I'd be strongly tempted, but maybe working on the two TLs I already started and then hibernated would be a really better idea.
Lands of Ice and Mice: An Alternate History of the Thule
- Thread starter DirtyCommie
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I'd be strongly tempted, but maybe working on the two TLs I already started and then hibernated would be a really better idea.
Wouldn't some young single Norse males find interesting marrying into Thule women? That would accelerate dissolution of their group as a distinct entity.
And yet, my own perception is that it is happening at near implausibly breakneck speed.
Grandfather has opened contact with the Norse with the deliberate effort to see what they have that's worth having, and to make his name by bringing it to the Thule. He's following the Ptarmigan model. Find a local innovation that has significance, and carry it.
This leads to him quite deliberately obtaining and introducing a handful of vegetables, sheep looms, some knowledge of ironworking, and it also leads to the inadvertent introduction of writing.
But he's picking and choosing, and many things he rejects.
The Norse are not even that deliberate. When Grandfather shows up, they don't all think: "What objects or knowledge does he bring us that we can use."
Their approach to trade is rather more reactive, they don't sort deliberately through Thule culture, picking and choosing, so any cultural borrowings are going to be slower, ad hoc and incremental.
The rule is that different cultures often exist side by side or impinging on each other while maintaining very separate identities and not melting into each other.
Thule crops do fine anywhere in Greenland.
The usual model (not that there's actually a usual model but this comes closest) of Thule expansion is that successive cultural waves morph in or replace each other. First comes the hunter/gatherers, then the hunter gatherers either adopt or are driven out by increasing population of herders/horticulturalists who assemble the components of the agricultural package and then they adopt/merge/or are driven out by the fully agricultural.
The presence of the Norse as a trading community means that you'll get at least some agriculturals showing up early, and a kind of regional focus on them drawing hunter/gatherers and herder/horticulturalists. Populations are driven by something other than land use. That in itself is something of a recipe for conflicts between the Thule groups.
It does.
They won't.
There is some adoption of skin boats.
Transmission of literacy is largely inadvertent on both sides. Ironwroking we'll discuss coming up soon. Travel to and shipping wood in quantity as I've pointed out is hampered by vast distances.
IRON AND THE NORSE
The transmission of Norse culture or materials to the Thule during the Norse interchange was often anything but straightforward. In this passage, we’ll explore the presence and role of iron in Norse culture in the East Settlement of Greenland, and how it interacted with the Thule.
The Norse were experienced and relatively sophisticated iron users. Iron was essential to their ships, to their agriculture and war, to their cooking, it was a part of their lifestyle. More southern cultures in Europe might produce iron and steel in greater quantities, with more efficiency and better quality. But on the whole, the Norse developed an iron working culture which suited their needs.
It was an iron working culture which eventually passed to the Thule. How this culture passed is at times imperfectly understood. What must be appreciated is that later European contact offered metal goods and iron in far greater volumes and quality than the Thule could produce, even with techniques borrowed or inspired by the Norse. Almost overnight, the Norse derived iron working culture was wiped out and replaced. In the west, fragments of copper and bronze cultures persisted locally, allowing us an unbroken continuity and understanding of these metallurgical cultures. In the east, the metallurgical culture is mostly known through archeological reconstruction and reference to literary sources.
But let us begin by examining the metallurgical culture that was available to the Thule. Viking culture identified three sources of iron - mining, bog harvest and trade.
The first was mining and smelting iron ores, this took place in a handful of locations in Scandinavia proper, mostly Sweden. These areas produced surpluses of iron which were used to enforce local hegemonies, or were traded or distributed through and beyond the Norse regions.
However, Norse culture was one of distributed, diffuse populations, centralization did exist, as did trade networks. But by and large, geography and population encouraged regional or local production. Most Norse Iron was produced locally, harvested from bogs.
Bog Iron is a product of rocky country and poor drainage. Geological processes folds edges of continental plates into mountains or fuels volcanoes, which in turn are all slowly worn down. The disordered country formed by mountain building and erosion often produces pockets of poor drainage, filled with silt and stagnant water. In turn, these become hosts for, layer after layer of vegetation, living, dying, living on top of layers of dead matter, dead and decaying layers piling up underneath. In this necrotic stew of stale water, mineral rich silts and dead vegetation, anearobic bacteria thrive.
Some of these bacteria, as part of their metabolic process, end up processing mineralized iron and concentrating it in their excretion. Over time, these excretions form iron nodules. Given enough time, the nodules can get pretty big. The biggest pieces ever found were the size of Buicks. Even within short period of a few decades, nodules will grow large enough to harvest. This is Bog Iron, a sort of naturally occurring, organically produced iron. An iron producing bog could be harvested, would eventually regenerate, and could be harvested again in about a generation. The discharges of the bacteria also produced a metallic/oily slick or iridescent sheen to the water which was usually a good indication of the presence of bog iron within.
Some areas are particularly suited to the formation of bogs and bog iron. The ancient worn appalachian countryside of eastern North America. The rocky Cambrian shield of northeastern Canada, Scandinavia and Iceland, the Baltic region.
For the Vikings the advantage of Bog Iron was that it could be locally produced. All it took was time, labour and a reasonable set of skills. Bog Iron production didn’t produce huge amounts of Iron. But Vikings were frugal, an average Viking household probably owned less than a hundred pounds of iron in total, counting utensils, farm implements, weapons, fixtures and so forth.
This iron would stay in use for decade after decade, even past a century. The relatively low production, and the relative expense in terms of the time and effort to obtain it, of Bog Iron met the needs of the Norse.
Basically, the Viking requirements for Iron were relatively small, and Iron stayed in use for a long time, so you really only needed fairly meagre production, from local village economies, to account for replacement, repair and expansion.
One consequence of the wide distribution of bog iron harvesting was that the skills of iron working were widely distributed through Norse culture. It’s an exaggeration to say that every Norse man was a blacksmith. But not much of one.
This wasn’t a situation where there was a whole complex of centralized skills - Ore mining, smelting, forging, etc., which was so intensive of time and effort that large scale production and distribution was dominating the economy.
This was all local, the labour of digging up bogs, of harvesting or winnowing out the nodules of bog iron, the gathering of fuel, the firing of forges were all done with community labour, or within site of the community, so knowledge and at least some of the rudiments of skills passed into the community and became part of local lore and knowledge.
Even within a village, there’s some degree of specialization. By inheritance or affinity, certain people wind up in certain roles, they become the leaders or the hunters, the animal doctors, the particular farmers, weavers or seamstresses. The skill or knowledge may be generally distributed but some people tend to gravitate or be attributed to certain tasks.
Within a village, there would probably always be at least a few men accorded the status of blacksmiths, and perhaps a handful who were suitable to try their hands at it. The crew of a longship would carry at least a couple of such men. We have evidence of a bog iron forge operation in Newfoundland, where a group of Norse sailors forged iron studs and washers to repair their ship.
Iceland produced its own bog iron. Ironically, Greenland did not.
Greenland did have areas where bogs existed and bog iron could be harvested, but none of these were near or known to the Greenland Norse. There’s no evidence that the Greenland Norse harvested bog iron locally.
Although there was meteoric Iron at Cape York, the Greenland Norse never reached it on their own. There was Telluric Iron found at Disko Bay, but although the Norse did hunt walrus in this area, but apparently never made use of the Iron there while in the area.
Instead, the Greenland Norse for the most part, obtained their iron through trade. Greenland iron came from Iceland, and later from Norway. Imported iron did not arrive in the form of finished tools, but rather as bars or blanks, which were intended to be worked or reworked on site.
The lack of bog iron in Greenland did not mean that the Greenland Norse lost their ironworking traditions. Ironworking for shaping bars and blanks, or repairing and refitting tools remained a strongly embedded local skill and knowledge. As we’ve noted, there is evidence that Norse harvested bog iron elsewhere in the new world, these Norse would have either been from Greenland, or at least passed through Greenland. So there remained a practical need to preserve the skills to some degree
More than that, lacking local iron, and frequently impoverished, the Greenland Norse were forced to stretch the use of the iron that they had, re-using and often re-forging. In the later part of the colony’s history, as ships from Iceland or Norway became ever more infrequent, as the community fell on harder and harder times, maintaining and reworking the community’s stock of iron became crucial.
Conversely, the volume of iron in the community proportionately increased. As the population declined, iron was simply lost, or worn out, or buried with its owners. But relatively, the decrease of iron was outpaced by the decrease in population.
As a result, knowledge base was relatively well preserved, passed down from generation to generation, through many of the men in the community. Because knowledge was fairly widely distributed in each generation, there was relatively little lost from one generation to the next. It was imperfect, some knowledge, some detail, fell through the cracks, and if opportunity presented, would have to be learned all over again through trial and error or guesswork. But on the whole, substantial working lore remained surprisingly coherent.
Even a young Norseman who was two generations away from anyone who had seen an iron producing bog had a reasonable chance of recognizing and harvesting from one, and with a lot of work and some luck had a shot at being a passable blacksmith. How good a shot? Most of this was oral history and lore within the community, much would depend on how gifted and clever the young Norse was, or how determined.
This was the state of Norse metallurgy that the Thule found - a community with a moderate surplus of iron and iron artifacts, with a significant degree of skill and knowledge in terms of both the practical aspects of forging and smithing and at least a theoretical knowledge of harvesting iron sources.
The Thule had already found and were exploiting sources of iron at Cape York and Disko Bay. However, their technique was limited to heating and hammering, to annealing. Elsewhere, in the coppermine basin, the Thule had learned to crudely smelt copper and were working limited amounts of bronze, but there’s no indication that these skills had travelled outside the local area.
Norse ironwork was effectively a quantum leap beyond the Thule practice.
Initial trading contact within the first few years slowly depleted the local surplus of iron artifacts. After that the flow slowed considerably, and iron was traded only grudgingly out of desperation or at higher exchange rates. The Thule placed an extremely high value on Norse iron, but it wasn’t infinite.
They had their own sources and their own worked iron.
The more significant exchange was of knowledge. Starting with the Thule Shaman known as Grandfather, a number of Norse tales and stories of iron passed to the Thule. Grandfather himself on a series of inscriptions on animal hides includes descriptions of harvesting bog iron, of the film or slick that signified the presence of bog iron, of the Norse forges and in some cases crude but remarkably detailed, half accurate drawings, as well as folk tales, myths and descriptions of objects.
These hides circulated to his Grandson, who copied them and passed them on to other students who copied them as well. The primary effect of these extensive descriptions, at least initially, was to raise the trading price of Norse iron dramatically. This was of relatively little benefit to the Norse, much of their surplus was traded away in the first five years, but of immense benefit to the Ellesmere Trading network which either controlled or had access to much of the Norse iron that had entered the Thule system.
Indeed, the effect on the Norse was predominantly negative. As ‘prices’ rose, exorbitant demand pushed the Norse into parting with more and more. A good knife could command a brace of musk-ox. At times, they stole from each other. Ships were stripped of washers and fittings. Even where there was no particular desire to part, winter’s privations often forced desperate decisions. The increasing value placed on iron appears to have triggered episodes of grave robbing or wrecking of abandoned structures seeking more iron for trade. Nor was this confined to the Norse.
Ambitious and avaricious Thule raided outlying houses, slaughtering whole families for iron trinkets. After several such incidents, the Norse withdrew in on themselves, fortifying and guarding their property. For a time, only Grandfather remained among the Norse, though a half dozen trading settlements sprang up in the region.
Impoverished of iron, several of their boats no longer seaworthy, confined to a smaller area and sustaining smaller herds in that area, the standards of living of the Norse actually dropped. Their ability to sustain a subsistence lifestyle was diminishing. They became more and more dependent on trade and relations with the Thule, now primarily woolen and woven products, forming selective alliances with the friendliest of the Thule groups, and intermarrying to cement alliances and bonds.
There was some rallying. Some of Grandfather’s skin messages refer to young Norsemen sent north to Disko Bay or even Cape York to work iron. It seems that over a period of years, he had concluded that the although the resources were not there, the skill was. Archeological evidence of Cape York and Disko Bay shows strong evidence of very late Norse settlements - traditional Norse houses, foundries and smelters, forges.
These took place in the context of Thule contact. Thule vegetables and Caribou show up in the middens as primary food sources. Thule artifacts abound. The late Norse settlements in this area seem to have been cooperative ventures.
But relatively few if any Norse women relocated up there. Mostly, it was Norse men, and they either took Thule wives or eventually returned.
Regardless, perhaps as early as a decade into contact, but certainly inside a generation, there was a new surge of fresh Norse iron flowing into the Ellesmere trading network, a surge which seems to have lasted several decades, perhaps a century.
During this period, the apparent Norse presence in these regions fades slowly away. Houses and shelters stop being built in Norse manner, the presence of attributably Norse artifacts evaporates. The Norse over decades simply return home, or remain and are gradually absorbed into the Thule culture and population, leaving only the residue of their skill.
Accompanying the transfer of Norse iron lore, and perhaps accompanied by some of the Norsemen themselves (a controversial assertion), some of the Thule areas began harvesting bog iron and forging it themselves.
Starting roughly around 1450, we see Bog Iron workings developing in several places in Labrador/Quebec and around Hudson Bay and even some parts of Baffin Island. While we can’t rule out the presence of Norsemen, many of these sites show a certain diversity and improvisation of techniques which suggest that local or regional Shaman’s were acting or inspiring based on the written descriptions of Grandfather and others. Certainly by this time, literacy had become extremely widespread among the Shamanic times, and Grandfather’s original messages and descriptions had been copied and recopied hundreds of times.
There are a number of extant copies of hide markings copied from Grandfather which describe the Greenland Norse tales of bog iron.... ironically, something which most of the Greenland Norse had never seen... Describing the water slicks which marked the presence of iron, and with instructions or discussions of varying detail for harvesting and forging. There’s often loss of transmission or interpretation errors in many of these copies. But there is often enough there to at least be the basis of systematic trial and error to develop a bog iron harvest or foundry.
In addition to the writings of Grandfather and others, we must also acknowledge the likelihood of verbal or oral transmission, particularly given the existence of mixed Thule/Norse ironworking colonies at Disko Bay and Cape York.
Nor can we ignore the possibility that at least some Norse smiths might have ventured out of Greenland into the Thule realm. Labrador Thule folk tales record at least one such man, although he may be an apocryphal figure along the lines of Paul Bunyan of Joe Majurak.
There’s a great diversity of Forges and Furnaces in development use around this time, and classical Norse furnaces identical to those used in Greenland do show up, but clearly in many cases, what we’re seeing is local improvisations.
In some cases, local furnaces are repeatedly torn down or abandoned and rebuilt, indicating an ongoing process of trial and error, or perhaps new information coming in from outside.
By about 1500 or thereafter, there are consistent, more or less standard, designs and modes for furnaces, which show a clear Norse influence, but the likelihood is that the influence is cultural, and almost certainly not the product of Norsemen directly.
It would take at least another generation or two for the Norse influenced furnace and forges to be widely adopted by the bronze and copper producers of McKenzie Bay and Alaska.
Norse derived ironworking spread through the eastern part of the Thule realm. Bog iron working proliferated in Quebec and Labrador, traditionally the poorest and most isolated areas of the Thule realm. It was also well established among Thule on the Hudson Bay coast, including the founder culture spreading inland in some areas almost to the coppermine basin.
The spread of bog iron working seems to have been actively opposed by the Ellesmere trading network, which controlled the Disko Bay and Cape York sites. Indigenous bog working was a threat to a potential monopoly on the control and distribution of iron. For a time, the Ellesmere network resisted carrying bog iron, denounced it as inferior. On some occasions, tensions were such that communities in Labrador or Quebec would conceal their bog iron when Ellesmere traders were around.
Disko and Cape York iron dominated Greenland, Ellesmere and Baffin Island, were actively sought and traded in the western archipelago, and competed with bog iron, copper and bronze on the mainland. Artifacts from the Greenland sources have been found as far out as Siberia.
It is often fashionable to draw a line between the ‘Iron Thule’ and the ‘Copper/Bronze Thule’ and it is somewhat accurate. Notably, the Copper/Bronze Thule tended to be highly conservative and resisted iron. Economics played a part, copper/bronze originated in the west, iron originated in the east, each was relatively cheaper in their own home areas, and relatively expensive to import.
Nevertheless, there was some overlap. The Western archipelago, despite its relative poverty and thin population had a mixture of metals imported from the two subcultures. Copper/Bronze shows up across the mainland down to the coasts of Hudson Bay. Iron artifacts appear in the McKenzie basin, and even some iron workings. Indeed, in the McKenzie basin, we see some experiments mixing iron and tin, creating very crude steel.
Siberia is an interesting case. Most of the Siberian Thule’s imported metals were copper and bronze, mostly from Alaska, but with some from the McKenzie basin. Only a handful of iron artifacts made their way out there, and most of these were Greenland iron.
But then around 1500, we begin to see bog iron production in areas of Siberia. Some of the production is in unmistakably Labrador styles. The technology has essentially leapfrogged half the continent. Whether this is a factor of the spread of literacy and the work of an innovative Shamanic class, or whether some eastern Thule were ending up in Siberia and bringing the skills with them is a matter for debate which may never be resolved. The consensus is that there may have been a mixture of the two.
Siberian bog iron production proved a boon to the Bering Thule, allowing them initially a military advantage over their rivals, the Chukchi and Yakut, and later a trading opportunity. Traded or captured Siberian bog iron artifacts made their way as far south as Mongolia.
Iron culture in the East persisted well into the 1650's, at which point the fur and roseroot trades began to introduce increasing amounts of finished European metal goods, particularly steel axes. After 1700 Greenland production from Cape York and Disko Bay tails off dramatically (although it was never quite abandoned), and we see evidence of the abandonment of bog iron works throughout Labrador and Quebec.
Despite bog iron works persisting in a few areas into the early 1800's, these are rare exceptions, local traditional or cultural activities, and European replacement has been complete. There is, for instance, an elaborate written description from Ungava of a local village’s harvesting and forging of bog iron, the pieces of which are hammered into ornaments of various sorts and given away... The community using a great quantity of imported European metal for just about every purpose.
The fate of Siberian bog iron culture would be the same as the Eastern Iron culture - supplanted by superior iron and steel from European trade. But due to rather more complex and violent relations with the Russians, this took longer. As late as 1800, Siberian bog iron remained a persistent local working in many areas.
Iron among the Thule precedes the Norse interchange. Cape York and then Disko Bay were already introducing small amounts of crudely worked iron artifacts through parts of the Thule realm.
What the Norse interchange did was dramatically increase the amount of iron among the Thule, and offer a slate of new technologies for obtaining and working that iron. An innovation which reshaped many Thule subcultures.
Despite this, iron among the Thule remained at relatively low volumes and relatively crude. A Thule family in labrador might own perhaps a few dozen pounds of iron, a village a few hundred pounds. This is relatively trivial compared to late iron age societies like the romans or the greeks. Although the Thule became relatively sophisticated within the limits of their technology, most of their iron was wrought or hammered, there’s little evidence of casting. There was no chance of such activities as forging gun barrels, and they simply could not compete with European metals when these were introduced.
The iron culture that the Thule adopted from the Norse was effectively living on borrowed time from the day they got it, enduring for three centuries before almost vanishing.
The transmission of Norse culture or materials to the Thule during the Norse interchange was often anything but straightforward. In this passage, we’ll explore the presence and role of iron in Norse culture in the East Settlement of Greenland, and how it interacted with the Thule.
The Norse were experienced and relatively sophisticated iron users. Iron was essential to their ships, to their agriculture and war, to their cooking, it was a part of their lifestyle. More southern cultures in Europe might produce iron and steel in greater quantities, with more efficiency and better quality. But on the whole, the Norse developed an iron working culture which suited their needs.
It was an iron working culture which eventually passed to the Thule. How this culture passed is at times imperfectly understood. What must be appreciated is that later European contact offered metal goods and iron in far greater volumes and quality than the Thule could produce, even with techniques borrowed or inspired by the Norse. Almost overnight, the Norse derived iron working culture was wiped out and replaced. In the west, fragments of copper and bronze cultures persisted locally, allowing us an unbroken continuity and understanding of these metallurgical cultures. In the east, the metallurgical culture is mostly known through archeological reconstruction and reference to literary sources.
But let us begin by examining the metallurgical culture that was available to the Thule. Viking culture identified three sources of iron - mining, bog harvest and trade.
The first was mining and smelting iron ores, this took place in a handful of locations in Scandinavia proper, mostly Sweden. These areas produced surpluses of iron which were used to enforce local hegemonies, or were traded or distributed through and beyond the Norse regions.
However, Norse culture was one of distributed, diffuse populations, centralization did exist, as did trade networks. But by and large, geography and population encouraged regional or local production. Most Norse Iron was produced locally, harvested from bogs.
Bog Iron is a product of rocky country and poor drainage. Geological processes folds edges of continental plates into mountains or fuels volcanoes, which in turn are all slowly worn down. The disordered country formed by mountain building and erosion often produces pockets of poor drainage, filled with silt and stagnant water. In turn, these become hosts for, layer after layer of vegetation, living, dying, living on top of layers of dead matter, dead and decaying layers piling up underneath. In this necrotic stew of stale water, mineral rich silts and dead vegetation, anearobic bacteria thrive.
Some of these bacteria, as part of their metabolic process, end up processing mineralized iron and concentrating it in their excretion. Over time, these excretions form iron nodules. Given enough time, the nodules can get pretty big. The biggest pieces ever found were the size of Buicks. Even within short period of a few decades, nodules will grow large enough to harvest. This is Bog Iron, a sort of naturally occurring, organically produced iron. An iron producing bog could be harvested, would eventually regenerate, and could be harvested again in about a generation. The discharges of the bacteria also produced a metallic/oily slick or iridescent sheen to the water which was usually a good indication of the presence of bog iron within.
Some areas are particularly suited to the formation of bogs and bog iron. The ancient worn appalachian countryside of eastern North America. The rocky Cambrian shield of northeastern Canada, Scandinavia and Iceland, the Baltic region.
For the Vikings the advantage of Bog Iron was that it could be locally produced. All it took was time, labour and a reasonable set of skills. Bog Iron production didn’t produce huge amounts of Iron. But Vikings were frugal, an average Viking household probably owned less than a hundred pounds of iron in total, counting utensils, farm implements, weapons, fixtures and so forth.
This iron would stay in use for decade after decade, even past a century. The relatively low production, and the relative expense in terms of the time and effort to obtain it, of Bog Iron met the needs of the Norse.
Basically, the Viking requirements for Iron were relatively small, and Iron stayed in use for a long time, so you really only needed fairly meagre production, from local village economies, to account for replacement, repair and expansion.
One consequence of the wide distribution of bog iron harvesting was that the skills of iron working were widely distributed through Norse culture. It’s an exaggeration to say that every Norse man was a blacksmith. But not much of one.
This wasn’t a situation where there was a whole complex of centralized skills - Ore mining, smelting, forging, etc., which was so intensive of time and effort that large scale production and distribution was dominating the economy.
This was all local, the labour of digging up bogs, of harvesting or winnowing out the nodules of bog iron, the gathering of fuel, the firing of forges were all done with community labour, or within site of the community, so knowledge and at least some of the rudiments of skills passed into the community and became part of local lore and knowledge.
Even within a village, there’s some degree of specialization. By inheritance or affinity, certain people wind up in certain roles, they become the leaders or the hunters, the animal doctors, the particular farmers, weavers or seamstresses. The skill or knowledge may be generally distributed but some people tend to gravitate or be attributed to certain tasks.
Within a village, there would probably always be at least a few men accorded the status of blacksmiths, and perhaps a handful who were suitable to try their hands at it. The crew of a longship would carry at least a couple of such men. We have evidence of a bog iron forge operation in Newfoundland, where a group of Norse sailors forged iron studs and washers to repair their ship.
Iceland produced its own bog iron. Ironically, Greenland did not.
Greenland did have areas where bogs existed and bog iron could be harvested, but none of these were near or known to the Greenland Norse. There’s no evidence that the Greenland Norse harvested bog iron locally.
Although there was meteoric Iron at Cape York, the Greenland Norse never reached it on their own. There was Telluric Iron found at Disko Bay, but although the Norse did hunt walrus in this area, but apparently never made use of the Iron there while in the area.
Instead, the Greenland Norse for the most part, obtained their iron through trade. Greenland iron came from Iceland, and later from Norway. Imported iron did not arrive in the form of finished tools, but rather as bars or blanks, which were intended to be worked or reworked on site.
The lack of bog iron in Greenland did not mean that the Greenland Norse lost their ironworking traditions. Ironworking for shaping bars and blanks, or repairing and refitting tools remained a strongly embedded local skill and knowledge. As we’ve noted, there is evidence that Norse harvested bog iron elsewhere in the new world, these Norse would have either been from Greenland, or at least passed through Greenland. So there remained a practical need to preserve the skills to some degree
More than that, lacking local iron, and frequently impoverished, the Greenland Norse were forced to stretch the use of the iron that they had, re-using and often re-forging. In the later part of the colony’s history, as ships from Iceland or Norway became ever more infrequent, as the community fell on harder and harder times, maintaining and reworking the community’s stock of iron became crucial.
Conversely, the volume of iron in the community proportionately increased. As the population declined, iron was simply lost, or worn out, or buried with its owners. But relatively, the decrease of iron was outpaced by the decrease in population.
As a result, knowledge base was relatively well preserved, passed down from generation to generation, through many of the men in the community. Because knowledge was fairly widely distributed in each generation, there was relatively little lost from one generation to the next. It was imperfect, some knowledge, some detail, fell through the cracks, and if opportunity presented, would have to be learned all over again through trial and error or guesswork. But on the whole, substantial working lore remained surprisingly coherent.
Even a young Norseman who was two generations away from anyone who had seen an iron producing bog had a reasonable chance of recognizing and harvesting from one, and with a lot of work and some luck had a shot at being a passable blacksmith. How good a shot? Most of this was oral history and lore within the community, much would depend on how gifted and clever the young Norse was, or how determined.
This was the state of Norse metallurgy that the Thule found - a community with a moderate surplus of iron and iron artifacts, with a significant degree of skill and knowledge in terms of both the practical aspects of forging and smithing and at least a theoretical knowledge of harvesting iron sources.
The Thule had already found and were exploiting sources of iron at Cape York and Disko Bay. However, their technique was limited to heating and hammering, to annealing. Elsewhere, in the coppermine basin, the Thule had learned to crudely smelt copper and were working limited amounts of bronze, but there’s no indication that these skills had travelled outside the local area.
Norse ironwork was effectively a quantum leap beyond the Thule practice.
Initial trading contact within the first few years slowly depleted the local surplus of iron artifacts. After that the flow slowed considerably, and iron was traded only grudgingly out of desperation or at higher exchange rates. The Thule placed an extremely high value on Norse iron, but it wasn’t infinite.
They had their own sources and their own worked iron.
The more significant exchange was of knowledge. Starting with the Thule Shaman known as Grandfather, a number of Norse tales and stories of iron passed to the Thule. Grandfather himself on a series of inscriptions on animal hides includes descriptions of harvesting bog iron, of the film or slick that signified the presence of bog iron, of the Norse forges and in some cases crude but remarkably detailed, half accurate drawings, as well as folk tales, myths and descriptions of objects.
These hides circulated to his Grandson, who copied them and passed them on to other students who copied them as well. The primary effect of these extensive descriptions, at least initially, was to raise the trading price of Norse iron dramatically. This was of relatively little benefit to the Norse, much of their surplus was traded away in the first five years, but of immense benefit to the Ellesmere Trading network which either controlled or had access to much of the Norse iron that had entered the Thule system.
Indeed, the effect on the Norse was predominantly negative. As ‘prices’ rose, exorbitant demand pushed the Norse into parting with more and more. A good knife could command a brace of musk-ox. At times, they stole from each other. Ships were stripped of washers and fittings. Even where there was no particular desire to part, winter’s privations often forced desperate decisions. The increasing value placed on iron appears to have triggered episodes of grave robbing or wrecking of abandoned structures seeking more iron for trade. Nor was this confined to the Norse.
Ambitious and avaricious Thule raided outlying houses, slaughtering whole families for iron trinkets. After several such incidents, the Norse withdrew in on themselves, fortifying and guarding their property. For a time, only Grandfather remained among the Norse, though a half dozen trading settlements sprang up in the region.
Impoverished of iron, several of their boats no longer seaworthy, confined to a smaller area and sustaining smaller herds in that area, the standards of living of the Norse actually dropped. Their ability to sustain a subsistence lifestyle was diminishing. They became more and more dependent on trade and relations with the Thule, now primarily woolen and woven products, forming selective alliances with the friendliest of the Thule groups, and intermarrying to cement alliances and bonds.
There was some rallying. Some of Grandfather’s skin messages refer to young Norsemen sent north to Disko Bay or even Cape York to work iron. It seems that over a period of years, he had concluded that the although the resources were not there, the skill was. Archeological evidence of Cape York and Disko Bay shows strong evidence of very late Norse settlements - traditional Norse houses, foundries and smelters, forges.
These took place in the context of Thule contact. Thule vegetables and Caribou show up in the middens as primary food sources. Thule artifacts abound. The late Norse settlements in this area seem to have been cooperative ventures.
But relatively few if any Norse women relocated up there. Mostly, it was Norse men, and they either took Thule wives or eventually returned.
Regardless, perhaps as early as a decade into contact, but certainly inside a generation, there was a new surge of fresh Norse iron flowing into the Ellesmere trading network, a surge which seems to have lasted several decades, perhaps a century.
During this period, the apparent Norse presence in these regions fades slowly away. Houses and shelters stop being built in Norse manner, the presence of attributably Norse artifacts evaporates. The Norse over decades simply return home, or remain and are gradually absorbed into the Thule culture and population, leaving only the residue of their skill.
Accompanying the transfer of Norse iron lore, and perhaps accompanied by some of the Norsemen themselves (a controversial assertion), some of the Thule areas began harvesting bog iron and forging it themselves.
Starting roughly around 1450, we see Bog Iron workings developing in several places in Labrador/Quebec and around Hudson Bay and even some parts of Baffin Island. While we can’t rule out the presence of Norsemen, many of these sites show a certain diversity and improvisation of techniques which suggest that local or regional Shaman’s were acting or inspiring based on the written descriptions of Grandfather and others. Certainly by this time, literacy had become extremely widespread among the Shamanic times, and Grandfather’s original messages and descriptions had been copied and recopied hundreds of times.
There are a number of extant copies of hide markings copied from Grandfather which describe the Greenland Norse tales of bog iron.... ironically, something which most of the Greenland Norse had never seen... Describing the water slicks which marked the presence of iron, and with instructions or discussions of varying detail for harvesting and forging. There’s often loss of transmission or interpretation errors in many of these copies. But there is often enough there to at least be the basis of systematic trial and error to develop a bog iron harvest or foundry.
In addition to the writings of Grandfather and others, we must also acknowledge the likelihood of verbal or oral transmission, particularly given the existence of mixed Thule/Norse ironworking colonies at Disko Bay and Cape York.
Nor can we ignore the possibility that at least some Norse smiths might have ventured out of Greenland into the Thule realm. Labrador Thule folk tales record at least one such man, although he may be an apocryphal figure along the lines of Paul Bunyan of Joe Majurak.
There’s a great diversity of Forges and Furnaces in development use around this time, and classical Norse furnaces identical to those used in Greenland do show up, but clearly in many cases, what we’re seeing is local improvisations.
In some cases, local furnaces are repeatedly torn down or abandoned and rebuilt, indicating an ongoing process of trial and error, or perhaps new information coming in from outside.
By about 1500 or thereafter, there are consistent, more or less standard, designs and modes for furnaces, which show a clear Norse influence, but the likelihood is that the influence is cultural, and almost certainly not the product of Norsemen directly.
It would take at least another generation or two for the Norse influenced furnace and forges to be widely adopted by the bronze and copper producers of McKenzie Bay and Alaska.
Norse derived ironworking spread through the eastern part of the Thule realm. Bog iron working proliferated in Quebec and Labrador, traditionally the poorest and most isolated areas of the Thule realm. It was also well established among Thule on the Hudson Bay coast, including the founder culture spreading inland in some areas almost to the coppermine basin.
The spread of bog iron working seems to have been actively opposed by the Ellesmere trading network, which controlled the Disko Bay and Cape York sites. Indigenous bog working was a threat to a potential monopoly on the control and distribution of iron. For a time, the Ellesmere network resisted carrying bog iron, denounced it as inferior. On some occasions, tensions were such that communities in Labrador or Quebec would conceal their bog iron when Ellesmere traders were around.
Disko and Cape York iron dominated Greenland, Ellesmere and Baffin Island, were actively sought and traded in the western archipelago, and competed with bog iron, copper and bronze on the mainland. Artifacts from the Greenland sources have been found as far out as Siberia.
It is often fashionable to draw a line between the ‘Iron Thule’ and the ‘Copper/Bronze Thule’ and it is somewhat accurate. Notably, the Copper/Bronze Thule tended to be highly conservative and resisted iron. Economics played a part, copper/bronze originated in the west, iron originated in the east, each was relatively cheaper in their own home areas, and relatively expensive to import.
Nevertheless, there was some overlap. The Western archipelago, despite its relative poverty and thin population had a mixture of metals imported from the two subcultures. Copper/Bronze shows up across the mainland down to the coasts of Hudson Bay. Iron artifacts appear in the McKenzie basin, and even some iron workings. Indeed, in the McKenzie basin, we see some experiments mixing iron and tin, creating very crude steel.
Siberia is an interesting case. Most of the Siberian Thule’s imported metals were copper and bronze, mostly from Alaska, but with some from the McKenzie basin. Only a handful of iron artifacts made their way out there, and most of these were Greenland iron.
But then around 1500, we begin to see bog iron production in areas of Siberia. Some of the production is in unmistakably Labrador styles. The technology has essentially leapfrogged half the continent. Whether this is a factor of the spread of literacy and the work of an innovative Shamanic class, or whether some eastern Thule were ending up in Siberia and bringing the skills with them is a matter for debate which may never be resolved. The consensus is that there may have been a mixture of the two.
Siberian bog iron production proved a boon to the Bering Thule, allowing them initially a military advantage over their rivals, the Chukchi and Yakut, and later a trading opportunity. Traded or captured Siberian bog iron artifacts made their way as far south as Mongolia.
Iron culture in the East persisted well into the 1650's, at which point the fur and roseroot trades began to introduce increasing amounts of finished European metal goods, particularly steel axes. After 1700 Greenland production from Cape York and Disko Bay tails off dramatically (although it was never quite abandoned), and we see evidence of the abandonment of bog iron works throughout Labrador and Quebec.
Despite bog iron works persisting in a few areas into the early 1800's, these are rare exceptions, local traditional or cultural activities, and European replacement has been complete. There is, for instance, an elaborate written description from Ungava of a local village’s harvesting and forging of bog iron, the pieces of which are hammered into ornaments of various sorts and given away... The community using a great quantity of imported European metal for just about every purpose.
The fate of Siberian bog iron culture would be the same as the Eastern Iron culture - supplanted by superior iron and steel from European trade. But due to rather more complex and violent relations with the Russians, this took longer. As late as 1800, Siberian bog iron remained a persistent local working in many areas.
Iron among the Thule precedes the Norse interchange. Cape York and then Disko Bay were already introducing small amounts of crudely worked iron artifacts through parts of the Thule realm.
What the Norse interchange did was dramatically increase the amount of iron among the Thule, and offer a slate of new technologies for obtaining and working that iron. An innovation which reshaped many Thule subcultures.
Despite this, iron among the Thule remained at relatively low volumes and relatively crude. A Thule family in labrador might own perhaps a few dozen pounds of iron, a village a few hundred pounds. This is relatively trivial compared to late iron age societies like the romans or the greeks. Although the Thule became relatively sophisticated within the limits of their technology, most of their iron was wrought or hammered, there’s little evidence of casting. There was no chance of such activities as forging gun barrels, and they simply could not compete with European metals when these were introduced.
The iron culture that the Thule adopted from the Norse was effectively living on borrowed time from the day they got it, enduring for three centuries before almost vanishing.
That was a long post, I hope it wasn't too much detail.
The subject of Bog Iron is actually quite interesting. In writing these things, I am often conscious as to how much reliance and inspiration I take from sources out there. The internet is an amazing, though sometimes frustrating research tool. A week of dedicated trolling through the libraries and bookstores can be replaced by a few afternoons of scrolling.
Usually I just fly through, picking up bits of information here and there. The part about Greenland lacking Bog Iron I picked up in excerpts from an academic article online for instance. There's also some fascinating discussions of the process by which Bog Iron forms, and its role in the New England economy.
Mostly I just sift the information, moving from web site to web site, swallowing references and bits of data like a blue whale swallowing krill and then moving on continously. The downside of this is that I don't normally keep elaborate notes and reference. My attitude is that if I need it, I can just track it down again (I hope), and its more important to keep going than to track where you've been.
In academic terms, that's pretty damned unforgiveable. Academia, law, engineering all put extreme stock in detailed references and sourcing those references.... for very good reasons.
Here? Not so rigorous. We have different fish to fry. It's about telling a story, presenting a 'might have been'. A different version of the world
One consequence of my approach is that I occasionally get details wrong. I ask forgiveness, and I generally do not resent being corrected. I'm often intuitive in my conclusions, but am usually able to justify them.
Another consequence is that sometimes my borrowing gets excessive, and because of the lack of formal sourcing, that can take us into gray areas.
Anyway, by this rambling note, I just want to acknowledge the many, many, many unreferenced, unrecognized, and unattributed contributors who have made this and other timelines of mine and of other people so worthwhile.
In respect of the issue of Bog Iron I would encourage any of you to take this article as a starting point, go out, search the net yourself and learn of a fascinating little corner of the world.
In a larger sense, I hope that this site encourages many of us to pursue research and investigation into the many aspects of the world. This place is an opportunity for us to grow and to grow larger, by showing us the realms of possibility. It would be a shame if we didn't take advantage of that.
As for Bog Iron, although there are many sites, I'll start you off with this one, which I found valuable and useful.
http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/bog_iron.htm
The subject of Bog Iron is actually quite interesting. In writing these things, I am often conscious as to how much reliance and inspiration I take from sources out there. The internet is an amazing, though sometimes frustrating research tool. A week of dedicated trolling through the libraries and bookstores can be replaced by a few afternoons of scrolling.
Usually I just fly through, picking up bits of information here and there. The part about Greenland lacking Bog Iron I picked up in excerpts from an academic article online for instance. There's also some fascinating discussions of the process by which Bog Iron forms, and its role in the New England economy.
Mostly I just sift the information, moving from web site to web site, swallowing references and bits of data like a blue whale swallowing krill and then moving on continously. The downside of this is that I don't normally keep elaborate notes and reference. My attitude is that if I need it, I can just track it down again (I hope), and its more important to keep going than to track where you've been.
In academic terms, that's pretty damned unforgiveable. Academia, law, engineering all put extreme stock in detailed references and sourcing those references.... for very good reasons.
Here? Not so rigorous. We have different fish to fry. It's about telling a story, presenting a 'might have been'. A different version of the world
One consequence of my approach is that I occasionally get details wrong. I ask forgiveness, and I generally do not resent being corrected. I'm often intuitive in my conclusions, but am usually able to justify them.
Another consequence is that sometimes my borrowing gets excessive, and because of the lack of formal sourcing, that can take us into gray areas.
Anyway, by this rambling note, I just want to acknowledge the many, many, many unreferenced, unrecognized, and unattributed contributors who have made this and other timelines of mine and of other people so worthwhile.
In respect of the issue of Bog Iron I would encourage any of you to take this article as a starting point, go out, search the net yourself and learn of a fascinating little corner of the world.
In a larger sense, I hope that this site encourages many of us to pursue research and investigation into the many aspects of the world. This place is an opportunity for us to grow and to grow larger, by showing us the realms of possibility. It would be a shame if we didn't take advantage of that.
As for Bog Iron, although there are many sites, I'll start you off with this one, which I found valuable and useful.
http://www.hurstwic.org/history/articles/manufacturing/text/bog_iron.htm
twovultures
Donor
People tend to forget that grimdark is really OTL in many ways.
In this case of the Norse, though, it's somewhat depressing due to the lack of drama. Barbarian invasions and giant plagues at least create a sense of excitement for the reader, but the destruction of the Norse through downward spiral, especially after they developed such a fearsome reputation in Europe, is just kind of a downer.
For gosh sakes it's not like I'm going to impale thee entire eastern settlement!
....
.....
Hmmm
....
.....
Hmmm
I couldn't agree more with this. (However, in humanities at least, academia is sometimes quite forgiving about lack of detailed reference and sourcing, if the result is or seems worthwhile. There are good reasons for engeneering to ask higher standards in this area. )
After the impalement spree you gave us in GA, it would be small business either way.
For the Thule, yes. Thanks to Grandfather, thanks to the shamanic tradition.
It's the Norse who seem incredibly dull and sluggish to me, and it's killing them.
Your further clarifications below suggest that indeed some Norse are opening up, and these Norse go away. They go north, they go west. That's good. They might have descendants who survive.
But it seems odd and sad to me that the Norse who remain in the Eastern Settlement would be content to let the opportunities of survival pass them by.
They are poor, they are malnourished, perhaps they aren't too bright by now. But I was hoping incoming Thule would result in their diet being a bit more nourishing, their curiosity and ambitions rekindled. And that some of them would see new ways to make a better go of it right on the land their ancestors settled, resulting in a revived hybrid Norse/Thule community.
This is what you are saying a flat "no" to.
And it's plausible they would not be so bright as to do so right away. But after some years, some decades? When they are eating better thanks to Thule foods, and are no longer trapped because now there are alternatives to wood boats? When there are other Thule communities they might visit, a whole world opening up in the Arctic?
Perhaps brain drain is the problem; when a young Norse man or possibly woman gets bright and sassy, they see their familiar narrow little world as a trap and shake its frosty dust from their feet; perhaps they don't do so well in the wider Thule world and so don't return, perhaps they do too well there--and so don't return. Meanwhile the stay-behinds are selected to be the dull ones.
Again if a fair number of Norse do personally survive and pass on a legacy to someone somewhere, it's OK with me if those someones all identify as Thule first.
Yeah, but these guys are dying. If the juxtaposition of an open door to life, and the plodding approach of death, doesn't move them to a bit more creativity--well that's the depressing part I guess.
Of course if you wrote of inevitable violence dominating the picture I suppose we'd be taking you to task for that too.
And that bugs me, because I don't think you mean most of what the Norse get to supplement their diets with is brought in from far away. Given the Arctic climate, a fair amount of food might travel that far, but hauling it in would be costly. Since you're agreeing that Thule cultivators will be working right there in plain sight, not even where I might have guessed up at the abandoned Western Settlement but right in the neighborhood of the Norse remnant in the "East" ie south settlement, it seems awfully dull and stubborn of them not to take note of what works--not even to get drawn in to the practices via individual contacts. A Norse woman marries a Thule farmer, why not? And then she spreads knowledge about how she keeps herself and children fed among other women she knows. And so on.
I'll save an obvious "why not" for the religious part below. Again I'm stressing, these are poor people who want to live, and here's a chance.
If the Norse are too haughty or otherwise mulish, they'd better be specializing in stuff to trade to the Thule farmers, or they are nothing more than beggars. Long ago, early in the thread, you speculated the Thule contact with the Norse might be via taking Norse slaves. If the Norse won't show themselves productive in any sense to the Thule, they might find themselves being forced into doing something productive.
But I think if some of them wind up in that status, not all of them would; many would take some pride in finding some way to fit in as free people and they'd be a bit creative about it.
Again, maybe every one of these people are the ones who leave. Below in the Iron passage, you mention the men who go north to the ironworks, and some return, others stay and are presumably assimilated into the Thule. But what about women? Are they as likely to make such journeyman migrations? You say those footloose men did not take women along. So all the Norse women are stuck there, unless they marry some Thule. If they are going to do that, why not a local Thule?
Cool. Why only "some?" These are the only boats they can make in the Settlement zones, why not adopt them wholesale?
Perhaps by "some" you mean, by the time the Norse do adopt them, there aren't many of them left still in the Settlement?
It's clear enough why they aren't going into the business of shipping wood to the East Settlement; it's not so clear why Norse families don't migrate to where the wood is and stay there. Wherever trees grow, their traditional crops should grow better than they do in the Settlement. How bad can it look compared to staying?
Unless of course the Thule influx and the sort of creative mutualism I'd hope for were making the Settlement look better, despite the absence of wood or decent European crop prospects. That wouldn't look so bad if they were growing Thule crops themselves, at least some of them, and offering specialized skills to trade for the rest. But they don't have any specialized skills to impress the Thule with, other than ironworking which you deal with so well below--ironworking is not a Norse specialty, it spreads to become something Thule in general are proficient at. If the Settlement survives at all it can only be by becoming a center of Thule agriculture. If the Norse, by your flat statement, refuse to adopt Thule agriculture in the Settlement, the Settlement, as a Norse center, must die. I can still hope they mostly scatter into the larger Thule world and give up their stubborn scruples and ignorance there, but again, the Norse Settlement as such seems doomed.
But only because they fail to adopt and adapt on their home ground.
Well, that's a word I might have inadvisibly picked up and not properly understand how to use. What I mean is, it's kind of cruel, and harsh, and stupid, and brutal. Kind of grim, kind of dark.
After all, you've seen me around enough of your timelines to know, I admire your creativity, your fine interweaving of fact and imagination, the science-fictional feeling of verisimilitude combined with audacious fantasy.
And you often do make bunny cry. Look at the wonders and cruelties of the Ts'alal. Look at how you've raised up General Alba to be a truly admirable hero, and foretold his doom.
I figure, it's a worldview thing. You think tough is cool, manly, and also the main thing.
You like it this way, right? I thought you might take it as a compliment! Anyway, I take it as part of the DValdron package.
It's what you call realism, right?
{Bunny Cry}*(I've lately found Icanhazcheezburger just about impossible to load, or I'd be linking to the appropriate one here)*
And this, oddly enough perhaps, does not make Bunny Cry at all. It's up to the Christians to prove their worth as such at this point. I'd have thought that there might be a chance that somewhere among the handful of clerics the Settlement was supporting, or among the more thoughtful laypersons, there would be a creative Christian among them who might patch together some sort of helpful narrative from the Christian canon, suitably interpreted, that would ease this badly needed help from a bunch of Samaratins.
But if they don't, or someone tries and gets quashed by the senior priest--well tough then, the Christian denomination would lose stock fast. If the Church's feeble light is not bright enough, let it gutter out and die then, save as an interesting set of wacky superstitions their benighted ancestors were bamboozled by. Let them become shamanic, since it is the shamans who are helping.
Again if they cling to it as it drags them under--well, that's the stupid, grim, dark part. Why must they perish in such a lemminglike way?
I could see though how a sufficiently reactionary, dogmatic Church, bearing in mind we'd be talking at this point about a handful of men, could poison the possibility of the creative adaption happening at the Eastern Settlement. It would be easy enough for Norse who thought differently to just up and leave, out of range of priestly maldictions, and thus leave the core community that much more ingrown, rotten, and doomed. Which would only polarize the people still remaining behind still more; gradually everyone whose mind was slightly open would drift away, leaving a handful of dysfunctional fanatics. But this would scatter the Norse identity.
I'm not all that concerned to preserve the Norse identity, though it seems sad it couldn't have gone smoother. I was mainly concerned to save the people, and the new ideas they do bring. Which it seems Grandfather has already salvaged well enough for his people's sake, now I just hope the people who brought it to him survive in some form.
Are they? They're quick enough to recognize an opportunity when it present itself to them. They overcome their fear of aliens and develop a relationship with Grandfather.
I have said that there's some genetic contribution. So someone got busy with someon, or someone adopted someone.
Are they?
Well yeah. But I'm not being mean about it. The Norse diet will be a bit better, their world a bit larger.
Well yes, but Umiak are not deep sea craft. They're quite different. They're not sail craft, its not like something so lightly built could sustain the weight of a mast or the stresses of a sail. I don't know that you'd want to try and pull a net in from one of them. Substitutions are not really one to one.
It's a little bit more complicated than that.
Yeah, they are. But they're not morons marching into the sea.
Of course if you wrote of inevitable violence dominating the picture I suppose we'd be taking you to task for that too.
Oh oh.
Comparatively. By this time, Agricultural and herding subcultures are well established in Greenland. Grandfather is often pushing local and regional agricultural surpluses across relatively short distances, musk ox and caribou across significant distances, and Norse exports all the way into the Thule mainstream.
You are correct. Hedysarum and Claytonia would be expensive to export in quantity from the Thule mainstream. You're talking a several thousand kilometer journey. Most of the imported foods are from adjacent communities within 500 kilometers. Grandfather travels in the winter to exact 'gifts' and 'trade.'
Caribou and Musk Ox, on the other hand are coming much further - they walk on their own, and there's a broad demand for them across Greenland Thule and they're able to keep relatively well until slaughtered.
But if winter famines are alleviated through trade, is there a motive to adopt agricultural practices that are quite alien, seem to irrevocably involve invocations to demons and spirits, and take years to produce a result?
Remember, the first real harvest will be in three years. The threat of famine is the upcoming winter. What would you do?
Well isn't that what trade is all about? Finding something the other guys want? What can the Norse offer to Thule?
That's important, and it shows the Norse flexibility, because I'll ask you.... when the Greenland Norse were sustaining their lifestyle with trade to Norway and Iceland, what did they trade? Walrus Ivory, Walrus hides, Polar Bear fur, polar bear cubs, essentially luxury items.
The trouble is, the Thule already have these things, or better access. So what are the Norse going to produce?
Well, its a pretty alien technology. They're not constructed in the same way, there's an upward learning curve in learning to build them. More of a learning curve in learning to sail and use them.
Easier said than done. We're talking a five thousand kilometer journey, and the reception at the end is not necessarily friendly. Not all Thule are like Grandfather.
Finally. I was worrying that no one had noticed.
But sure, the Norse have useful specialized skills.
Well, yes it is. But it's not that simple.
Like reality?
Well, everyone dies. And not all Tsalal are evil.
And anyway, the Moontrap Timeline is pretty nifty and light hearted.
Mostly cynical. I believe that as a race, we never miss the chance to screw things up, we do the right thing only when we have no choice, the smart thing only when we've exhausted all the alternatives. We evolved to be just smart enough to muddle through, because that was all evolution required.
We all play our cards, we take our chances, sometimes we get good hands, sometime bad hands, we perservere.
Basically.
Sorry about your bunny.
Nobody else wants to talk about Norse iron? I thought that was a good solid post. Certainly took enough work.
That's it. The next post, the goddammed Norse get it.
That's it. The next post, the goddammed Norse get it.
I think it makes sense for the Norse not to adopt Thule agriculture since its techniques are pretty inextricably linked (at least to people like the Norse) to pagan religion. It'd be hard for them to tease the technical knowledge out of all of the talk about spirits.
As for the bog iron, damn, I didn't know those bits of bog iron could get that big.
Oh and over the last month or so I've read through your three main timelines from start to finish and I just want to say how much I've enjoyed reading them. Am looking forward to hearing more about the White Age...
As for the bog iron, damn, I didn't know those bits of bog iron could get that big.
Oh and over the last month or so I've read through your three main timelines from start to finish and I just want to say how much I've enjoyed reading them. Am looking forward to hearing more about the White Age...
Cool stuff is coming from the White age. I want to get this to a certain point, do a few more Axis of Andes, and then its back to Antarctica.
No hurry at all, that's the thing about having read the whole damn thing in a week or so, my brain is so full of so much of it that it'd feel like cheating to get any more until next year, kind of like how I'd feel if the next George Martin book came out next year
But I don't think I'll be able to play D&D without imagining orcs as Tsalal ever again.
Love the iron stuff. I like the counter-intuitive destruction of the Greenland Norse by their trade with the Thule. I like the idea of latest-surviving Norse communities as secondary colonies on Newfoundland and Labrador. I like the trade tension between the Ellesmere Network and local bog iron producers (there's a lot of potential for war there mm hmm). I like how in the end, none of this really matters since the Europeans introduce steel anyway.
A few bits of butterfly turbulence you might have to explain though:
1) Greenland Norse "returning home" to Iceland or Norway would _certainly_ tell people about the well-fed, warlike, iron-hungry people on Greenland. I can imagine reasons why no one from Iceland or Norway goes to investigate (the people who emigrate are biased against Thule, the King forbids trade after a religious snafu, the Thule have nothing to trade that the Norwegians want). At very least, though, "Vinland" won't be a vague legend by the 1500s. It should be well known in Europe that thar's land out thar, and it's inhabited. Columbus might say, "yes, by Tartars." and not change his opinions very much. But this information might change the date of the search for the Northwest Passage.
2) A source of iron trade in north-eastern Sibera will cause ripples in Mongol successor states and Ming China (which might actually abut Thule territory on the coast). I can see how Thule lands might not look tempting to Mongol or Chinese (or Japanese) annexation. In fact, southern civilizations might like to see their northern neighbors driven out by other settled agriculturalists and lend a hand. But what stops the Thule from hooking up to China's trade network?
Oh, and I totally agree with the plausibility for how the Greenland Norse bit the dust.
A few bits of butterfly turbulence you might have to explain though:
1) Greenland Norse "returning home" to Iceland or Norway would _certainly_ tell people about the well-fed, warlike, iron-hungry people on Greenland. I can imagine reasons why no one from Iceland or Norway goes to investigate (the people who emigrate are biased against Thule, the King forbids trade after a religious snafu, the Thule have nothing to trade that the Norwegians want). At very least, though, "Vinland" won't be a vague legend by the 1500s. It should be well known in Europe that thar's land out thar, and it's inhabited. Columbus might say, "yes, by Tartars." and not change his opinions very much. But this information might change the date of the search for the Northwest Passage.
2) A source of iron trade in north-eastern Sibera will cause ripples in Mongol successor states and Ming China (which might actually abut Thule territory on the coast). I can see how Thule lands might not look tempting to Mongol or Chinese (or Japanese) annexation. In fact, southern civilizations might like to see their northern neighbors driven out by other settled agriculturalists and lend a hand. But what stops the Thule from hooking up to China's trade network?
Oh, and I totally agree with the plausibility for how the Greenland Norse bit the dust.
Oh, and what do the Thule do with native iron (besides using it to kill Chukchi)?
they might get...
1) Iron weapons and armor
--->expansion of Thule territory into Siberia and possible into central North America
--->what happens when Cree and Haida get their hands on these weapons? Even if they don't know how to make them, they can work like the roman-era Germans and trade for them or steal them)
---> we should expect some centralization of the Thule state(s), with certain regions now suddenly able to arm their soldiers much more effectively than others. I'm thinking East(centralized) versus West (decentralized), although the Transberingians could go either way.
2) Iron farm implements and axes
---> better land engineering for crops. Useable cropland extends northward. Perhaps to the detriment of herding subcultures?
---> population boom, although a slow-growing one
---> transformation of woodland into farmland, increased (violent) contact with southern tribes
---> assimilation of southeastern Innu ("Montagnais") is this hasn't already happened.
---> Algic and Salishan peoples pushed southward into Iroquoian, Siouan and maybe Uto-Aztecan peoples.
--->Spread of Bruce into these peoples. Spread of sheep? Whether they pick up any Thule technology is debatable, but I wouldn't be surprised if iron trinkets ended up all the way in Tenochtitlan, mediated by the Mississippians (whatever language they spoke).
3) Keys and locks
--->cementing the power of a wealthy, mercantile class. Perhaps the advent of banking practice?
4) Nails
---> changes to boat and house-building. Thule might shun Norse-style houses, but I bet they use Norse-style sheep-sheds. They might also get nailed-together boxes, books, armor, wagons/chariots, and boats (see below)
---> we should expect to see nails turning up all over the damn place, along with iron arrow-heads. The Pilgrims, John Smith, and Cortez should all go up against people armed with pointy iron, and maybe even Columbus and Pizarro.
5) Pots and pans and other cooking utensils
--->soups become easier to make, allowing toothless oldsters to live longer, making society more stable, but also more conservative
--->more trade items. Oh my God trade items.
--->(it's worthy of note that pots were what the Mongols spent most of their iron on after swords) we might see the evolution of a "home and pot" family-centered culture rather than "home and hearth"
--->wandering blacksmiths (like European tinkers), trading and repairing the iron implements in a given settlement. Leading to increased trade, cohesion over distance, expansion into hinterlands, and labor specialization.
?) Wooden boats and sailing? If the Norse were sailing from Greenland to Labrador, then I think it's likely. If so, then we should expect.
---> exponentially increasing trade between Greenland, Transberingia, and mainland Thule, including heavy goods like metals, woods, and slaves.
--->Thule exploration down the Atlantic coast of North America (pushing the Three Sisters Algic people south into the South Appalachian Mississippians) and the Pacific coasts of NA (pushing Tsimshianic and Wakashan peoples into the linguistic mess down the coast). Pacific Asia would be particularly appealing, since it's full of mild-weather islands. Again, I stress contact between Thule and Ming China and Muromachi Japan.
The lessons I take away from this is that from 1450 to 1550, Thule becomes much more centralized, not to say imperialist, and expands (a little south into North America ("Algia?"), a lot east into Transberingia. Trade opens with Siberian tribes, China, possibly Japan, the Mississippians, and (I argue) Iceland. Bruce effects populations in Siberia, central and eastern North America, and Iceland?
Okay, enough spinning out possibilities. I'm sure DValdron has better ideas than I do anyway
they might get...
1) Iron weapons and armor
--->expansion of Thule territory into Siberia and possible into central North America
--->what happens when Cree and Haida get their hands on these weapons? Even if they don't know how to make them, they can work like the roman-era Germans and trade for them or steal them)
---> we should expect some centralization of the Thule state(s), with certain regions now suddenly able to arm their soldiers much more effectively than others. I'm thinking East(centralized) versus West (decentralized), although the Transberingians could go either way.
2) Iron farm implements and axes
---> better land engineering for crops. Useable cropland extends northward. Perhaps to the detriment of herding subcultures?
---> population boom, although a slow-growing one
---> transformation of woodland into farmland, increased (violent) contact with southern tribes
---> assimilation of southeastern Innu ("Montagnais") is this hasn't already happened.
---> Algic and Salishan peoples pushed southward into Iroquoian, Siouan and maybe Uto-Aztecan peoples.
--->Spread of Bruce into these peoples. Spread of sheep? Whether they pick up any Thule technology is debatable, but I wouldn't be surprised if iron trinkets ended up all the way in Tenochtitlan, mediated by the Mississippians (whatever language they spoke).
3) Keys and locks
--->cementing the power of a wealthy, mercantile class. Perhaps the advent of banking practice?
4) Nails
---> changes to boat and house-building. Thule might shun Norse-style houses, but I bet they use Norse-style sheep-sheds. They might also get nailed-together boxes, books, armor, wagons/chariots, and boats (see below)
---> we should expect to see nails turning up all over the damn place, along with iron arrow-heads. The Pilgrims, John Smith, and Cortez should all go up against people armed with pointy iron, and maybe even Columbus and Pizarro.
5) Pots and pans and other cooking utensils
--->soups become easier to make, allowing toothless oldsters to live longer, making society more stable, but also more conservative
--->more trade items. Oh my God trade items.
--->(it's worthy of note that pots were what the Mongols spent most of their iron on after swords) we might see the evolution of a "home and pot" family-centered culture rather than "home and hearth"
--->wandering blacksmiths (like European tinkers), trading and repairing the iron implements in a given settlement. Leading to increased trade, cohesion over distance, expansion into hinterlands, and labor specialization.
?) Wooden boats and sailing? If the Norse were sailing from Greenland to Labrador, then I think it's likely. If so, then we should expect.
---> exponentially increasing trade between Greenland, Transberingia, and mainland Thule, including heavy goods like metals, woods, and slaves.
--->Thule exploration down the Atlantic coast of North America (pushing the Three Sisters Algic people south into the South Appalachian Mississippians) and the Pacific coasts of NA (pushing Tsimshianic and Wakashan peoples into the linguistic mess down the coast). Pacific Asia would be particularly appealing, since it's full of mild-weather islands. Again, I stress contact between Thule and Ming China and Muromachi Japan.
The lessons I take away from this is that from 1450 to 1550, Thule becomes much more centralized, not to say imperialist, and expands (a little south into North America ("Algia?"), a lot east into Transberingia. Trade opens with Siberian tribes, China, possibly Japan, the Mississippians, and (I argue) Iceland. Bruce effects populations in Siberia, central and eastern North America, and Iceland?
Okay, enough spinning out possibilities. I'm sure DValdron has better ideas than I do anyway
- Status