The Norse in North America

Can we all just take a second to appreciate the Norsemen and their presence in America?

>Lands in North American cold waters and starts fishing right away
>realizes land keeps going and decides to explore until they meet natives
>establishes trade with Natives and literally gives them everything BUT weapons
>Natives trade everything they have BUT tobacco
>Sets up Catholic Church in Greenland and successfully hides holy grail there
>little ice age hits and kills all left behind

Could you imagine if they gave Natives swords?
Could you imagine if the Natives gave the Norse TOBACCO?!?

Read collapse by Jared diamond, a whole chapter is devoted to the norse settlement in Greenland and why it failed. They fuck up the soil by deforestation and overgrazing sheep/goats. Refused to fish for food because of some senseless taboo, and pretty much immediately pissed off the inuits and chose not to learn from the natives survival/hunting techniques and ended up starving to death as you said during the little ice age. Could have done worse but definitely not the best example of successful colonization.

>>Sets up Catholic Church in Greenland
this is bad though

they were 'catholic' but lacked a strong catholic culture like spain thats needed to colonize the americas ,

>not the best example of successful colonization.
The Greenland colony had a damn good run though. Five centuries is nothing to scoff at. That's 20 to 25 generations of Norsemen that called Greenland home. How many of them really died off at the end? I was under the impression most of them fucked off back to Iceland over the latter half of the 15th century. Huh. I wonder what life was like for the last Norseman in Greenland? Did he see the fjord he called home slowly disappear from site as the ship sailed east, or was he or she the last of a group of diehards, eking out a life in some little hovel, wondering when they'd be too old and feeble to row their little fishing boat and drag in the net.

>Could you imagine if they gave Natives swords?
>Could you imagine if the Natives gave the Norse TOBACCO?!?

The opportunities for cultural exchange boggle the mind.
>A rich history of Indian sagas across North America written in runes
>Medieval tapestries of knights and nobles smoking pipes
Sadly, I think massive native die-offs from European disease were inevitable, but imagine if small pox had ravaged the continent in 1000 giving the natives five centuries to recover and adapt before Columbus. History would've been very different indeed.

>muh colonialists

Oh give it up already

This topic is very interesting. I honestly am not familiar with the subject matter, but I will try to get some good reading material concerning the Greenland, as well as North American Norse expeditions and colonies.

better yet, Imagine of the norse had landed in Mexico.

We would be talking about the Aztec Empire right now.

I have never seen a reasonable explanation why the Norse made widespread the knowledge of an American continent.

They did know it was a separate uncharted continent and not Asia.

Wtf was Leif Erikson's problem?

never made*

They did, no one cared about it though, it seemed like just another arctic island

Crusader Kings II played with that idea with their Sunset Invasion expansion pack. If you enabled it for gameplay (even possible on Ironman mode, where it's hardcore rules so you could get achievements), the Aztecs will show up at some point later through the centuries, almost coinciding with the Mongol invasions. The Aztecs, if enabled, are also a way for Western European large states to be kept from getting too powerful.

>American net-pagans unironically calling the US "Vinland"

>conquer France
>conquer Aztecs
>give French provinces to Aztecs
>have them fighting the Mongols
Love that game.

One of the very best by Paradox Interactive.

Most CKII players I know abaolutely HATE Sunset Invasion for some reason.

Let's not.
Let's instead appreciate what would've happened if Columbus landed as he did, then never returned.

Four hundred years later, Iron armour and iron weapons on horseback.

>Spanish don't colonize Americas
>don't hog all the gold in the world and do NOTHING useful with their wealth

Hmm...

>spanish don't colonize the Americas
>Remain a strong power because the gold they already have isn't completely devalued because of the pure quantity they got from the Americas

>By the time the Euros reach Americas, it's more akin to the scramble of Africa, with actually somewhat developed nations in select places, made possible by the spread of horses through the great plains.

I have to admit, when I first played Crusader Kings 2 I had Sunset on and I didn't know what was going to happen. Had a bitchin time as Galicia and was able to unite Spain and take most of Northern Africa when they appeared. I got butt fucked to oblivion and back.

Yep. It is sort of a game breaker for a lot of people.

I still enjoy CK2 and I still put on the Sunset Invasion every once and a while if I'm feeling lucky or masochistic, but yeah I was pretty fucking salty when that happened.

Because that is so much less retarded than refering to it by the first name of some spanish explorer no one cares about.

Adam of Bremen knew of it, but nobody cared

Yup good ol leafy Ericsson was converted by the king of Norway to the faith and commissioned to introduce it to the colonials living in Greenland and Vinland. They even had a decent cathedral in Greenland and a bishopric until the mini ice age hit.

Very true, not a bad run. From what I understand Greenland was so far away from skandinavia and became somewhat neglected in trade in the 14th century so only one or two ships made the trip to and from the colony each year, primarily bringing in luxury items for the church and returning with walrus ivory and polar bear skins, so I doubt there were enough opportunities for people to emigrate out. More like successive decades of food shortages/inuit raids wittled down the population till the last survivors passed.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if the last Norsemen went all Roanoke and got absorbed by the native population. Vikings had a long history of porking locals.
You're right, there was probably a significant population left behind. Since making the post above I read the wiki on the history of Greenland. Apparently, In the early 18th century, the Danes sent missionaries to Greenland who fully expected to find Catholic Norsemen completely unaware of the reformation. Of course, they found none.

Hadn't thought of that, I'd agree except for the difference in how the norse viewed pagan natives and vice versa, and how they viewed other Christian Europeans in the places of Europe where they interbred and eventually assimilated. Because relations with the inuit that we know of through archeological/written records were exclusively hostile and how the Vikings scorned the natives to the point of naming them "skraelings" or "wretches", I doubt the inuit would have been receptive to mingling even if the Vikings were desperate enough. Either way I suppose we will never know.

Hadn't thought of that, I'd agree except for the difference in how the norse viewed pagan natives and vice versa, and how they viewed other Christian Europeans in the places of Europe where they interbred and eventually assimilated. Because relations with the inuit that we know of through archeological/written records were exclusively hostile and how the Vikings scorned the natives to the point of naming them "skraelings" or "wretches", I doubt the inuit would have been receptive to mingling even if the Vikings were desperate enough. Either way I suppose we will never know.

I really hate this white revisionist shit, you're as bad as the afrocentrists. There were no Norse living in North America or greenland. There were just inuit peoples.

Nice bait

There certainly was, and there's contemporary records and archeological evidence to support it. Those colonies just didn't stick is all. If this is your first time hearing about it, it does sound pretty wild.

>Italian Explorer
Ftfy

WE

WUZ

das rite!

...

This is great bait

The "Amerigo" thing is a myth. The Spanish came up with "America" after the native name of a mountain range.

>>Sets up Catholic Church in Greenland
ok sure whatever
>>>>>successfully hides holy grail there
what?
>implying the holy grail is a real thing

you're also retarded

Had it truly been named after Amerigho Vespucci, the new world would've been named Vespuccia. Naming something after a commoner's first name was unheard of. We're to believe a group of cartographers inexplicably named the new world after the explorer's latinized first name "Americus" hence America. However, Amerigho, an international author at that time, had already latinized his name in his writings to Albericus. If for some unfathomable reason, they wanted to use his first name, why not Alberica?

Because the cartographers already knew the land was being called "America" and were forcing an explanation. Spanish explorers, Columbus among them, returned with tales of Indians along the coast of what is now Nicaragua who gave them a word for a tiny mountainous region which came off the Spanish tongue as "Americ" which eventually got equated to the entire new world after reports about translations of reports about other reports about what some official said some sailors said made the rounds of Europe.