Lands of Ice and Mice: An Alternate History of the Thule

[DValdron]

I’m trying to work up a picture of Iceland’s evolution OTL over a few centuries.

First off, the principal areas of Norse settlement seem to be around the north and western coasts for the most part. That’s where the fjords and landing sites are. The south coast is fairly bereft of good landing sites.
Although marginal for agriculture, the Icelanders had a good starting point, and the luxury of stands of timber and the medieval warm period. So it looks like population grew rapidly through immigration and natural increase.

Between 1220 and 1250 you have the Sturlong Civil war, a nasty conflict that includes a major sea battle. This lead, in 1262 to the Icelanders putting themselves under the rule of the King of Norway, who had been extending his influence through alliances and gifts to significant Icelandic Chieftains.

1227 a Treaty divides power between the Church and King. This doesn’t come out of the blue. But rather, it is preceded by a flurry of power struggles between Chieftains and Church officials over who controlled the application of justice. This had built all the way up to a small civil war and at least one significant battle. The Treaty seems intended to establish a balance.

This period of conflict, civil war, religious war and eventual enlistment with the King of Norway seems to coincide with the decline of the medieval warm period, which I find suspicious. Was it driven by increasingly bad weather, climactic shifts that made some clans untenable, that made everyone desperate. Crop failures, declines in pasture land, would lead to rustling, land disputes, contests of various sorts, situations of wealth and dependency, people would build alliances, oaths of fealty, nurse old grudges.

The social organization of the period was based around Godi or Chieftains. Chieftains would basically protect their farmers by enforcing compensation or vengeance for violations. In return, the Chieftains demanded political loyalty and military service. The Godi maintained their positions not just with the power of ‘law’ over people - basically, they were civil and criminal courts, judges, juries, negotiators and enforcers all rolled into one - but they also maintained their power with gift giving and feasts. If a Chieftain wasn’t giving gifts and feasts, the subjects would look elsewhere. Good times, people have a certain luxury and liberty. Hard times, you stick close to the guy who might feed you. A regional economic/environmental decline probably lead to increased power of Chieftains, competition, and civil war. The adoption of the Norwegian king suggests that the Chieftains were bringing in outside money.

The religious balance struck in 1227 isn’t stable. the Catholic Church becomes an increasingly powerful entity in Iceland through the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Through the practice of tithing, the Church accumulates a massive social surplus, encroaching on lands through bequests, purchase, settlements and outright taking, the Church becomes the biggest landowner in Iceland, controls vast wealth and is literally a state within a state. The Church maintained its own legal system, was expropriating property and imposing its own punishments.

The medieval glacial period is kicking in, about 1250 to 1450, everyone is getting poorer and more desperate, the church is getting wealthy. At least one Bishop is well known for supporting the poor and desperate.
Nothing much seems to happen in the 1300's. I think we’re looking at a period of relative social stability and consolidation, as the Church expands and provides social services, and the Chieftains are supported by the King of Norway and maintain their little fiefdoms.

The 1400's suck. The black plague rips through in 1400, killing something like 50 to 80% of the population. Almost a hundred years later, the plague rips through again, killing 30 to 50%. So literally, just as Iceland recovers demographically, it gets hit hard again.

There are signs of economic tension. In 1419 the Icelanders demand a right to free trade. That wouldn’t come up unless things are getting bad and people are looking for new options. In a generation though, around 1450, things will start warming up and this may take the edge off of political tensions.

The role of the Church wasn’t without conflict or controversy. In 1433, a particularly corrupt and greedy bishop was drowned. In 1446 there’s another major conflict between the Chieftains and bishops that results in the Bishops removal. Again, this is in the later part of the medieval glaciation.

It’s also in the aftermath of the demographic collapse caused by the plague, a generation later. So maybe with all those people are dying, there’s a land surplus, a pasture surplus, a milk surplus, and with those subsistence surpluses, the Chieftains see a surge of influence and authority. After all, with all that extra pasture, all those extra farm animals, you can throw a lot more feasts and richer feasts.

The Church is also glomming up emptied properties after the collapse. For a while, there’s enough surplus for everyone, but then after a generation or so of parallel acquisition, the game is getting thin for the big players and tensions rise. The Church is crowding the Chieftains.

In 1458, the two century old treaty dividing power between Church and King is restated. Again, this seems to show ongoing social tensions between the power and authority of the Church and local authorities.
In 1513, a group of 26 Chieftains came together to write a letter of the protest to the king and the public challenging the encroachment of the Church.

So Iceland was hardly neutral in its Catholicism. There seems to have been some indications of a low level civil war flaring up perhaps as early as 1530, which in the period between 1545 through 1550, resulted in power struggles, between Bishops and perhaps between Chieftains and ecclesiastical authorities. It ended eventually with a small battle, and the subsequent capture and beheading of a recalcitrant Catholic Bishop and his sons (yeah, I know).

My now interestingly, these conflicts were taking place during a relative warm spell between 1450 and 1550 that was between the medieval glaciation and the little ice age. There would have been increasing prosperity, more warmth. People are getting richer. It looks like in the first part of it, 1433 and 1513 the Chieftains are asserting themselves. But then as things go into a decline, say from 1530, it starts to get serious and nasty, and there’s a direct struggle, Catholicism and Catholic wealth is out. Lutheranism comes in.

What’s going on economically? I think that we probably see the decline and disappearance of the barley economy, and the primary agricultural economy. What’s left after Barley goes is truck gardens. I find references to grain being imported at great expense, I’m assuming that’s for beer and bread. The shift is to pastoralism, so cows, sheep, goats, with an economy revolving around milk and wool, meat. Wool becomes an export. The poorer folk are driven to fishing for their supper, which can be a productive living, but a hard one, and an unreliable one. This is probably the medieval glaciation.

As conditions worsen, you’ve got social support systems revolving around Church and Chieftains, who in turn monopolise land and wealth, more people are pushed to fishing. As I’ve said, the demand for trade comes 1419, which is also around the time that English fishermen start showing up in the waters, implying there’s someone else to trade with. The warm spell briefly takes the pressure off and the land economy rallies.
What shifts the Icelandic economy is the international demand for Cod, towards the end of the medieval glaciation. The English, the Basques, they’re already travelling vast distances to fish. Salted and dried cod can be transported. The fishermen, formerly the most destitute, start to be the ones with money in their pockets. The economy reorients around fishing.

The Chieftains probably lose most of their power around the time of the Little Ice Age, following 1550, particularly as , they can’t produce enough surplus on their own to buy loyalty, other people are producing uncaptured surpluses. Relations are shifting to external/commercial. The breaking of the Church and resulting wealth seems to have gone into the hands of the Danes, the Chieftains got frozen out.

1600 comes along, and Iceland becomes a monopoly for Danish trading companies. Each company has its own stations, they don’t compete. Probably a lot of price fixing and value taking. This is when standards of living start to go down dramatically and people get impoverished. The land economy, agricultural and pastoral is in the grip of the little ice age, the entire economy of the country is dependent on the cod fishery, and the cod fishery is controlled by the Danish companies, not the locals. They set the prices to buy, they loan or extend credit to fishermen for boats or nets, they make tons of money selling. The monopoly lasts almost 190 years, which suggests its incredibly lucrative. It lasts until a volcanic eruption literally wrecks the country. Iceland under the monopoly reminds me a lot of Newfoundland under the old outports system.

Post 1600 Iceland sucks massively. It’s not a fun place to be. The interior depopulates. The farms and pastorals, formerly the backbone of the economy literally end up on the outside looking in, backwards paupers, reduced to a bare subsistence economy. There’s a huge wave of witch trials and witch burnings, suggesting overall social and economic stress. Another giant plague, probably smallpox hits in 1707, carries off a quarter of the population. 80 years later, a huge volcano wrecks the place, essentially destroying the livestock economy and inducing a famine that kills a quarter of the population.

So this is Iceland, OTL, as nearly as I can work it out from poking about here and there.

[Shevek23]

I'm just catching up, forgive me if my posts overlap discussion that's already happened!

Originally Posted by DValdron

It's a good map. The thing is that all o these are evolving competing states, so borders are highly fluid, as fluid as Europe's were.

I like the map a lot, bearing in mind things will shift.

Is it at any rate a good snapshot of some particular year, DValdron?

Originally Posted by DValdron

....
One thing that's correct. If the East Greenlanders are able to make Svalbard, then the South Greenlanders should be able to make it to Labrador and start accessing timber and shipbuilding resources. But its unlikely that the Thule could simply adapt their Umiaks to wooden construction. Or that they'd acquire boatbuilding from the Greenland Norse.... that's a big step up, and it strikes me as the sort of skill that would simply tend to fall out.

If you hadn't cut the Gordian Knot of the Norse/Thule interchange I'd have wanted more of this. But I have to admit, Norse carpentry is indeed a skill they'd start losing once their wood supplies were cut off, which was long before Grandfather contacted them. Iron and other metals can be melted down and reforged into something else, or mended; all you can do with wood is cut it into smaller pieces. Then nail or glue or lash them together, but these things are hardly anything they'd want to dare to do to their boats! I daresay the art of making a boat from fresh wood was lost generations ago.

What I might have held out for, if the Norse had lingered around and rallied a bit more, by means of adopting more of the Thule crop package, is the idea of using wood, say initially from a ruined boat, as a frame to reinforce an Umiak, then in these hybrid improved skin boats voyage to Labrador or wherever the wood was and either start relocating there, or importing lumber on a scale to use it sparingly in such-like wood frame, skin surface things--for boats, for buildings, etc.

You kept saying "it's thousands of kilometers!" and I figured, yes, if you hug the coast all the way up to Ellesmere and then down, but straight across it's much closer.

I accept that there weren't enough Norse and they weren't curious and adaptive enough to accept the Thule stuff wholesale. (Also, on the terms I care about, a lot of Norse did survive--they married into the Thule, and some of their culture was transmitted and transformed. A lot of stuff I might wish had been transmitted but wasn't, like carpentry, like European high intellectual culture, was stuff the Norse either never had or lost on their own generations before.)

So, not on that round. Thule woodworking will be something they invent themselves, pick up from other Native peoples, or from Europeans.

Originally Posted by DValdron

Hmmmm..... I'll poke around there a little more. My best guess at the moment, is its a late acquisition, using European ships as models, and adapting. Probably through Thule being absorbed into the whaling industry. Hmmm some more.

Yeah, stuff like that. Also, what are the chances of ideas from Tlingit contact filtering east, stuff like how to work with wood?

Originally Posted by DValdron

Here's a question, what's the likely rate of cultural acquisition by the Iceland Norse, assuming a large stable cultural interface - ie, two substantial populations living and interacting peaceably, each acting as effective doorways.

I dunno how come the Sea Thule settlers in Iceland can make for a more stable and open interface than the contact in Greenland did!

Well, I sort of do. On one hand, the Icelanders, being a larger population not yet quite in the dire straits the Greenland Norse were, might easily take it into their heads to try to exterminate or expel the Thule. If the general population takes its time mulling it over, a hotheaded viceroy of the Norweigian (or is it Danish, already?) king might simply order this crusade.

On the other hand, if the authorities keep their cool and the ordinary people making contact generally do, everything might go more circumspectly, especially if the Thule are generally using land the Icelanders found no good use for.

Then, a larger population will have more room for the more curious and adventurous to make individual contacts. It also hosts more elites (not a lot, it's freaking Iceland, but among the clerics for instance might be a few with some pretensions to intellectualism and some contacts with Europe more recent than several centuries ago!) There will be books other than the Bible, and sooner or later a trade/tribute delegation from Norway. We're on the verge of the Reformation but not quite there yet, perhaps the Catholic Church will send a small mission, and then when the Reformation overtakes Scandinavia, the Reformed Church.

It's possible such missionaries might actually listen to what the Thule have to say for themselves.

Originally Posted by DValdron

Thinking out loud here, I could see ready adoption of Caribou and Musk Ox. They're analogous to Norse Domesticates, the skill sets for management can be adapted to them, the animals will clearly thrive in the environment and the Norse Domesticates are struggling. On the downside, they're poor milk producers, and that's a huge thing for the Norse. Musk Ox give good Qviat, but much smaller sheep produce greater volumes of wool. The big obstacle would be CMT in goats and sheep which would be pretty lethal to prospects for introduction. So there'd be a fairly brutal learning curve in learning to manage the problem. Unless the Thule fill in a few details. Even then...

I wouldn't see wholesale adoption of Thule agriculture immediately. There are barriers - the Shamanistic overstructure, the counterintuitive methods like stone cover, the labour intensity of mound construction, and the long perrenial growth period. But Icelandic agriculture is still functioning somewhat. And now there are gateways or overlaps - the Thule are cultivating turnips, carrot/parsnips, and onions. The icelanders will recognize these plants in the Thule larder, and they'll note that the Thule seem to be doing a better job of them. So that opens the door to Norse farmers experimenting with some parts of Thule agriculture - stonecover for instance, or limited mounds. Even marginal success will tend to spread through Norse agriculture, and it'll encourage further adoptions and expansions, and perhaps incorporation of the key Thule plants - the thing with Sweetvetch, Bistort, Claytonia and Roseroot by this time is that they're all mature domesticates, agriculture friendly, highly productive and different from the wild versions. Their problem is that they're slow.... but Iceland has a declining/starving population, so I don't think they're short on land to waste. And if they figure out ways to keep Norse domesticates from killing Thule domesticates they can access considerable horsepower in Caribou and Musk Ox.

So I figure this will happen. The question is.... How fast and how far?

Lets think this out. Iceland during this period is basically a series of subsistence villages scattered around the coast. Not many towns or cities if any. Most of the villages are probably self contained - ie, the local economy probably produces almost everything people require. So its not like there's lots of people circulating around from community to community, commuting back and forth, there's no newspapers, there's no Shamanic caste moving freely and transmitting information. If anything, the priesthood would be an anti-shamanic class, opposing the spread of Thule knowledge and techniques as ungodly.

Probably for the most part. Were Catholic priests in Iceland on the eve of the Reformation native Icelanders ordained--well, I gather Iceland only briefly if ever had its own bishops, so they'd have to travel to Europe to be properly ordained, or the bishop would have to come every generation or so to visit, which if that ever happened probably stopped happening generations ago by this point. But otherwise the Church would have to send foreigners (presumably mostly Norwegians) to be their priests.

The Church was dogmatic and steeped in corruption, but also most of Europe's intellectual class at this point. If the Church is sending Norwegian priests, they probably aren't the best; probably losers or troublemakers. But among the troublemakers, might there not be some who are intellectually inquisitive?

How did the Church view the preservation of Norse Eddas and Sagas by the likes of Snorri Sturluson?

I'd think some of the clergy must have had an interest, even if they weren't Icelanders themselves they were probably Scandinavians and felt a tie to the Old Norse. That sort of interest might translate into curiosity and interest regarding the Thule.

Originally Posted by DValdron

So how does information, deep information like the how to, stuff circulate. What's the people/information exchange/rate between communities.

They're not completely isolated. The black plague ripped through the Icelandic population good and hard twice. Communities are probably importing grain or flour. There's almost certainly a low level demand for some basic essential finished goods, and for luxury items. So villages aren't completely self contained.

On the other hand, I don't think that there's a lot of outmarriage, no advantage to marrying off your daughters to the next community, they don't do you any good.

News travels back and forth, if there's any news worth hearing about. Epidemics, pirates, disasters, etc. A 'new people' showing up would be news, something to debate, discuss, argue about. Would people come from far and wide to check them out? No. But stories would get around. Details of agricultural practices would be scoffed, unless some of these end up being endorsed by the interface Norse.... "Crazy stuff, they cover it with Stones, but I hear a man named Olaf tried it, and he got a turnip as big as his head." But even then, agricultural practice is finicky, and not the easiest thing to be conveyed in this way.

The people beyond the actual interface zones most likely to pick things up would be the communities living closest, and then the communities closest to them, and so on. Cultural transmission as a game of telephone. And there's probably signal degradation in the telephone system, because there aren't a caste of Shamans to keep everyone's practice fine tuned, and they're all learning third hand. But success will breed imitation. The Icelandic Norse will produce a sort of photocopy imitation of Thule agriculture, not quite as efficient, but productive enough to justify itself.

But how fast? I don't see it happening in a year. Not in five years. So.... twenty? Thirty? There are factors (starvation) that would push more rapid adoption. Roseroot has enough medicinal/stimulant effects that it would be desperately embraced. Let's face it, the Icelanders are people desperately in need of stimulants. Berry's may be a surprising one - but not too surprising (if the Icelanders are importing grains, they're using it to make beer, or they're importing beer [its a potable water thing, raw drinking water is a quick trip through dysintery land] fermented berry wines might go over very well).

But there are also factors against. The Iceland Norse have committed a lot of their economies to fishing, and its an either/or proposition. The fishing season is the same as the farming season, you can't do both. So committing fully to Thule agriculture is a big investment, and its also going to have a big opportunity cost in terms of loss of fishing opportunities. Loss of fishing opportunity is bad, because fishing pays off that summer, as opposed to in three years time for a lot of Thule Agriculture. What this means is that adoption is always going to be incremental, bits and pieces like stone cover agriculture being introduced experimentally, expanded, and more and more bits and pieces adopted.

So let's say it takes a particular village 5 to 10 years to bit by bit pick up and get the whole package working. How long to spread through the whole country. It's not a case of having to wait until each village gets the whole package and then the next village starts. Rather, incremental practices, once they prove, will travel. Say one tries stonecover and it works really well.... then the next year, its established in the village, the next year other surrounding villages in travel range try it, consolidate, spread again.

Twenty to Forty years to become common through the Icelandic Norse? What do you all think? Off base? Too conservative? Too radical? It won't be a perfect or complete reproduction of Thule agriculture, but say about 85% of it?

Another variable. 1495 or thereabouts the black plague rips through, kills of about 20 or 30% of the population. So there's huge labour shortages. Just not enough people to go around. And Iceland is pretty impoverished and isolated, so its not like people are clamoring to immigrate to it.

That labour shortage, in one sense, is going to retard adoption, because most people's time is already consumed by subsistence activities. Fishing, the primary activity, is taking up a lot of the available Norse manpower.

But it also opens up opportunity. The Thule are farmers and herders. There's no competition in the primary Norse commercial/subsistence activity of Fishing. Instead, the Norse are potentially perfectly happy to let a bunch of newcomers show up and help out, occupying less desirable niches or contributing to subsistence.

So a lot more Thule come over, more waves of migration, more settlement. Say 500 a year over 20 years, that would be 10,000. More likely as time goes on, you'd get more than that, some years two or three thousand. So over 20 years.... 15 to 20 thousand? Natural increase 20 to 25 thousand in that time. Thirty years time, counting continuing immigrants and second generation coming online - 30 to 40 thousand and up? Not bad considering the population of Iceland during this time is probably somewhere between 50 and 70 thousand.

There's even 'local historical' precedent. Norway around this time (give or take a century) experienced its own big population decline, lots of farms were being abandoned. Norse authorities invited the Sammi to come in and fill in the gaps. Or more recently, you can look at black migrations into northern cities. The right economic conditions can produce large ethnic or population movements within cultures or regions that continue to function more or less normally.

And of course, the wider the interface grows - ie, the more people from both sides in contact, the more opportunities for transmission and adoption.

So lets say 30 years for Norse Icelanders to adopt their own version of Thule Agriculture. Which is also the same timeframe for the demographic of Iceland and population dynamics to shift radically. Reasonable?

Well, it's how I started thinking when you pointed out that the Icelander Norse (since presumably eventually "Icelander" will generically cover both Norse and Thule natives, I'm starting to distinguish) won't want to risk missing chances to fish. The Thule also want to fish, but they are growing crops anyway; the cultivating niche is wide open to them. They might simply handle growing all the crops, all the ones they bring anyway, and trade. Since these are Sea Thule presumably some of them will go on whaling and fishing and sealing and so forth, but a branch of them, soon (in a century or so I mean) to become the overwhelming majority of them living in Iceland, are mainly farmers.

Originally Posted by DValdron

(Thinking out loud, there's a critical innovation that the 'Sea Thule' will probably take from Icelanders. Nets, possibly Sails if they don't already have them, or improved sails if they do. Easily grasped, portable, adaptable and huge benefits to the developing Sea Thule subculture.)

Ha, I thought we were supposed to dismiss the idea that the Greenland Norse could teach the Thule to sail because Umiaks couldn't take sails?

Again, I offer the hybrid wood-frame/skincovered boat as a solution. One that might also be adopted by Icelander Norse as a way of stretching their meagre lumber resources, which have to be shipped in from Norway. At least those ships are still coming to them, more sporadically than before.

And the tempting possibility of a very belated revival of the "Vinland" project, or anyway Markland, in the form of Thule communications revealing there is an alternate source of lumber, a long way away but not controlled by the Norwegian king either. A mixed Thule/Norse Icelander expedition can sail by way of Greenland on to the east coast of Baffin Bay and then south coastwise, assuming that other Thule groups along the way are reasonably cool with the deal.

[DValdron]

Okay, let's focus the snapshot in a bit. Let's assume that this is basically how Iceland goes in OTL. Maybe the details aren't quite on, but the broad strokes are accurate.

Now, the Thule start showing up in numbers about 1515.

First, they're damned lucky! They missed a major pandemic by a historical hair's breadth. They were fortunate that Iceland's shores were mostly open sea in most winters, and the lands were essentially inaccessible.

Second, they're showing up within 20 years of a major demographic collapse. Which would have meant major labour shortages, particularly for labour intense activities like fishing. But for land use stuff.... there was plenty of land. So social conflicts low, demand high. During this time, the Icelanders are having some trade with both the English and the Hanseatic league, are somewhat used to strange Europeans in and around their waters. This is probably a period when natural xenophobia is going to be running low. Strangers will not be killed on site. Maybe not even if there is a lot of them. If strangers seem to present opportunity... maybe welcome.

Which is good because I think I was wrong about them ending up on empty shores in the cold northern part and not getting noticed. I figured most of the Icelanders were along the south shores. Not the case. They're smack dab in the pathway of the Thule. So the encounter will be early, and the early encounters are going to be decisive.

They're going to run into two rival power structures, existing in uneasy communion, the Chieftains and the Church. I think of the two, the Church is ascendant, and the Chieftains are resentful and perhaps more opportunistic.

So what do the local Chieftains do about these new interlopers?

Kill them? Possibly. But that might be harder said than done. They're going to be showing up in winter over ice floes. It's hard to move around during that time for the Icelanders. Tough to raise up a big army, your soldiers will be whatever local boys you can gather. Not much, maybe not sufficient.

Remember that the Chieftains kept the peace by exacting vengeance and compensation. They weren't pro-active. It takes time to get the word out, enlist other chieftains, gather up an army.

You might see flight instead. Get the hell out. But that's dicy. You go from a Chieftain to a supplicant. Get on your knees for anyone, maybe there's no getting back up.

Both Chieftains and Thule have a tradition of feasts and gift giving, the usual means of making friends - you feed people and give them things.

So could Thule who have some Norse or Norse pidgin buy their way in? Gifts and feasts for the Chieftain, who can then use it to pay off/buy his own followers.

The Chieftains economy revolves around pastoral land use - their wealth is in cattle, sheep and goats. For cattle sheep and goats you need forage. For forage you need acres, and that's land. Now, demographic collapse meant lots of land, perhaps even lots of spare land, relative wealth.

Is there enough spare land that a Chieftain could give some to the Thule settlers and consolidate his relationship with them? Or does he turn out his pockets and say 'no land for you, I need it all.'

Twenty years after the demogaphic collapse. I just don't know.

But maybe there's a couple of things. The Thule can make use of really shitty land. Worthless land for sheep or cattle, the caribou can make a go of it. And the Thule have learned by this time to make sure that their Caribou don't go anywhere near sheep or goats. So the Chieftain isn't giving up anything, and he'll find an absence of conflict.

The local Thule prosper, shifting slowly from pastoralism to more intense pastoralism to poor agriculture to better agriculture. They spread to the most maginal lands.

How does this shake out? They align with or are under the Chieftains, at least initially, embedded in a role in Icelandic culture. Communities start to emerge. Thule systems and governance begins to assert itself.

Do the Chieftains benefit? Lose? A bit of both I assume. Where does it go? Do the Chieftains divide into Thule allies and enemies? Do the Thule express fealty of some sort to some Chietains? Do we see some Chieftains becoming uber-ascendent with the Thule on their side, or does their interaction with the Thule undermine and destroy them.

I think that given the possibility that if there is peaceful entry, it will be mediated by the Chieftains suggests that there may be a faster acquisition of agricultural components than I had previously estimated, and emergence of a Norse version of the Thule package relatively earlier rather than later. It may eventually outrun Thule immigration, possibly. With radical shifts in land use and production.

That's all assuming a peaceful entry mediated by Chieftains

There is of course the non-peaceful entry, which is not mediated, but met with conflict and disorganized response.

There's maybe a peaceful entry mediated by the Church.

Or enslavement?

I don't know. Just working the ideas out, here in front of everyone.

[Shevek23]

OK, now I've caught up for the moment.

There are so many variables, I guess it's going to come down to author fiat to choose the outcomes.

I like the idea of the Norse and Thule drifting into more and more contact; not to the exclusion of their remaining separate communities necessarily, but as time goes by I think it's most realistic to assume two-way communication. This might happen in a context of denial of the origin of this or that practice in the Others, however obvious that origin is to outsiders. But Thule will pick up more and more European stuff, European-descended Icelanders will gradually learn a lot from the Thule.

Perhaps it will take the intervention of rather wise and shrewd leaders in the early contact to keep the peace, but I don't think smart leaders are necessarily ASB! I wouldn't write off the Church so easily--on the whole it might be greedy and corrupt, and dangerously dogmatic, but some clerics will think carefully about what they are doing and have some sense of a responsibility to achieve a win-win outcome. If Iceland is lucky, the secular leadership at the time might also have some smart cookies, and working together they might steer the initial contact into win-win solutions. If that happens, Iceland is on a virtuous spiral that justifies the investment and risks involved and makes sustaining civil relations into conventional wisdom. If some fanatical monks show up denouncing Thule agriculture as witchcraft after it has become a mainstay of the Iceland-Norse diet for a generation or two, they will find a chilly welcome.

Meanwhile what I've read since my last post about politics all across the Scandinavian North Atlantic suggests to me that if there is a faction that gets fed up with the domination of Denmark/Southern Norway, they'd be interested in things like expeditions to North America to secure alternate supplies. Acting in partnership with Sea Thule mediating contacts with other Thule along the way to places like Labrador, they can probably hack it. North Norwegian built wooden ships, Thule navigators.

For reasons of early foreshadowing in the early posts, I doubt it will happen this way. But it doesn't seem impossible at this point, if by "this point" we mean between 1550 and 1600.

[RGB]

About Iceland, trade, ships, pidgin languages, and xenophobia:

You've heard of this, right?

http://www.snjafjallasetur.is/basque2.html - Massacre of the Basque Whalers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque-Icelandic_pidgin - Trade Creole

Just food for thought.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

I like the map a lot, bearing in mind things will shift.

Is it at any rate a good snapshot of some particular year, DValdron?

Let's call it 1600, Shevek. It's a good snapshot, period.

If you hadn't cut the Gordian Knot of the Norse/Thule interchange I'd have wanted more of this.

It seems that the interchange isn't finished yet.

But I have to admit, Norse carpentry is indeed a skill they'd start losing once their wood supplies were cut off, which was long before Grandfather contacted them. Iron and other metals can be melted down and reforged into something else, or mended; all you can do with wood is cut it into smaller pieces. Then nail or glue or lash them together, but these things are hardly anything they'd want to dare to do to their boats! I daresay the art of making a boat from fresh wood was lost generations ago.

Concurr.

You kept saying "it's thousands of kilometers!" and I figured, yes, if you hug the coast all the way up to Ellesmere and then down, but straight across it's much closer.

That fun little map function I found indicates that on a crows flight from South Greenland to the Labrador coast, its on average about twice the distance from Greenland to Svalbard or Greenland to Iceland. It's a big jump. But not as big as I expected.

I still don't think that the late era Greenland Norse would be making that kind of jump. If they could, they'd probably go to Iceland instead, closer and there's more value there.

But it's accessible perhaps under some circumstances. The early era Greenland Norse were definitely doing it. And maybe the South Greenland Thule, or East Greenland/Sea Thule might. I'm kicking it around.

I accept that there weren't enough Norse and they weren't curious and adaptive enough

I don't really see them as being incurious or unadaptive. They were playing a difficult hand of cards and playing it as well as they could. They just had a set of needs and options that limited their response.

to accept the Thule stuff wholesale. (Also, on the terms I care about, a lot of Norse did survive--they married into the Thule, and some of their culture was transmitted and transformed.

Glad to oblige. The Greenland Norse eventually passed into extinction, but they survived longer, left more of a footprint behind.

Yeah, stuff like that. Also, what are the chances of ideas from Tlingit contact filtering east, stuff like how to work with wood?

Have not thought about it.

I dunno how come the Sea Thule settlers in Iceland can make for a more stable and open interface than the contact in Greenland did!

A few reasons. They're not operating with the accumulated cultural deficits that the Greenland Norse did. They are showing up with a package much better suited to the environment, rather than desperately trying to squeeze life out of an unsuited declining package.

And the Sea Thule have a bit of a cultural advantage. They're more aware of the Norse, they have a smattering of Norse pidgin, some stories of Norse traditions. In essence, they have a cultural reservoir to draw on. The people that they are encountering are not utterly alien to them.

I will admit though, trying to model the path or lacks of Sea Thule/Iceland Norse interaction is making smoke come out my ears.

Well, I sort of do. On one hand, the Icelanders, being a larger population not yet quite in the dire straits the Greenland Norse were, might easily take it into their heads to try to exterminate or expel the Thule.

Possible.

If the general population takes its time mulling it over, a hotheaded viceroy of the Norweigian (or is it Danish, already?)

Danish. The Danes haven't completely taken over the Icelandic power structure, but they're top dogs.

king might simply order this crusade.

Also possible.

On the other hand, if the authorities keep their cool and the ordinary people making contact generally do, everything might go more circumspectly, especially if the Thule are generally using land the Icelanders found no good use for.

As I've said. I'm struggling. I'm not at all sure what my final conclusions will be. Certain outcome seem more interesting and offer more butterflies than others. But in the end, whatever happens needs to be plausible and offer reasonable probability. If the most interesting outcome is a 10% chance, I'll go for it. If it's a 0.0001% chance, I won't.

It's entirely possible that the Norse interchange is going to end with a bunch of Sea Thule slaughtered on a frozen beach, with a handful of traumatized survivors enslaved, and only a few loan words and winter survival tricks making their way, the introduction of Thule domesticate plants as untended and overlooked weeds.

Or (and I think this is more interesting) the Norse interchange starts to flow the other way in Iceland and it works backwards to create a resurgent Norway, an altered set of north European wars and a free for all in the White and Barents seas.

That's what I'm struggling with right now.

Well, it's how I started thinking when you pointed out that the Icelander Norse (since presumably eventually "Icelander" will generically cover both Norse and Thule natives, I'm starting to distinguish) won't want to risk missing chances to fish. The Thule also want to fish, but they are growing crops anyway; the cultivating niche is wide open to them. They might simply handle growing all the crops, all the ones they bring anyway, and trade. Since these are Sea Thule presumably some of them will go on whaling and fishing and sealing and so forth, but a branch of them, soon (in a century or so I mean) to become the overwhelming majority of them living in Iceland, are mainly farmers.

I'm thinking so. As I've said somewhere, there may be a second bump for the Thule on the Norse interchange. They may pick up Nets and Sails (or better sails) from Iceland (if they didn't pick it up in Greenland), and that's going to give the Sea Thule a boost.

Ha, I thought we were supposed to dismiss the idea that the Greenland Norse could teach the Thule to sail because Umiaks couldn't take sails?

Have I contradicted myself? So be it. I am large. I contain multitudes of contradictions.

And the tempting possibility of a very belated revival of the "Vinland" project, or anyway Markland, in the form of Thule communications revealing there is an alternate source of lumber, a long way away but not controlled by the Norwegian king either. A mixed Thule/Norse Icelander expedition can sail by way of Greenland on to the east coast of Baffin Bay and then south coastwise, assuming that other Thule groups along the way are reasonably cool with the deal.

Assuming a jump from Iceland to Greenland, sailing around the Greenland coast, then another jump to Labrador, that would be about 1800 kilometers. 3600 round trip. But both the Iceland Norse and the Sea Thule of the mid to late 1500's are more robust sailors than the late Greenland Norse could afford to be.

I honestly don't know. For anyone reading the last few pages, I think what you are reading are my efforts to wrestle and process historical situations, possibilities, probabilities and opportunities. We're not so much in timeline country right now, as 'thinking out loud and working out ideas.'

Perhaps I shouldn't be doing that, but rather, working it out privately and then presenting finished choices and a much more elegantly linear timeline.

Hard to say.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by RGB

About Iceland, trade, ships, pidgin languages, and xenophobia:

You've heard of this, right?

http://www.snjafjallasetur.is/basque2.html - Massacre of the Basque Whalers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basque-Icelandic_pidgin - Trade Creole

Just food for thought.

Yep. Came across the Basque massacre. Some observations. Three Basque ships came in and summered pretty peacefully, so there was some mutual amity and relations.

Things didn't go to shit until the departure, and one of the ships didn't make it. This is in the teeth of winter, and this is in the teeth of the little ice age. So the generosity and warmth of the human heart had probably chilled a bit.

It's one thing to be a host when you the sun is warm and the strangers have something to offer. Its another thng to be a host when the strangers are paupers and your ass is freezing.

It's also significant that the massacre takes place when the Basques were leaving and figured they were home free. It might well be that just before departure, they burned some bridges that they should have left alone. They were figuring they weren't going to need these Norse any more, have no further use for good relations. In their shoes, I might have offered up a hearty 'fuck you' and snuck off with anything not nailed down. Just bad luck to end up on the shore with a bunch of people you'd screwed over.

Now, against the big black mark of the Basque massacre is the pidgin, which indicates some rather more enduring contact, regular enough that people were putting together a couple of different glossaries.

So, what are we to make of it all? Massacre, definitely a possibility. But non-massacre and some interaction seems to be an option. Xenophobia waxes and wanes.

Our target is 1515 (give or take five years) and the place is somewhere on the Northwestern shore of Iceland, during a harsh winter. The question: What happens?

[RGB]

Originally Posted by DValdron

Yep. Came across the Basque massacre. Some observations. Three Basque ships came in and summered pretty peacefully, so there was some mutual amity and relations.

Things didn't go to shit until the departure, and one of the ships didn't make it. This is in the teeth of winter, and this is in the teeth of the little ice age. So the generosity and warmth of the human heart had probably chilled a bit.

It's one thing to be a host when you the sun is warm and the strangers have something to offer. Its another thng to be a host when the strangers are paupers and your ass is freezing.

It's also significant that the massacre takes place when the Basques were leaving and figured they were home free. It might well be that just before departure, they burned some bridges that they should have left alone. They were figuring they weren't going to need these Norse any more, have no further use for good relations. In their shoes, I might have offered up a hearty 'fuck you' and snuck off with anything not nailed down. Just bad luck to end up on the shore with a bunch of people you'd screwed over.

Now, against the big black mark of the Basque massacre is the pidgin, which indicates some rather more enduring contact, regular enough that people were putting together a couple of different glossaries.

So, what are we to make of it all? Massacre, definitely a possibility. But non-massacre and some interaction seems to be an option. Xenophobia waxes and wanes.

Our target is 1515 (give or take five years) and the place is somewhere on the Northwestern shore of Iceland, during a harsh winter. The question: What happens?

Oh, I never had a firm idea on how to interpret all that. That`s why I pointed to both.

Clearly they traded, possibly lots. Clearly, they were also touchy.

It takes two to tango and so a lot might depend on the Thule themselves, not jjust the Icelanders.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by Shevek23

There are so many variables, I guess it's going to come down to author fiat to choose the outcomes.

Being God of this universe is not the easy job I was hoping for.

Perhaps it will take the intervention of rather wise and shrewd leaders in the early contact to keep the peace, but I don't think smart leaders are necessarily ASB!

LOL. You're right. But my cynicism about human nature often makes it seem so to me. My feeling is that if people can find a way to screw it up, they will.

If some fanatical monks show up denouncing Thule agriculture as witchcraft after it has become a mainstay of the Iceland-Norse diet for a generation or two, they will find a chilly welcome.

I ended up nosing around in Icelandic witch trials. They all seemed to be in the 1600's and there was an awkward lot of them. I tend to read them as signs of social stress. If things are going well for you, you tend to be happy with your neighbors and not accusing them of witchcraft. If things are tough, there's a human tendency to lash out. A lot of witch hunts probably means that there's a lot of hard times and misery going around, and people looking for someone to blame for anything.

But one remark struck me - that Icelanders were not adverse to practicing magic. The whole Chieftain tradition had originally been pagan priests. This was a remote, rural community only a few hundred years removed from paganism. So there might be people who would be willing to adopt 'pagan' Shaman rites on the sly if they could get bigger turnips out of it.

If so, that's a statistical thing. In any population, there'll be a few of them. A small population, not enough of them to make an impact. A larger population, there might be enough of them to catch on.

Meanwhile what I've read since my last post about politics all across the Scandinavian North Atlantic suggests to me that if there is a faction that gets fed up with the domination of Denmark/Southern Norway, they'd be interested in things like expeditions to North America to secure alternate supplies.

Doesn't north and central Norway have wood? But I think that you're right in that they may see opportunities in linking to the Thule sphere for trade.

For reasons of early foreshadowing in the early posts, I doubt it will happen this way. But it doesn't seem impossible at this point, if by "this point" we mean between 1550 and 1600.

In the main part of the Timeline, we're still somewhere between 1450 and 1550. I still have to sort out what's happening in the Thule realm and Siberia.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by RGB

Oh, I never had a firm idea on how to interpret all that. That`s why I pointed to both.

Hope I didn't sound defensive or argumentative. I'm struggling to draw conclusions about an outcome which doesn't have an actual direct precedent.

[Pesterfield]

Do the Chieftains benefit? Lose? A bit of both I assume.

How would the Chieftains lose by giving Thule land the Chieftains aren't able to use but the Thule can?

[TaylorS]

[QUOTE=Falecius;6772453]

Originally Posted by DValdron

This is happening in the teeth of Reformation.
Reformation in Scandinavia, as opposed to Scotland or Germany, was basically top-down, centre-to-periphery in character. Norway and Iceland tended to remain Catholic while Denmark had adopted Lutheranism by royal fiat.
Of course, there are reasons why Norway did not turn into another Ireland and eventually accepted Reformation. But the Thule contact might be enough for Iceland to stand up a say the Danes fuck off. Parts of Norway might follow suit.
In the middle ages, the basic interface to the Arctic was Trondheim. I am not sure it is still the case at this time, but I can see a rift between Southern Norway, willing to keep ties with Denmark, and North-Central Norway, with Trondheim as a possible rallying point, with separatist attitudes, more willing to stay Catholic, but hardly able to stand up alone. Unless it gets hooked intto the Thule sphere, but this bit seems quite far fetched.
However, keep religious issues in mind. They're going to be relevant.
Don't forget that the Portuguese are sniffing around, or had just tried to.

Whoa now, that's my ancestors' neck of the woods you are talking about.

[DValdron]

The Far Lands

"I cannot dissuade you allm this mad venture?"

"How so madness? Madness would be to sit on our hands and refuse to go forward."

"Madness that you don't know what's out there. Madness that you propose a journey of weeks across the frozen sea."

"Nonsense, there are longer winter sea journeys north and south to the Trader lands. There is nothing remarkable about this."

"I've been on those journeys, they are in sight of land most of the way, we knew places to stop and go to shore if we needed to, and we knew our destinations. This is open sea, when you lose the shore, there will be no sight of land until you've found this new land."

"You speak as if we don't know where we are going. We know where the new land is, many sailors have seen it, have even come within reach of its shores."

"Knowing its there is not the same as finding it."

"In any event, how do we know that there is anything of worth there. It might just be nothing more than barren rock and ice. You go all that way... for what? To starve and eat rocks and seaweed."

"If there's nothing there, we'll just come back."

"If you can."

"But up north, I hear stories of how the whalers have found and settled the new land up there. And that it is fertile and beautiful, and that it has places for many people. So why shouldn't the new land here be the same?"

"Perhaps both lands are the same."

"Too far apart."

"Perhaps, but perhaps it just means that it is a single vast land."

"No, the new land of the North is islands."

"You know that?"

"I've had the word come to me. Yes."

"Is it fertile and glorious as they say?"

"I cannot speak to that, but it is a place where the people prosper I am told."

"This new land.... what if it is already occupied?"

"By whom?"

"The moss face people. They came from the east, some claim to see their ships in the distance, around where the new land is. Perhaps that is where they come from."

"Well, they are a dying people. They're probably all gone."

"What if they're not."

"Well so what? They will pose no challenge. They were not very bright. They were foolish and lazy and unable to prosper. They could not farm properly, and their animals were weak and poisonous."

"Hey! You're talking about my grandmother."

"My father had a moss face for a brother!"

"Well its true, though."

"I'll show you true!"

"Settle down. No one means to speak ill of anyone. Apologize please."

"I didn't say anything wrong."

"Nevertheless."

"Oh all right."

"The Moss faces had sheep."

"Sheep are poisonous, hard to care for, and hard on land."

"Still, sheep are on whole a good thing."

"Some say that."

"And the moss faces had iron, and made huge boats from wood."

"If there are moss faces, perhaps they'll trade for Iron?"

"Moss face Iron, now there's value, back in the day the trader people had an insatiable hunger for it."

"We don't even know that they're there."

"Regardless, its land out there, there's a lot of it from the looks, and there's not enough here. We should go."

"I don't see the purpose. There's more than enough here."

"No, Caribou sicken everywhere. There are too many sheep. Farmers fight over fields. There has been harvest theft."

"People just need to learn to live together better. Up on the East Coast, there are fewer of them than there are here, but they fight all the time. That's why some of them had to run away to the North New Land. Here there are more of us, but we have peace, we do not have their constant wars."

"But still, there are more and more people, and more and more farms, and the farms are getting in each others way, and the caribou men and the sheep men are losing pasture to farms, and then they graze in the same places. We need more land."

"We don't need more land, we just need people to mind better. And anyway, its probably just rocks out there, no use to anyone."

"I say we go."

"If we don't go, the East Shore people north of us will take the New land, just as they took the North New Land."

"Let them have it."

"No. It should be our land."

[RGB]

Coastal clans falling on hard times?

[DValdron]

The colonization of Svalbard by the East Coast Thule had an element of desperation. Displacement wars were becoming more frequent. Some people were seeing the writing on the wall, some were just looking for safety, either way, there was some motivation to take the risk. The colonization effort building for Iceland is a little more complex. Less desperation, more ambition.

The Southern Shores/Southern East Coast is by no means as desperate as it is further north. Everyone is more or less comfortable, and there are reasonable surpluses being produced by all parties - the trade network back to Ellesmere carries wool, local caribou herds provide meat, farms produce. The local subcultures are all doing relatively well lin their niches.

We're about a generation away from the displacement wars and conflicts that raged between 1470 and 1490 that ground the Greenland Norse into oblivion. The various subcultures around the south have more or less balanced out. But after some thirty years, that balance is freying. There is increasing competition and conflict between various groups.

Everyone remembers the troubles from a generation or so ago. Most people aren't looking forward to starting it up again. Some, of course, are nursing old grudges.

There's also older memories that have a golden glow. The colonization of Southern Greenland by the Thule is the story of a long journey and harsh lands. In comparison to the locations around Ellesmere, Northern Greenland or the upper Greenland coasts, the south was like a bountiful paradise in terms of productivity. The presence of the Norse culture and its useable domestics and skills was a huge shot in the arm for the burgeoning immigrant population, and the intensity of trade made them wealthy.

The Norse are remembered fondly as gifted idiots, they couldn't fight well, couldn't navigate the sea well, farmed badly, were full of crazy notions and habits, but at the same time, they were gateways to wealth.

Overall, the South Greenland Thule have a kind of collective memory linking wealth and prosperity to the colonization of new land.

They're now in a kind of twilight - old memories of the Golden Age, more recent memories of the War times, a recent period of stability followed by an accumulating sense of decline again. There's a sense of wanting to recapture the glory days of the golden age, of wanting to seek that out again. And a sense of wanting to avoid the wars that may be coming.

They are well aware of the colonization of Svalbard, and so this precedent is floating around, although the difficulties of colonizing Svalbard and the relative barrenness of the place have been overlooked. They know that there are these new Islands not so far away, they know that they can be reached, and they know that other Thule are reaching them. So there's a psychic barrier that is broken. The sense is that this Far land is accessible. If the starving wartorn wretches of the East Shore can make a new start... why can't they.

What you have in South Greenland is a society that has multiple motivations to want to launch a colonizing effort, even successive colonizing efforts, and which has the relative wealth and surpluses available to it, to attempt to colonize on an ambitious scale - ie, well equipped, well supplied, largish numbers.

It's significant perhaps that the last pure blood Norse has died around 1517, approximately the time that the first serious effort to reach and colonize the Far Land has been made.

[Falecius]

Originally Posted by DValdron

snip

This. Iron trade. People of Moss Face descent, some able to speak sort of Norse. Land is at premium in Greenland. Increasing densities.
Very nice.
And, oh, is it around 1515 you say?
A handful of the last pure blood Norse elders should be alive still. Not amounting to much, but somebody may, stretching things, learn the language from them.
Oh, it may be a long way, all down what's left of the Eastern Settlement...

However.
Iceland was relatively isolated and highly peripheral to anything of note in Europe, but still an integrated part of European civilization. Which IS in contact with Russia. At some point, the Russians will be quite aware of what's going on on their Northern shores.

Another point is that at least some Thule will have a vague idea of what Christianity is. Distorted and probably twisted, but enough to make the Church (or the Churches, at that point) very interested... Lost tribes of Israel anyone?
A particularly fascinating notion might be some sort of survival of baptism as local lore practice among the Greenland Thule clans where Norse intermarriage has been stronger.
Of course it would be given a wholly different meaning in the new religious context, but some form of the rite and, more critically, the Norse word, could survive. The interesting part is having some Thule individuals going to Iceland, claming to perplexed Norse that they had been "baptized" (which is true from their point of view), and showing some very confused idea about a spirit called "Christ".
I can see Icelandic priests going absolutely nuts until they realized the role of the Greenland Norse (which, by the way, won't take long).
Actually, if some of the first Thule coming show adequate knowledge of some sort of Norse and some Norse physical traits, they might even be mistaken for the descendants of the Greenlander Norse themselves... That in turn could help a warmer welcome (and would not be completely untrue after all).

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by Falecius

Iceland was relatively isolated and highly peripheral to anything of note in Europe, but still an integrated part of European civilization.

Yep. The Danish monarchy and the Church are aware of the immigration of poor heathens into Iceland, but as long as it doesn't disturb the balance of things, they're not too worried.

This is taking place in a period immediately prior to the Danish Crown's consolidation of commercial and political power in Iceland, and during the last gasp of the Chieftains.

Which IS in contact with Russia. At some point, the Russians will be quite aware of what's going on on their Northern shores.

Long term occupation of Novaya Zemyla is about 1580. It's not a really accessible area heavily on Russian radar, though they know of the place. The colonization of Severnaya Zemyla takes place around 1595, but the Russians have no idea it exists. The Taimyr peninsula and the linkage with the Siberian Thule come sometime after that. I'd say that the Thule really only start to show up heavily on Russian radar around 1620-1660. By that time, Iceland, and perhaps Norway will be very different places.

Another point is that at least some Thule will have a vague idea of what Christianity is. Distorted and probably twisted, but enough to make the Church (or the Churches, at that point) very interested... Lost tribes of Israel anyone?

Interesting.

A particularly fascinating notion might be some sort of survival of baptism as local lore practice among the Greenland Thule clans where Norse intermarriage has been stronger.

Quite likely.

[quote]Of course it would be given a wholly different meaning in the new religious context, but some form of the rite and, more critically, the Norse word, could survive. The interesting part is having some Thule individuals going to Iceland, claming to perplexed Norse that they had been "baptized" (which is true from their point of view), and showing some very confused idea about a spirit called "Christ".

I can see Icelandic priests going absolutely nuts until they realized the role of the Greenland Norse (which, by the way, won't take long).

Actually, if some of the first Thule coming show adequate knowledge of some sort of Norse and some Norse physical traits, they might even be mistaken for the descendants of the Greenlander Norse themselves... That in turn could help a warmer welcome (and would not be completely untrue after all).

There'll be a fair number of Norse loan words in the local dialect, a fair number of speakers of Norse pidgin, and a few people who might recall enough of the old Norse to get by in a restaurant.

[Falecius]

Yep. By the way, Denmark is going to rather busy with the Swedish was of independence, the attempts to enforce Reformation, wary observation of the ongoing mess in Germany, and keeping Norway in line.
I think nobody will give a fuck about Iceland at a political level. In terms of culture and Church, however, it may be different.
If the Thule look Christian-like, there will be MORE interest in converting them. But in the first fifteen to twenty years, there will be little concern in Copenhagen I suppose.
The Thule however are delighted. This is Norse Interchange 2.0, only on spades.

[DValdron]

I'm starting to think of the Northern Seven Years war, 1563-1570 as the big departure point in Europe. This was the big dust up between Norway-Denmark (assisted by Poland-Lithuania) on one side and Sweden on the other. Most of the fighting was down south. The conflict ended with both sides too exhausted and punch drunk to continue.

But there's interesting things going on in the north. The Swedes overran the largely undefended Norwegian provinces of Jemtland and Herjedalen, probably with relatively small numbers of troops. In 1564 a mere 400 troops took Trondheim and the province of Trondelag. They were eventually evicted by the governor of Bergenhaus with 50 professional soldiers and a peasants levy of about 3500. The Swedes, financially strapped, levied heavy taxes on Trondheim and pretty much earned the perpetual enmity of the Norwegians.

But let's kick this around a bit more. Let's assume that the Thule/Norse Agricultural package dominates Iceland between 1515 and 1550. It's introduced to Norway somewhere around 1530-35, and has spread quite a bit in the northern provinces by around 1565.

That's too soon for major demographic effects. You'll see more Norwegians. Let's assume that with more more and more stable food production, and more wealth, you'll have a higher birthrate during that time, lower infant mortality, and likely less outmigration south (I'm assuming that at this point the little ice age was kicking in seriously, and there was a steady stream of departures as marginal farms were abandoned and the northern Norwegians looked for greener pastures). So anywhere between 15 and 25% more.

More significantly, there's likely more wealth and economic activity. Roseroot and Labrador Tea are commercial crops, we may be seeing some Qviat trade, whale, in addition to Icelandic wool and cod.

Denmark doesn't institute the Trade monopoly for Copenhagen until 1600. So its likely that Trondheim has grown slowly but steadily between say 1525 and 1565, on the enhanced Iceland trade, and increased local production, and there's likely increasing friction with the Danish traders. More economic activity and trade has collateral spin offs - more Norwegian shipping, more sailing, more traders, more people looking for opportunities, which spills over into the fur trade around the Barents and White Sea, and more local focus on the north.

So, the Swedes attack in 1564, just like OTL, taking Jemtland and Herjedalen, its slightly/somewhat more populous, somewhat richer from imported Thule/Norse agriculture. They're taxing the locals. Locals are paying in produce. There's tax assessments of farmers, examination of strange produce and stranger new farming methods, animals. The package starts to filter into Sweden and Finland, which will have consequences over the next three or four generations.

But the most direct result, is that Trondheim, more populous, more prosperous, doesn't get overrun. The 400 Swedish soldiers are sent packing by the local forces backed by militia, possibly consolidates forces with Bergenhus. They might in the end take back the lost provinces, rather than have them returned in the peace treaty.

Trondheim emerges as a renewed commercial and military center, dominating the center and north of Norway, with influence stretching south, and an investment in local autonomy.

The population continues to grow as the demographic avalanche of the Arctic package takes effect in central and northern Norway, and with it, increasing resentment of and friction over Danish commercial privileges. The Copenhagen monopoly on the Iceland trade in 1600 is much more bitterly contested.

Meanwhile, over in Sweden/Finland the Norse/Thule crops and package are spreading, the north is somewhat more productive, populations are slightly higher, there's more of a tax base.

Charles IX becomes King of Sweden in 1600, after being regent for five years.
Denmark-Norway controls the strait between the Baltic and North seas, and they're taxing the hell out of Swedish shipping. (this is OTL)

To get around that, Charles IX got interested in a trade route through Lapland to avoid the Danish dues. This was to the point where Charles IX declares himself 'King of the Lapps' (this part is OTL). I'm thinking that Charles IX is probably thinking out his butt at this time, an overland route through lappland to the sea? There's no way that's going to be cost effective.

But assuming that Charles IX, is seeing a bit more population, a bit more economic activity, a bit more tax revenue from the northern districts, this just pushes him even harder in a direction he's already going.

And this move is actually fairly appealing to the burgeoning central and northern Norwegian population. The Lappland route would go through the northern provinces of Jamtland or Herjadalen, which Sweden has some hypothetical claim or designs on, or some of the higher northern provinces, like Tromso, for which Sweden has amore legitimate claim. So Swedish territorial designs are a downside. But on the other hand, Swedish and Finnish trade going through the Norwegian coast means a shitload of money, and that's got to appeal to the Trondheim set.

Denmark, of course has no interest whatsoever in an alternative trade route out of the Baltic. Taxing or levying duties on the Baltic trade passing back and forth through the sound is the economic backbone of the Danish government. (OTL)

The result is the Kalmar war. (OTL)

Like all these wars, its maddeningly inconclusive. Sweden invades a few northern provinces, gets kicked out. Denmark invades southern Sweden, and racks up military victories and dominance, but that doesn't translate to very much. In the end, Denmark gives Swedish shipping a free pass, which makes it the economic loser, and the Lappland trade route, intrinsically doubtful, is abandones. (OTL)

But now, in this timeline, lets say that the Kalmar war runs differently. Charles IX has, if not allies, at least sympathizers in Norway. The Norwegians, particularly the central and northern Norwegians are feeling hard done by. The 1600 monopoly on the Iceland trade was intensely resented. The blocking of Lappland trade is resented. Danish control of Norwegian affairs is resented. In the north at least, the Swedes are not seen as the same bogeymen they are in ATL. Charles IX is something of a schemer historically.

So, when the Kalmar war breaks out, Charles IX throws his hat behind the banner of Norwegian independence. With that support behind them the Norwegians revolt. Denmark is too consumed with the struggle with Sweden in the south to marshall significant forces in the north. Every time they do, Sweden looks like its gaining an advantage. In the end, the fight with Sweden takes priority, and the Danes end up too bankrupt and exhausted to keep Norway from leaving.

In the end, they content themselves with maintaining hold on some of the southern Norwegian provinces where their commercial and military interests are strong. The Swedes still get free trade through. The Lapp trade route is more or less dead (an independent Norway and possibly enough extra population and activity in the region might keep something going).

The end result is that the Norwegian state emerges two centuries early around 1613. Its politics are a bit different. It's got a mild mad on against Denmark regarding its southern provinces. More neutral or friendly towards Sweden.

This new state is much more active and activist with the Thule trade as well as the White Sea/Barrents Sea trade. That's the big effect through the 1600's, a brand new player.

Norway mostly stays out of the Thirty Years War, to its long term demographic and economic advantage. It carves away the remaining Norwegian provinces from Danish control.

The Norse/Thule Arctic package allows Norway to stabilize at a greater populatlion and a more active economy.

Denmark is slightly weaker, but not much more initially than OTL. It receives an immense ransom from Sweden which goes into founding cities and colonial ventures.

Denmark focuses on Germany, getting heavily involved in the Thirty Years War (1618 - 1648). This proves a disastrous venture for Denmark, (both OTL and ATL). Presumably, having slightly fewer resources to commit means that Denmark plays slightly more conservatively, or it loses slightly faster. Minimal butterflies. Denmark loses the Torstenson war (1643-1645). It loses its Scanian proplerties in subsequent wars.

Sweden on the other hand, does even better in this timeline, largely due to the Arctic Agricultural package. More population overall, demographic and economic expansion in the north, leading to a new push towards Karelia and White Sea frontier.

Unlike OTL the 'Peace and Economy' party rather than the 'Military-Aristocratic Party' tended to be dominant politically, with on average, longer periods of better governance.

One big effect is that the famine of 1696 which kills a third of Finns and a tenth of Swedes is either avoided or blunted. Although there's more interest and activity in the north, the Swedish focus remains around the Baltic.

Still, the White Sea and Barents Sea from about 1650 on is far less a Russian lake and much more a free for all. Swedes and Norwegians are far more active in the area, in ways that simply were not possible in OTL. The British, Dutch and Thule are all minor players in significant ways.

So, you smart guys out there that know all this stuff. What do you think?

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by Falecius

Yep. By the way, Denmark is going to rather busy with the Swedish was of independence, the attempts to enforce Reformation, wary observation of the ongoing mess in Germany, and keeping Norway in line.

If the scenario I've described above seems reasonably plausible, I think that Denmark is going to be unhappy, and its going to lose control over Iceland around 1611-1613. Not guaranteed, but a likely outcome.

I think nobody will give a fuck about Iceland at a political level. In terms of culture and Church, however, it may be different.

Well, so far as I can tell, the Lutherans didn's seem to have the same messianic zeal that the Catholics did. They were very concerned with saving souls from Catholicism, not so concerned with saving pagan souls.

If the Thule look Christian-like, there will be MORE interest in converting them. But in the first fifteen to twenty years, there will be little concern in Copenhagen I suppose.

1550 seems to be the tipping point in OTL. At that time, the ecclesiastical holdings fall to the Danish Crown, and the Danes are exercising increasing power and authority over Icelandic life. One of the major usurpations which follows in 1550 is that the Danish King begins enforcing a puritanical code of morality laws - punishing sex out of wedlock for instance.

Two things seem to be going on there - one is that puritanism is a likely a sign of worsening climate and economy, times keep getting tougher, and morality gets more conservative (out of wedlock and illegitimate sex gets punished a lot harder because that leads to births, and when times are really really tough, new mouths to feed are not a happy thing. Also, wedlocks are strategic arrangements vital to survival and illicit sex tends to undermine those arrangements.)

The other is that the Danish King is clearly intruding upon the core power of the Chieftains - to decide personal matters and act as lawgivers and enforcers.

My guess is that the usurpation of the key power of the Chieftains brings about the decline of their influence and authority, particularly in the face of the Danish King. That's a decline in indigenous and local authority and ability to advocate locally. Throw that in with the importance of trade, the Danish control of forfeited ecclesiastical properties, and Iceland is being reduced to a colony - all the decisions are being made somewhere else and local input is being frozen out. By the time the Danish trade monopoly is instituted in 1600, indigenous institutions and power structures have largely been emasculated, there's no real route to opposing colonial dominance, its game over for the Icelanders in OTL.

This timeline.... who knows.

The Thule however are delighted. This is Norse Interchange 2.0, only on spades.

The Norse may benefit....