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

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In 1570, smallpox comes, spreading to the interior...

The fools have thrown aside the protection of the Spirit Manupataq like a willful infant divests itself of rabbit-fur swaddling. Do they cry now that the cold wind of death blows across them? Then send help to them, for as the squalling babe is given suck, salvation is the necessary result of obedience.
 
Christianity did a relatively poor job of displacing Animist faiths in Africa

I'd argue that Christianity did a good job, not necessarily of displacing animism but finding a firm place alongside it. The joke in Burkina Faso is that the country is 50 percent Christian, 50 percent Muslim and 100 percent animist (I've heard that joke told about other countries too), and this isn't far from the mark. There are plenty of countries where animism remains strong and pre-Christian customs predominate, but where nearly everyone who isn't Muslim is nominally Christian and takes it very seriously. Ever been to Lagos? Churches everywhere - and I mean everywhere - and political issues debated in biblical terms. Kenya, Uganda, Zambia: likewise. Ghana: stores and market stalls named after Bible verses or inspirational messages.

What Africans have done is taken what they wanted from Christianity and reinterpreted it to suit their culture, as with the African Independent Churches. Something similar could easily happen among the Thule, and while the Greenland Thule seem to have been effectively inoculated against Christianity, Thule culture stretches a very long way west, and will have a lot of frontage with Christian (or at least Christianizing) cultures. Will all the Siberian Thule reject Christianity? I doubt it, especially if the Russians treat them like they treated the Yakuts in OTL.

I don't see Islam and Buddhism getting any significant penetration, though, because the Thule won't have any borders with cultures that follow those religions. Maybe Buddhism could filter up from the Mongol peoples, but any news the Thule get would be third or fourth-hand, unless you're planning for the Mongols to have a very different role from OTL.
 
Thank you for your post, Jonathan. For any follower of this timeline, I certainly recommend Jonathan Edlestein's 'Male Rising.'

It's quite correct that neither Buddhism, nor Islam, nor for that matter hindu polytheism nor chinese confucianism will make any headway among the Thule who are simply too remote and inaccessible.

As for Christianity, I think its a given that with the size and diversity of the Thule realm, Christianity's story will be a diverse one. The Iceland Thule will certainly Christianize. It's likely that the sea Thule will as well, although they're likely to be caught on the wedge of Russian Orthodox, Calvinist and Catholic and how that plays out vis a vis indigenous faiths will vary.

The Siberian Thule will be militantly Anti-Christian because their great enemies, the Russians are Christian. But along the pacific coast, the Anglicanism and Catholicism of their allies may make a few inroads.

There's also the possibility of weird pseudo-christian syncretizations like the Tai-Ping, the Moonies, the Mormons, etc.

On the other hand, there's Manupataq's emergent cult. She's gone as far as she can in terms of a Theocratic Goddess/Queen, but she's sending out missionaries with an increasingly articulated core doctrine, a unique (for the Thule) oppositional worldview, apocalyptic fervour and a mad-on for Christianity, so who knows where that stuff is going.

There's also the fact that Thule spirituality itself has been evolving rapidly in response to changing social and technological conditions. I've been remiss, and I will write about that real soon. But the bottom line is that there's been a transition from Animism towards Polytheism and Pantheism.

So I would expect a lot of evolving diversity rather than a simple story in terms of relations with Europeans and their faiths.
 
Labrador - 1570

Smallpox sputters along the Labrador coast, burning its way inland. Labrador is relatively thinly populated, with villages separated by distance. Most Labrador villages are relatively isolated - communication and transportation is by dog sled or kayak or umiak.

Sheep predominate in many areas, which limit the presence of Caribou in many areas. Sheep are relatively poor pack animals and bad sled animals. The Labrador Thule have a high proportion of milk drinkers, and sheep's milk is a significant part of the diet. The Labrador Thule are also iron workers, harvesting bog Iron. Their iron is considered inferior to Ellesmere Island from Cape York or Disko Bay, and inferior to McKenzie basin bronze. Trade is archaic, with objects and artifacts passed from hand to hand, village to village.

For the Labrador Thule, two relatively unconnected trade networks have developed. The older network passes to Hudson Bay and Baffin Island. Initially, an introduction of sheep, plants, and people out, now a slow but increasing trickle of bog iron back. Geographical barriers, low or erratic population densities tends to make trade and communication seasonal and low intensity.

The newer trading network is along the coast, and is rapidly shifting. The advent of European traders has posed new opportunities for a handful of coastal villages which have been quick to take advantage. European products, particularly glass and metal have moved inwards in exchange for medicinal roseroot. A class of coastal Thule merchants have emerged, travelling inland to trade.

When smallpox hits, it begins in the coastal villages, jumping from village to village as survivors or refugees flee, burning its way inland along new trade routes.

Highly lethal, smallpox is transmitted through the air, or through contact with bodily fluids or contaminated objects. The incubation period is long, twelve days. It becomes infectious after this, with the onset of the rash, for about 7 to 10 days, until the rash scabs over.

Once it appears in a community, then it becomes almost impossible to stop - particularly in circumstances when persons visit or travel from household to household or lodge to lodge, enclosed spaces with limited air circulation which are perfect transmission grounds for the virus.

However, in labrador, contact between many villages is intermittent. Communities follow river pathways, and will have almost no contact with parallel river valleys. Gaps of more than two weeks are not unusual from one community to the next. This makes it difficult for infections to leap easily from community to community.

The progress of smallpox in Labrador is erratic. Sometimes burning rapidly up a river through a series of communities, and then suddenly haltering and sputtering. Through the summer, smallpox infections continually flare up and then almost die out. The coastal communities are almost entirely wiped out. The nascent European trading network vanishes. Ships sail up and down the coast but find nothing but abandoned villages, some marked with Crucifixes.

Fall comes, and with it the salmon runs and sturgeon and whitefish spawnings. During this period, immense numbers of fish are congregating at run and spawning sites, and traditionally, many communities come together to harvest the bounty. The sputtering, dying smallpox pandemic comes roaring back to full fire, towards the end of harvest season and beyond, bursting simultaneously among many communities.

The resulting terror spreads the pandemic further. Local outbreaks send refugees fleeing, including some already infected and carrying the infection to new communities. The mortality rate of the disease is high, over between 1/2 and 2/3rds. Many of the survivors are scarred and disfigured.

Manupataq's disciples are active during the pandemic, their warnings and proscriptions, previously politely listened to but largely ignored have now taken on new significance. The number of followers and disciples increase dramatically, particularly among survivors. Manupataq's proscriptions have been a mixed blessing - the long incubation period has circumvented all but the most extreme quarantines. Palliative care has increased survival, but has also increased infection slightly.

Hysteria has caused many survivors to be ostracized - a visibly pockmarked man or woman trying to enter a village risks being killed on sight... since they are considered to be carriers. Unless they have also and just as visibly taken on the markings of Manupataq's protection, meaning that they have been rescued from the plague by her magic and medicine.

Ultimately, Manupataq's cult helps somewhat, but benefits far out of proportion to its actual contribution. However, the lack of Manupataq's actual presence diffuses the impact, there is no local disciple or Shaman able to take up her mantle.

Smallpox dies down through the winter, but then flares up sporadically due to scavenging of contaminated objects. Gradually, this is understood by the locals, and incorporated by Manupataq's disciples, although it is not originally part of the doctrine. Manupataq's proscriptions are brought into increasing force, with contaminated lodges being burned utterly, elaborate purification rites and whole villages relocated. This slows the spread considerably, although in 1571, smallpox crossing onto the southern coast of Baffin Island and Southampton Island. However, isolation and low population density, and manupataq's proscriptions and increasing fear obstruct progress. At the height of the panic, whole villages are evacuated before the spread of the virus, strangers are killed on sight.

By 1572, after barely touching on the upper mainland, the pandemic finally ceases, without quite reaching the population centers of Hudson Bay.
 
So in the matters of war and peace, they are a bit schizophrenic, at war with all outsiders but mainly at peace with each other.

Not necessarily permanent war. But not at peace. Mostly it's people just trying to survive and being people, which sometimes means pretty awful things.

The OTL Inuit/ATL Thule were not tempermentally wedded to the empty arctic. It was not their dream-homeland. It was just the place where they had the advantages of survival, advantages of technology and organization over their rivals. They would have loved to have moved and occupied southern richer lands. But there were people there who had the advantages. It was all comparative advantages moving back and forth, and occasionally bloody clashes when people rubbed up against each other the wrong way.

Human history, unfortunately, is not a pretty thing. We do ugly things to each other, sometimes we do these ugly things because that's what survival requires. Those who didn't simply didn't make it.

Human history is not an unbroken chain of horror. We wouldn't have survived if that were not the case. There is altruism, there is love, there is peaceful commerce and communication and exchange.... it's just that as a species, we are so very very very good at fucking things up. The real history of the human race is mediocrity, its fumbling our way through things, its doing the easy thing, or the lazy thing, or the cheap thing, its missed opportunities and blunders and incremental step by step progress, its a darwinian maze of blind alleys and fumbling. Its often about doing the decent or right thing when its not too much trouble and we're comfortable. Its all too often about doing the smart thing when all the options have run out, when our circumstance and combination of factors leave us literally no other real option but having an advance.

I suppose this highlights the difference between you and me Shevek. You simply believe in people, or believe better of us. It's one of the reasons I like you.


But it clashes with my generalized idea of what human societies were like before cultivation, and the notions I have of a more egalitarian and relaxed pragmatic human pattern that we evolved in; societies polarized around a class of "big men" whose awe includes fear of their willingness to have recourse to force are I believe characteristic of what happens after surplus becomes consistently available, and therefore can be seized from its creators and concentrated in the control of a ruling class. I had thought the evidence of anthropology was largely on the side of the more militarized societies we now take for granted being a recent innovation, and that our gatherer-hunter ancestors lived quite differently.

Many hunter gatherers expressed a terror and wariness of strangers. The unknown was a terrifying thing, filled with opportunities but also nightmares. A true stranger represented a potentially dangerous thing. What would they want, what would they take? The tools used for hunting were also the tools used for war.

Tradition sets in. The strangers you get familiar with, the ones you know as relatives or friends, trading partners, the ones who seem to give as much as they take.... well, that gets friendly. The strangers who are rivals, who you compete with... the ones who potentially take food from your children, who steal your wives, who take your prey... well, they're enemies.

So I accepted your proto-Thule as being different largely on your say-so, and also because the people you describe, within their own cultural sphere, don't look much like a warrior people and look a lot more like the sort of gatherer-hunters I learned about in anthro classes. That is, they lack stratified classes; social influence is earned by people of exceptional ability who then share the outcomes of their abilities and the wisdom of their insights with their peers. One might say they trade superior ability for the coin of social support, which everyone, no matter what sorts of paragons they might be, needs the aid of from time to time.

I don't see them as a warlike people. The wiped out the Dorset, and they engaged in displacement wars among each other, and all sorts of conflicts, and during a crisis there was a big flood south... but warlike? Not especially. Just people doing what people do.

Studying the classic example taught (or anyway, once taught, this was the 1980s) of the Mbuti "pygmies" of the Ituri rainforest as presented by Colin Turnbull, but then apparently backed up by other examples (including the "bushmen" of the Kalahari desert, who live in a harsher environment) I was struck by how fearless and fluid their basic belief system seemed. I account for the contrast with what I thought of as the rather fearful and strict superstition of "primitive" people in general by the realization most of those are not primal gatherer-hunters but agriculturalists or pastoral herders--people like the Mbuti's Bantu neighbors in the rainforest, a contrasting example Turnbull brings up specifically. The Bantus feared the forest as a haunt of dangerous spirits; the Mbuti laughed at their superstitions and moved freely in it.[/quote]

This is actually a very interesting and a key point. My old Anthropology profs used to talk about the dichotomy between culture and nature and the careful way these things were negotiated.

To generalize very sloppily, hunter-gatherer societies live in a demon haunted world. But they also live in 'Nature' - Basically, their subsistence, their survival, the tools and foods and elements of their existence are all found in nature in the natural world. Gods aren't a meaningful thing in a natural world when spirits large and small abound everywhere.

However, there comes a time when you get to a certain point, and your world is made up of culture - ie, that your sustenance, your tools, your habitation and relationship comes from human beings, other human beings, human labour and artifice.

At that point, 'nature' becomes a separate thing. An 'alien thing' and humans turn inwards, building 'culture' as a kind of separate world. I'd say the defining boundary between humans living in a natural world, and humans living in a human constructed world probably cleaves pretty close to agriculture, probably accompanies population density and certain kinds of social complexity.

An interesting thing about the transition to 'culture' - to living in a human made world, is that's when you graduate from spirits to actual gods. Y'see, its when a human's survival depends on culture - on human works like agriculture and human domesticates and on human tools and the company and support of other humans.... then the spirit world changes.

In nature, there's all sorts of spirits and which ones are important at any particular point really depends on what you're doing right at that moment. Basically, to some extent, they're all important.

But get to culture, and suddenly some spirits start getting more important, some spirits start getting less important. If you're trying to bring a crop in, then the spirits of sun and rain and growing stuff are going to be vitally important. You pay more attention to them. Others fade. Hierarchies of spirits start to form, and the important ones get very demanding and take a lot of TLC.

The other thing is that as culture takes over, and we live in a human created and human dominated world, a world where what we know is other humans... those spirits become more and more human in their appearance, in their habits and temperment.

I'm generalizing crazily here of course but this is broadly how it all works. It also sets out what's going on in Thule cosmology and theology. The spiritual world of the Thule was a demon haunted world of spirits of all sorts. But even in the hunter gatherer phase, there was some priority spirits, big spirits like the woman who lived at the bottom of the sea, or the spirit of the wind.

Some interesting things are happening. Thule society is changing very rapidly, Agriculture is still a very recent invention, and subcultures are emerging to exploit all sorts of niches. The spiritual world is in major flux.

In one sense, the Shamans are ironically a sort of conservative force, with their ecumenical approach to spirits. But in many places, there's some spirits rising, some falling, some taking on very human and personal attributes. I suspect that there's a lot of local diversity, but I would assume that by 1500 or 1600 some degree of theological/spiritual consensus has begun to make its way. Manupataq may have come along at the perfect time and encountered the perfect crisis to make the leap up to human deity.


Gatherer-hunters live with very low numbers and low density on the land and can therefore expect that somewhere within the ranges they know, they can find something to sustain them before they starve to death.

I've written about this much much earlier. But typically, hunter-gatherers exist in numbers lower than the sustainable capacity of the environment... why? Because they have to eat all year round, and resource bottlenecks limit population. Periodic spells of starvation keep the population down, particularly when those periodic spells create high juvenile and infant mortality.

Agriculture, certain other practices like food storage, can allow one to evade the bottleneck. That's when things get interesting.


There are other stresses that living in the much greater numbers cultivation can enable bring as side effects, and these too tend to contribute to fear and anxiety. One way to manage fear and anxiety is to focus it into hatred and anger; when we consider that the "redistribution" of surplus we regard as normal is almost always a matter of a few taking from many and offering threats in return (they may offer something of more value too, but generally not without the threats) then anger and resentment are only reasonable--the trick is, these emotions can be diverted and manipulated, and the result is civilization as we know it.

Hmmm. And I thought I was bleak. ;)

Don't idealize any human society. Hunter gatherers are as much murderous ignorant pricks as the rest of us.

The myth of the noble savage is simply a myth.


I certainly don't find the pragmatic, quasi-scientific "shamanism" you've described to be unreasonable, I just wonder if the "shamanist" label really fits it.

I don't know where this 'quasi-scientific' stuff comes from. They're basically people whose job description is to deal with the unknowable world, who see things in terms of spirits and the supernatural, and whose approach to coping with that is trial and error. They're in a situation where their world is constanty changing, so they just keep trial and erroring.


As always, Shevek, a long and thoughtful post. I might come back to it again, a few more times.
 
My mom is currently flying over Thule land on her Seattle-Amsterdam flight. She should be fine. Hasn't been a major incident since the 80s.
 

katchen

Banned
Since we are talking about a circumpolar culture, would it be unrealistic for the Thule to make contact with Mongols via the Tunguska region and acquire yak? Yak, which are well adapted to the high Tibetan tundra would be perfect for polar tundra as well. And along with yak, as we get toward the 1400s might come Tibetan Buddhism, which unlike Christianity, integrates well with shamanic religious traditions. The Mongols of course did not come North to the Tundra OTL. They had no reason to. But if they knew of a well integrated pastoral/agricultural culture in the far North, Chinggis Khan might well want to incorporate it or some of it into his Ordos.
 
Since we are talking about a circumpolar culture, would it be unrealistic for the Thule to make contact with Mongols via the Tunguska region and acquire yak? Yak, which are well adapted to the high Tibetan tundra would be perfect for polar tundra as well. And along with yak, as we get toward the 1400s might come Tibetan Buddhism, which unlike Christianity, integrates well with shamanic religious traditions. The Mongols of course did not come North to the Tundra OTL. They had no reason to. But if they knew of a well integrated pastoral/agricultural culture in the far North, Chinggis Khan might well want to incorporate it or some of it into his Ordos.

The Thule have the Musk Ox, which sort of fills the niche of the Yak, though it is probably less effective as a beast of burden. But in that role, it's hard to see what can compare to Caribou.
 
Since we are talking about a circumpolar culture, would it be unrealistic for the Thule to make contact with Mongols via the Tunguska region and acquire yak? Yak, which are well adapted to the high Tibetan tundra would be perfect for polar tundra as well. And along with yak, as we get toward the 1400s might come Tibetan Buddhism, which unlike Christianity, integrates well with shamanic religious traditions. The Mongols of course did not come North to the Tundra OTL. They had no reason to. But if they knew of a well integrated pastoral/agricultural culture in the far North, Chinggis Khan might well want to incorporate it or some of it into his Ordos.

I dunno. It's a long, long, long way. It's a hard question to answer affirmatively. It's possible, given that the rivers of the Tunguska region drain north, into one another, and those rivers eventually drain to the arctic. But it's a long way, there's a lot of distance involved, and that distance is occupied by intermediate peoples.

Shevek has been one who sees possibilities in the expansion of the Thule Agricultural package to the Tibetan plateau, but I don't think that the two regions will mingle or contact until much later, possibly the 19th century.

In any case, the Thule already have acquired a rather startling suite of dometicates and semi and pseudo domesticates. I try to be careful to keep it from going over the top. So for now and at least until the 1800's if then or if ever, the Yak won't be making its way north.
 
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Awesome as always, DValdron. I always liked your attitude towards religion and spirituality, so I'm not complaining, far from it :D Manupataq sounds like one scary woman, and her personality very much fits into the general concept of these Shamans- one of them getting into a position of too much power and abusing it was bound to happen. And she's still quite young - I wonder how she will go down into Thule and European history. The First Prophet (I think she'll fit into society as an honorary male, kinda like the occasional female Pharaoh, unless I missed something- I get the impression that while Thule women are more or less equal to men, they aren't welcome as supreme leaders), or the Bitch Queen of Greenland? :D
 
The OTL Shamanic tradition among the Inuit seems open to both men and women. I'm not sure if there were significant differences between the genders.

Within OTL Inuit society, there seems to have been a significant diversification of roles along gender lines - men went out and hunted, women stayed close to home and manufactured stuff. But it flattened out quite a bit - both men and women were part of a nomadic family group, so 'staying home' was a relative thing.

Within the ATL, the Shamanic tradition continues this egalitarian thread. Manupataq is well within the history of male or female shaman's. She's quite young for a person of her stature. And she's approximately as sane a a person who has gone through her experiences would be.

Overall, she fits into a worldwide tradition of explosive revelatory mystics. Basically, some impressively charismatic mystic comes along at a point when society seems to be undergoing some form of crisis or discontent, they galvanize things, people come from all over, lots of excitement comes, things get crazy etc. Then it tends to fade. Savonarola is a textbook case, as much as any of these things have a textbook case, but there's also the Ghost Dance, the Lord's Resistance Army, the Tai Ping bunch...

Often what happens is that the movement runs out of steam or gets eaten by its own contradictions and orthodoxy reasserts itself. Sometimes violently so.

In the case of Manupataq, interestingly enough, there is no orthodoxy to bite back, only a heteroxy. And in greenland, its a heterodoxy that's considerably shell shocked. The other interesting thing is that her particular mania is unleashed on a freshly literate society, so her ideas and teachings will travel well beyond greenland, especially since her world view compels her to send out missionaries.

There will be good and bad to that. Embedded in her teachings will be prescriptions of a society to fight and weather out a pandemic. But that's also going to be wrapped in some heaping doses of crazy.

Over the next few centuries, the Thule are going to see the emergence of similar explosive mystic cults, some of them second generation from Manupataq, some of them may be Christian derived. None of them will be quite as successful or influential and Manupataq. And for the most part, they'll be pretty ineffective at coping with the social stresses and fractures - mostly caused by Western impacts that fueled them.
 
The Age of Arctic Discovery

On June 7, 1576, Martin Frobisher, sets sail with three ships, searching for the Northwest passage. Two of the ships are lost in a storm, but on July 28, Frobisher has reached the coast of Labrador. Sailing along the coasts, he finds nothing but abandoned villages, occasional sights of wary natives watching from the shore.

Sailing north, he misses or ignores the Hudson Strait altogether. Less than fifty miles separates Baffin Island from the Labrador coast. Hudson, unknowing, sails up from Labrador to the Baffin Island coast, coming to Frobisher Bay. Unable to go further north because of ice and winds, he sails up the Bay, thinking it is a strait, hoping to pass through to open sea on the other side. It is forbidding country, cold and dry, on either side of Frobisher Bay, sheer cliffs rise up a thousand or two thousand feet. The bay acts as a funnel for tides, at the farthest point inland the tides range across thirty five feet. The landscape is cold and dry.

Along small bays and inlets punctuating the cliffs the Frobisher ship is observed by Thule herdsmen with their caribou. Messages are passed, the news spreads, Shamans and Tribemen begin to mark the progress of this strange craft, and begin to travel west across the Baffin landscape, and south or north by Umiak. Several times, Frobisher’s men sight natives along the shores, but they avoid attempts at direct contact. Despite this, Frobisher sends landing parties out at several of the inlets. One of the men returns with a "piece of black stone."

On August 21, 1576, Frobisher makes contact with a small village. A local shaman goes to the ship to meet Frobisher, and through signs and charades appears to agree to guide them through the region. Frobisher sends five of his men in a ship’s boat to return that native to shore, instructing them not to get too close to any of the other natives. They are taken captive anyway. After days of searching, Frobisher is unable to recover them, and takes the Shaman hostage, hoping to negotiate a trade. He is unsuccessful. The natives along the shore grow increasingly hostile. Eventually, as the season wears on, he turns home, arriving in London in early October.

On the return to London, the black stone is assayed. Most of the assessors are unimpressed, but one reports the stone as gold bearing. On this basis, a prospective gold strike, a second, larger expedition is fitted out.

On May 27, 1577, Frobisher sets out with a much larger mission, three ships, with an aggregate of 150 miners, refiners gentlemen and soliders set out. By July 17, 1577, they reach the mouth of Frobisher bay. The mission this time is to prospect for gold, and they spend several weeks sailing up and down the coast of Frobisher Bay collecting ore samples. As recorded by Frobisher, there is much parlaying and skirmishing with the natives, but the size of Frobisher’s force acts as a deterrent. He is unable to recover the men captured the previous year. Eventually local hostility forces Frobisher out of Hudson Bay and south around the Peninsula where he enters Hudson Strait, on August 12.

Sailing along the Baffin Island coast on Hudson Strait, he makes contact with farming villages, including some prepared to receive him peacefully. The expedition is allowed to replenish its water and stores. There is an exchange of gifts, which includes Qviat weaving, Roseroot and Labrador Tea, and fur garments on the one side, receiving pots, knives, surplus equipment, and wooden tools on the other. An offer of a crucifix causes great consternation.
On August 26, just ahead of the winter season, Frobisher returned to England, arriving on September 27. The ‘gold’ was off loaded for assay, several of Frobisher’s ‘gifts’ were passed on to the Queen or to directors and backers of the Muscovy Company, although no particular attention was paid to these items at the time. It was immediately resolved to send out a larger expedition and establish a colony of 100 men.
 
Meanwhile, the faith of the queen and others remained strong in the productiveness of the newly discovered territory, which she herself named Meta Incognita, and it was resolved to send out a larger expedition than ever, with all necessaries for the establishment of a colony of 100 men. Frobisher was again received by the queen, and her Majesty threw a fine chain of gold around his neck.

The new expedition, leaving June 3, 1578, with fifteen vessels under his command, Frobisher reached Frobisher Bay on July 2. Stormy weather and dangerous ice conditions forced the expedition south once again, much to Frobisher’s frustration, as to his mind, the proven goal deposits were located within the bay. To the south, there was little to recommend it, except slightly friendlier natives.

Eventually, after some further reprovisioning and exchanges of gifts, he sailed back to Frobisher Bay and attempted to found a settlement. Frobisher by this time was able to negotiate some degree of peace with the locals of the bay, with formalized gifts. However, dissension and discontent, as well as local hostility forced abandonment. Some attempt was made at founding a settlement, and approximatly 1300 tons of ore was shipped. At the end of August, the expedition left for England, reaching home at the beginning of October.

Unfortunately, the ore was proven to be worthless pyrite. The expeditions were ultimately a financial disaster Frobisher and everyone involved, including the Crown which had backed the expeditions.

However, in the years following, some of the gifts exchanged with the natives and passed on to the English crown got a second look. Notably, samples of labrador tea, woven qviat and thule ivory received a great deal of attention.

The qviat, of finer quality than any sheep was seen as comparable to silk, and likely originating in China, which was also the likely source of tea. Despite the knowledge that walrus produced ivory, thule ivory was also attributed to the orient. These items, together with the presence of crude iron and bronze suggested that the natives were in indirect contact with China, and validated the theory of a northwest passage.

During the debates that followed, it was also observed that the small quantities medicinal roseroot provided as gifts seemed similar to the rare herbs cultivated in Iceland and Norway, monopolized by the Danish Royal Trading Company.

After almost a decade, the English Crown had recovered enough nerve to sponsor John Davis in an expedition to look for the Northwest Passage. Davis lead several expeditions, in 1585, up and down the coast of Greenland. In 1586, he sailed along Labrador coast, retracing Frobisher’s steps, into Frobisher Bay which he determined was not a strait. Backtracking, he followed the Labrador Coast, stopping at Davis Inlet and Hamilton Inlet, where he was attacked by the natives in both locations.

Davis took a far more outgoing approach to the natives, bringing musicians along with him, and having his crew dance for and play with the bemused Thule. Approaching Hudson strait, the expedition took a blow when local Thule stole one of the ship’s anchors. Relations soured. The Thule of the northern labrador coast were notably more hostile than those of the southern Baffin coast. After several attacks, Davis returned home, carrying nothing of particular value.

Nevertheless, belief in a Northwest Passage remained persistent. The Portugese controlled the southern sea route to India around Africa, the Spanish controlled the pacific route to China around South America. For the British, Dutch and French, opportunity lay in the hypothethetical Northwest Passage around America, or the Northeast Passage along Siberia.

The next expedition in search of the Northwest Passage came with Henry Hudson. Between 1608 and 1610, Hudson lead several expeditions, searching for both the Northeast Passage and the Northwest Passage, charting the coasts of Greenland, and encountering but not landing at Svalbard. His northern expedition reported numerous sightings of whales, which contributed to interest in whaling in the region. A North American expedition moved south, searching for a Northwest Passage through rivers into the interior, helping to establish both the Fur trade and the dutch claim in the region.

In 1610, funded by the British East India Company, Hudson set out to find the Northwest Passage. He sailed across the north, stopping at Iceland and recruiting a half breed Christianized Thule as a guide. He then sailed towards Greenland, without making landfall, the natives being described as ‘idolatrous devil worshippers.’ Unlike Davis, he did not sail north along the Greenland coast, the small sea between Greenland and Baffin Island by this time was known to be ringed with ice.

Instead, finding his way to the Baffin coast, he by-passed Frobisher Bay and entered Hudson Strait on June 25, 1610. Following the northern coast, of Baffin Island, he came to Foxe Basin, where he was forced to turn south, finally entering Hudson Bay on August 10, 1610. The ship sailed down the west coast of Hudson Bay, travelling thirty miles up Chesterfield Inlet, encountering a series of thriving communities, and attacting a great deal of attention. He made it as far south as the mouth of the Churchill River before being trapped in ice.

When ice cleared in the spring, Hudson sailed further south, reaching the northern tip of James Bay, before his crew forced him to abandon the quest for the Northwest passage, in July, 18, 1611.

Hudson’s expedition was a watershed event for both the Thule and the British East India Company. The presence of the Icelandic half-breed allowed communication, despite the pronounced differences in dialects between the Hudson Bay Thule and the Icelander, though there was substantial room for error. The Hudson Bay Thule were wrestling with a Greenland Thule dialect, mediated with Icelandic pidgin, translated through Norwegian into English.

As a result, Hudson was able to obtain a great deal of information about the people and cultures of the land, filtering much of it through a lens of British sensibility and prejudice. At times, Hudson allowed his preconceptions to rule. The locals, through his interpreter, informed him of a wealthy and powerful land to the west, laden with yellowed metals. The descriptions in hindsight are clearly of the McKenzie basin cultures, but Hudson identifies it as China, and reports clearly unrealistic expectations of how it might be reached. Local ivory and qviat, and local metalwork, all of which were acknowledged to have come through trade and exchange over large distances were taken as definitive proof of Chinese origina. Hudson speculated on various routes to China, through James Bay, the Churchill River, Chesterfield inlet and even Foxe basin.

Hudson was the first to link the peoples of Greenland, Labrador, Baffin and Hudson to the population of Iceland. At the time, only the Icelanders were known as the Thule, a name bequeathed by a priest with a classical education. Hudson applied the name Thule to the whole of the northern peoples, a convention that remained in place to modern times, and speculated as to a universal culture, customs and language.

This fairly cautious evaluation grew in the telling. Within a year of returning home, Hudson had transformed his speculation of a widespread northern race into a circumpolar state, the largest of the towns he had visited had become great cities, and the Chieftain who dominated the Chesterfield Inlet and the Hudson Bay western coast was transformed into the Emperor of the North Pole.

Most significantly, Hudson returned home with a full cargo, including Roseroot, tea, furs, ivory and qviat. For the first time, a cargo of Roseroot, and a particularly potent variety, had made it back to England.

exchange, he had provided linens, paper, fabric, china, tin and iron and brass, pots and pans, knives and blades and literally anything he and his crew had been able to pry up or let go of, motivated at least in part by the addictive qualities of both the roseroot and tea, and motivated on other occasions by the need to survive the overwinter with their hosts. Among the particular items obtained were gunpowder and muskets.

The Thule world was about to change...
 
Authorial footnote

For the record, most of this is all quite close to OTL history. Despite the presence of large fishing fleets year after year on the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, and despite semi-regular traffic between Denmark and Iceland and offshore fishing around Iceland actual arctic exploration came relatively late.

In the south, within a generation of Colombus, the Aztec and Inca empires had been toppled, the Pacific Ocean discovered, Tierra del Fuego had been sailed and Magellan and his crew had circumnavigated the world.

Northern exploration, in comparison, lagged. There were preliminary voyages up the Labrador Coast and along Greenland, but little impulse to go further. Truth to tell, there wasn't that much that was appealing up there. In OTL, populations were very thin on the ground, and they weren't up to much, there was little in terms of valuable trading or harvesting opportunities. Whaling, Sealing and Walrus harvest would come along, of course, but much later.

It was also not terribly hospitable lands. For much or the arctic, sailing weather was restricted to perhaps two months of the year. The hundred year warm spell between 1450 and 1550 that divided the Medieval Glacial Period from the Little Ice Age, the sea ice was reaching further and further south, the seasons of open water were growing shorter.

All of which seems to have discouraged a lot of northern exploration until the late 1500's. In this timeline, these conditions seem to have held.

To be honest, I expected earlier contact, but the limited communication and contact on the Greenland and Labrador coasts in the mid 1500's seem to have burned themselves out, with very little incentive to go further.

The Royal Danish-Norwegian Trading Company seemed to have some prospects to go far afield to trade for Roseroot. But poor and unreliable returns from Greenland and Labrador lead to a focus on local investment and emphasis on Iceland and Norway's production. The Danes failed to find the incentive to push further and deeper into an unknown landscape on the unproven chance that there might be riches beyond. As far as they were concerned, the further you went, the more inhospitable things were. In OTL, the Danes couldn't even be bothered to check up on Greenland, where, so far as they knew, they had subjects, until 1606-1607, and after that, not until the 1700's. (In this ATL those Danish expeditions didn't end well).

On the other hand, quixotically, I think that the Little Ice Age as it evolved pushed arctic exploration. A worsening climate and poorer harvests pushed a lot more demand for fish and deep sea fishing. Cold weather produced a demand and a fashion for warm clothing, particularly furs. Whale oil became vital. All this probably associates with colder and colder weather.

Another part was that the expanding economies of England, France and the Netherlands were still shut out of the southern routes. That wouldn't last forever, or very long, but there was a strong incentive to discover and exploit a viable northern route to Asia.

By this time, the Kalmar Union was a long dead letter, Norway was a powerless appendage to the Danish Kingdom itself a minor player, the Swedish Empire was entirely focused on the Baltic, and the Hanseatic League was a spent force. So there was literally no one to contest or claim the northern waters.

Thus around this time, we have the British forming the Muscovy Company, which sails into what are now Russian waters, trading in the Barents and White sea and travelling as far as Novaya Zemyla. The Muscovy Company eventually gets a monopoly on the British Whaling trade.

So the ATL exploration follows the OTL history quite closely, and a bizarre and violent history it is.

Frobisher really did blow three expeditions harvesting almost 1500 tons of fool's gold. On his first expedition, the inuit really did kidnap five of his men, and he really was attacked by locals on several occasions.

He really did think that Frobisher Bay was a strait which would lead to China, rather than a dead end. I don't believe he ever learned his error, being distracted by the lure of fool's gold. He never discovered Hudson's straight, either missing it or ignoring it.

Davis really did bring musicians and dancers with him to make nice to the Inuit. And they really did steal the anchor off his boat. Apparently, he interrupted some religious ceremony and they were pretty unhappy with him. His crew was attacked and members were killed on the Labrador coast at Davis Inlet and Hamilton Inlet. As far as I can tell, although he sailed up the coasts of Greenland, and along the Labrador Coast, he never came near Baffin Island or Hudson strait.

Henry Hudson's story is much more tragic OTL. Without Frobisher's slightly positive experiences of the Baffin south coast to guide him, he sailed along the North Labrador coast. He entered the strait and found his way earlier to Hudson Bay, but sailed down along the East Coast of the Bay.

I've taken the liberty of having him follow the Baffin Coast, be diverted by the Foxe basin, and going down the West Coast. That's slightly arbitrary, but in this ATL, the West Coast is more densely populated and a center of Thule civilization.

Anyway, Hudson sailed down as far as the southern tip of Hudson Bay before getting trapped by Winter Ice. The crew survived the winter, but I can't imagine in was a happy experience. When spring came and the ice broke up, Hudson wanted to keep on looking for the Northwest Passage, and would have undoubtedly ended up exploring the west coast of Hudson and James Bay.

Unfortunately, the crew had had enough. They mutinied, put him and his survivors in a small open boat, and set out for home. Hudson was never heard from again, there are not even native legends or oral histories to suggest his fate. He and his comrades probably died in freezing seas, cursing their fates.

I think part of the stubbornness that doomed him was that by this time in his voyage, he literally had nothing to show for it. He was funded by the East India Company and the Virginia Company to find the Northwest Passage. But at that point, he'd found pretty much nothing worth telling about, he'd passed a brutal winter in a strange land. To return home empty handed would be an admission of failure, and more than that, an admission that the expedition had been futile. It's hard to go so far, to go through so much, and be faced with coming back with nothing. Of course, his crew had no such vaunted principles driving him, they were just sick of the whole thing and wanted to go home.

In this ATL, Hudson's made out well enough, his pride has been sated enough, that he'll bend his neck and follow the wishes of the crew. He has found a new people, a new civilization, the tales of which he will continue to exaggerate for the next few decades of his additional life. He's found what he deems are genuine clues to the Northwest Passage, and he's obtained a valuable cargo. All of which allows him to go home with his head held high.
 
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On August 21, 1576, Frobisher makes contact with a small village. A local shaman goes to the ship to meet Frobisher, and through signs and charades appears to agree to guide them through the region. Frobisher sends five of his men in a ship’s boat to return that native to shore, instructing them not to get too close to any of the other natives. They are taken captive anyway. After days of searching, Frobisher is unable to recover them, and takes the Shaman hostage, hoping to negotiate a trade. He is unsuccessful. The natives along the shore grow increasingly hostile. Eventually, as the season wears on, he turns home, arriving in London in early October.

What happened to these prisoners? Did Frobisher return to London with a living Shaman? Did the Thule interrogate their prisoners trying to figure out how to replicate their equipment (such as the big ship), or just killed them?
 
OTL - Inuit oral history suggests that the five captives lived among them for a time, eventually building a boat and setting out to sea, where they were never heard from again. No word on Frobisher's hostage, either released, escaped or died

ATL - The language barrier would work against gaining any significant information. Most likely they lived among the local Thule as subordinates or pseudo-slaves, doing the grunt work. At some point, they tried to escape by building a raft or boat, and then vanished. One of them might have survived by assimilating with the locals, but nothing is ever heard. The Shaman does not make it back to England, Frobisher, having no use for him, drops him off on the Labrador Coast where he eventually makes contact with the local Thule, telling an extravagant story which parallels modern abduction tales all the way up to and including anal probes.
 
OTL - Inuit oral history suggests that the five captives lived among them for a time, eventually building a boat and setting out to sea, where they were never heard from again. No word on Frobisher's hostage, either released, escaped or died

ATL - The language barrier would work against gaining any significant information. Most likely they lived among the local Thule as subordinates or pseudo-slaves, doing the grunt work. At some point, they tried to escape by building a raft or boat, and then vanished. One of them might have survived by assimilating with the locals, but nothing is ever heard. The Shaman does not make it back to England, Frobisher, having no use for him, drops him off on the Labrador Coast where he eventually makes contact with the local Thule, telling an extravagant story which parallels modern abduction tales all the way up to and including anal probes.

Good.... just.... hehehehe.... ok. :D:eek:
 
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