab raids elsewhere. By the late 800s this had changed radically since the Danes started bringing their families and their entire way of life to stay permanently, especially after Alfred the Great ceded the Danelaw to Guthrum. The Norse also did this in the Orkneys and Iceland. I haven't found any mention of such settlement in Normandy or Ireland. The closest thing I could find was that Dublin was founded by the vikings, but that wasn't so much a colony as an armed camp and a way station for exporting Irish slaves.
The only source I have that spends any time on the East is
The Oxford Illustrated History of the Vikings, and most of the artifacts are weapons, armor and similar gear. The only area that appears to have had any kind of Norse colony was around Ladoga, which has
some evidence of Swedish farmers, as well as women's shoes of the kind that a Norse noblewoman would wear (they look very similar to those found in the Oseberg ship burial). If that's the case, then it's more than coincidence that in areas where the Norse were out to colonize, they didn't assimilate.
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.
I'm not blaming the Norse women, it's just that people usually prefer to find mates in their own group. There was a similar pattern in the differences between the way the Spanish and the English colonized the Americas. The Spanish who came over were mostly soldiers and adventurers (which is to say, men). They usually didn't bring women with them, since their goal was to make a killing (literally and figuratively) and go back to Spain as rich men. The ones who didn't find their fortune ended up intermarrying with native women and formed a kind of hybrid culture. The English sought to re-create England in North America and brought everything and everyone with them. Under these conditions, they had little use for the natives, except as people to trade with or rob.
The Scraelingers offered very little advantages unless it was too late.
However, the Norse were interested in trade, piracy, and later, land. Considering that much of the plunder the vikings got from Russia and the Baltic was in the form of furs and slaves, North America would have had pretty much everything any would be Norse traders would want.
However, that does not mean that the decline of the Norse settlements is due to no assimilation.
I agree. I also think it's time to call bullshit on Jared Diamond's theory about why the Norse settlements on Greenland fizzled out. Scandinavian culture revolved around boats, fishing, whaling and hunting seals back home in Northern Europe, so the idea that when hard pressed, they would refuse to go fishing, whaling and hunting seals to survive in Greenland is moronic. It could just as easily be a case of Greenland being the medieval equivalent of an Old West boom town that was abandoned when it was played out.