[FONT="]Taking a country that has no standing army and a population of only a few hundred thousand
today to the level of a superpower isn’t plausible. However, I think we could go a long way to making Iceland more important on the world stage, far more important than a glorified Azores, within the context of some sort of Northern confederacy.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Background to OTL.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Iceland was settled in 874. Greenland was settled roughly 100 years later, the population there reaching perhaps three or five thousand. Vinland was also settled. Snorri Thorfinnsson, the first child born in Vinland, left due to conflict with American Indians. There are 450,000 people of Icelandic descent today and ~30% of the population died in the eruption of Laki in 1783. Further, many thousands
died in Britain .[/FONT] [FONT="]The island of Iceland is south of the Arctic Circle, and is larger than both Portugal and Hungary. Native trees do
grow in Greenland , and now vegetables
are also growing. Greenland also
traded with Britain (page 44).
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The medieval warm period lasted roughly from 950 to 1250. According to
this website , “[/FONT]
[FONT="]At the time of human settlement about 1140 years ago, birch forest and woodland covered 25-40% of Iceland's land area."
[/FONT][FONT="]"Map showing the current birchwoods (dark green) and areas with mean summer temperatures of at least 9°C (middle green) and 7.6°C (light green), which is thought to be the pre-settlement limit of birch woodlands.” [/FONT] [FONT="]
That’s roughly the same land area as Rwanda (12 million) or Macedonia (2m) right up to Denmark (5.5m) or The Netherlands (16.7m) completely covered in forest.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The little ice age starts slowly with Atlantic ice packs beginning to grow in 1250, and by 1300 warm summers could no longer be depended on in northern Europe, in our timeline. Finally, in OTL, the Icelandic Sturlung Eraends with the signing of the Old Covenant 1262 that united Iceland with Norway.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The alternate timeline[/FONT]
[FONT="]The central POD is that it, instead of descending into a little ice age, it continues to get warmer, and at a more vigorous pace. Another important point of departure is that volcanoes don’t erupt. “[/FONT] [FONT="]
Volcanic ash is not only a problem immediately after an eruption ... [it] is blown back and forth for years and can be the source of dust storms for decades.” [/FONT]
[FONT="]The Norse Kingdom of Jorvik (York) remains independent and survives past 954, eventually becoming a Christian state. England forms, but without what was the Kingdom of Northumbria. This lessens Norse influence on it. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Around this time the rate of warming increases slightly, meaning both Iceland and Greenland become more successful. However, as indicated
here, the heartwood planks required to build ships were nowhere to be found in Greenland, and so expeditions go onward toward Vinland. Snorri is born ~1002, returns from Vinland following “
Skræling” hostility, as in OTL, and helps Christianise Iceland.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The warmer weather, however, means that resettlement is attempted, and succeeds. The hostility already built up between the Indians and Norse means relations are never repaired. The room to expand into North America subdues tribal warfare and eventually news spreads across other Norse/Northern nations, encouraging emigration from the Old World. The Black Death, however, practically halts this emigration from around the year 1350. The Black Death reaches Iceland, earlier than in OTL, around 1370, due to increased trade and hits North America about 1402, the time it first hits Iceland in OTL.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]By 1402, after 400 years of colonisation by Iceland and then the Nordic nations, the North American Norse population is significant, as unlike early explorers in OTL, they brought their women along. A stretch of North America has been colonised, to varying degrees, from Labrador to the Nelson and St. Lawrence rivers across to Cape Cod. Politically, these lands are separate petty kingdoms, that I’ll term Vinlandia. The Black Death results in massive depopulation over these areas and the area of Norse population remains within these boundaries for a considerable period after these events.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Instead of Harold Hardrada claiming the English throne in 1066, he successfully claims the Kingdom of Northumbria. The Kingdom of England falls to William the Conqueror. Without Jorvik though, Norman influence on England is much stronger, focusing England's outlook southward. When the Back Death hits Iceland, it’s subsumed into the Kingdom of Jorvik/Norway, the capital of which is Jorvik.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Meanwhile, warming means that Andalusia and North Africa are subject to desertification. While Spain is subject to Islamic rule, it is not to the same extent. The Nasrid Kingdom of Granada, which was a tributary state to Castile in OTL, falls not in 1492 but around the year 1450. Hearing northern rumours of lands to the West, and assuming these lands are off the coast of Asia, an expedition is sent out to find new trade routes around 1460. (The Santa Maria was constructed about that time).
[/FONT]
[FONT="]The New World is fully mapped out over decades, with note being taken of the relatively empty Vinland. [/FONT] [FONT="]Global temperatures continue to rise to around the 1990-2000 average by the year 1430, with the Northwest Passage opening for the first time around 1460. Temperature increases in Iceland and Greenland are several degrees above global increases. Giovanni Caboto, John Cabot, discovered the Northwest Passage in 1497 and the maritime nations of Europe started passing through the Passage unmolested around 1500, all serviced by Iceland. Greenland doesn’t support a large trading town like Reykjavik (which had been founded long before). [/FONT]
[FONT="]Vinlandian technology by 1500 was in a pitiful state. Lack of competition from other metalworking cultures, along with the late impact of the Black Death had left Vinlandia behind when compared to Europe. This new trade superhighway located just to the North of their territory not only exposed them to new information and brought them out of their isolation, it also represented a threat. A European power may want to seize the passage and would need bases close by to police it, or may want to extend their colonial empire. In 1512 the Vinlandian confederation was created, to provide for the common defence, to modernise Vinlandia and to take part in this new trade.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]This Vinlandian Confederacy needed an ally in Europe, and the Icelandic/ Norwegian/Jorvik Kingdom was perfect. Edinburgh, Roxburgh and Berwick had become part of the Jorvik Kingdom, as had the Orkney, Shetland and Faroe islands. Over the 500 years of colonisation, dialects had arisen among the formerly independent lands. With new waves of immigration from the Old World these dialects were subdued.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Vinlandia and the Jorvik Kingdom grow throughout the 16th century and the pivot between the old and new worlds remains Iceland. This increase in population and wealth from this trade eventually allows the operation of an extensive Navy, at first just to police the passage and keep it free from pirates, but it eventually becomes the largest in the world. Several wars changed the border between Jorvik and England to a diagonal line running from Gloucester to Lincoln, though the large town of Bristol remained English.[/FONT]
[FONT="]The reformation had started by 1550. Vinlandia, the Kingdoms of Jorvik, Scotland and Ireland became Protestant, while England remained Catholic. England allied itself with Spain and France and this resulted in the annexation of England in 1611. While weak on land, the Navy meant that the Jorvik Kingdom was never invaded. Sweden and Prussia were reaching new heights in the early 17th century and also became Protestant, resulting in strong allies for Jorvik. This alliance also kept antagonism between Sweden and Norway to a minimum. The Act of Union 1707 between Vinlandia and the Kingdom of Jorvik resulted in a united Norse Kingdom.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Without external pressure from Spain and France this would never have come about.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Trade improved with India, China and Indonesia due to less competition from Spain and France, as the Northwest Passage became closed to Catholic powers.
[/FONT]
[FONT="] The increase in population and wealth results in the industrial revolution starting earlier, with the Newcommen engine being invented not in 1712 but in 1679, and the Watt engine not in 1765 but in 1732. Watt and Boulton commercialised the engine ten years later in Jorvik. The geothermal energy of Iceland was first used to run a steam engine in 1748. Iceland became known for its industrial output. Workers were brought in from Jorvikshire, Scotland & Ireland and
copper ore from South America, Cuba and later South Australia. [/FONT] [FONT="]This is analogous to the aluminium trade today, as all bauxite is
imported into Iceland, lured by cheap energy costs. [/FONT]
[FONT="]Reykjavik was as rich as Amsterdam became in OTL, mainly from trade. This wealth was used to build grand buildings in a great Gothic revival. The railways arrived in the 1760s, hastening emigration to Vinlandia.In 1775 a new settlement was founded which was called New York in the dialect of the local area.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]Iceland’s importance as an industrial centre was soon eclipsed by the New Vinlands, which received migrants from the Protestant world. Iceland’s population stopped growing as all the geothermal power became utilised, and massive emigration balanced natural increase. The growing power of Vinland may have caused the transatlantic Kingdom to split, but a compromise was reached and the capital relocated to Reykjavik.[/FONT]
[FONT="]Spain and France had turned their attentions eastward, and colonised the Islamic world, their trade now running through Egypt. Spain, France and Portugal became allied in 1801. By 1814 the Protestant world and the Catholic world were at war, with commercial interests being the primary cause for the elites, and the religious aspect keeping the war popular among the great masses. Russia was too busy colonising the Far East.
[/FONT]
[FONT="]During the war, the long running English independence movement seized its chance and freed itself. However Cornwall and all of Lincolnshire that was shielded by the rising ocean around former marshland remained within Jorvik. Likewise many Spanish and French Protestant colonies declared independence in New Zealand, South Africa and the Greater Antilles. The Norse navy protected Iceland. Ultimately, the Norse Kingdom, Prussia and Sweden secured a narrow victory. Defeat for France and Spain meant that Vinland became the world’s economic centre, operated from New York.[/FONT]
[FONT="]With easy access to Europe and Asia, its great buildings, ancient history, fresh glacial water and spa towns, Iceland was reinvented as a great cultural centre. The world may have been run from New York, but Reykjavik was where the fashionable elite lived, at least in summer. During the dark winter, business was conducted in New York, or trips to Asia were taken. Iceland became a Greece to Vinland’s Rome. With no volcanoes causing massive famine, and a warmer climate meaning much more food available over almost a millennium, Greater Reykjavik reached a population of one and one half millon by the modern era.[/FONT]
[FONT="]I hope this is at least somewhat plausible.[/FONT]
