A Nordic New England?

Do you think those epidemics were "natural"?? This is due to all those deportations and it's actually much worse than mass killings since the Natives suffered much more.
Yes, I think epidemics are "natural". Unless you think XVI century Castille enginereed bio-weapons.
And suffered much more? I don't have your luck and don't own a sufferometer but having between 75% and 90% of the population dying out doesn't seems that great.

The US government destroyed their traditional lifestyle, which automatically led to those devastating epidemics.

Let me get this straight : US native policy in the XIX century, managed to create XVI epidemics?
That raises many interesting questions, the first of which : is that a trolling attempt?
 
A Nordic "New England" (I should write something like "New Scandinavia") would probably be more respectful with the Natives since the Vikings are more predisposed to understand the local cultures. Then there would probably be no cruel genocides against the Native Americans as happened with the Anglosaxons (British and Americans).

Surely it would be more a case of the Rus. Viking (such an awkward term I know but forgive me) Overlords ruling over tributary tribes...

I don't see how the Vikings will be any nicer, scholarly debate at the moment is still arguing whether the Viking exterminated the Pictish population of Orkney...

But the most important question is why would the Vikings wish to make a serious attempt at New England. Greenland was very much a one man adventure, and it wasn't that successful either...

Also it should be said Greenland was staunchly Christian...
 
What if the vikings had made colonies that was more long lasting?

I think that was within a stones throw of happening. things were balanced very finely. What was needed was some reason to get a bigger population flow. The original numbers were just too minute, and the settlers were at the end of a very long supply chain where the numbers got smaller with every step.

As far as we know, the Vikings did not exactly come in peace, and treated the natives as people to be pillaged.

That does not sound like the Viking-Native contacts I've heard about. At all.

Which was a mistake, because these aren't happy-hippy-food-cooperative Indians, these are the Indians who lived in North America, pre-small pox. Numerous. Well Organized. Quite able to fight, and quite ready to kick the funny looking violent interlopers off. Bluntly, there's likely a reason none of those Basque or Breton fishermen landed - if they did, they didn't come back.

While you are generally right about the Indians in North America, they were not all the same. There was just as much variety between areas and peoples as there were in Europe. And the Indians the Norse encountered was just about as far from theHaudenosaunee as they got.

In other words, if we susbstitue Europe for North America, you'd be describing the Byzantines and Spanish, whereas the explorers met the Saami.

The Indians the Norse encountered were about 1500 men women and children pre-disease, spread out over a large area, in small groups. No central authority, stone-age weapons tech. They were not exactly the Haudenosaunee.

Maybe I didn't understand what he meant. I just wanted to denounce all those who say that the great majority of Native Americans have been killed by epidemics in order to miniminize the mass killings organised by the US government.

Mathematically, the great majority of native americans were killed by the epidemics. Far more than the ones that died in deliberate genocided, not that that excuses the deliberate genocides in any way.
 
Do you think those epidemics were "natural"?? This is due to all those deportations and it's actually much worse than mass killings since the Natives suffered much more. The US government destroyed their traditional lifestyle, which automatically led to those devastating epidemics.

Dude, the biggeste epidemics went faster than European explorers. The Amazon was a jungle when the second lot of Europeans got there, and Europeans barely encountered the Cahokians.
 
That does not sound like the Viking-Native contacts I've heard about. At all.

I think it might be more comparable to look at the Swedish site at Staraya Ladoga. If there was deemed to be trade/goods worth the risk of the long journey to Vinland, you could imagine that the settlers would try and run a similar style of orgainisation as in the Rus. So you would have a few outposts linked by sea or rivers, constant raiding of the natives as a way of keeping them quite, and thus using them to produce whatever commodities you need.

Perhaps the St Lawrence River would be a good location.

But all this is on the assumption that there is something worth staying in Vinland that is worth the very long trips there and back again... Because f there is, getting settlers would not be too much of a trouble, especially if it is during one of the times when the English are getting uppity.
 
Yes, I think epidemics are "natural". Unless you think XVI century Castille enginereed bio-weapons.
And suffered much more? I don't have your luck and don't own a sufferometer but having between 75% and 90% of the population dying out doesn't seems that great.



Let me get this straight : US native policy in the XIX century, managed to create XVI epidemics?
That raises many interesting questions, the first of which : is that a trolling attempt?

First, this is not correct to assume that all the Natives were killed during the 16th Century. You should read some facts about the Indian removal (19th Century) which is clearly an ethnic cleansing.
Secondly, you should better avoid the use of derogatory words like "troll"...
 
First, this is not correct to assume that all the Natives were killed during the 16th Century. You should read some facts about the Indian removal (19th Century) which is clearly an ethnic cleansing.

Mmm...Maybe I did mistakenly said all natives were killed? Let's see...

" the epidemics that ravaged, properly ravaged the native population"
"And the great majority of Natives were killed by epidemics."

Nope, never made such a claim. I may need to read some facts, but you clearly need to read posts you answer to.

Secondly, you should better avoid the use of derogatory words like "troll"...
Come on, we're talking about the possibility of viking (you know, medieval scandinavian peoples) and you put America on the table clearly answering to people that argues Natives would be nevertheless more than decimated by epidemics that is a US lie.
To me, it's looking like huge irrelevance (as, OTL XIX US policy are kind of irrelevant regarding how ATL XI Norses in America would do, as astonighing it looks) at the very best.

So, I wouldn't have used words as such, if you had shown some restrain yourself as "propaganda", or "lie" regarding the role of epidemics in Native demographics. Period.
 
First, this is not correct to assume that all the Natives were killed during the 16th Century. You should read some facts about the Indian removal (19th Century) which is clearly an ethnic cleansing.

There are some disagreement on the population levels of America pre-Colombus. In 1966 Dobnys claimed that the 1492 population of the Americas was 90-112 million. At the time, this was thought to be high. However, in 1966 we did not know much about how large and densly populated Cahokia was, and the Amazon basin was though to have been very sparsly inhabited, rather than a mass of villages and towns.

Its coming to look like 112 million was lowballing it a lot.

In 1650, it was about 6 million.

Yes, there were terrible massacres and ethnic clensing perpetrated, and a large of people died. However, it wasn't close to the number killed by diseases. I would not be surprised to learn that the number of deaths in the epidemics was greater than the total number of indians born in the period 1650-1900.
 
Its coming to look like 112 million was lowballing it a lot.

In 1650, it was about 6 million.
The current consensus is more about 50/60 millons, based on both litterary sources and land occupation. It still does means that about 90% of the population just died out (by epidemics, of course, and their undirect consequences : other epidemics, wars, etc). Saying it was one of the most important biological and epidemic shock of modern history is not really an understatement.

While it's really hard to have a proper number due to the sudden nature of the death tool, Natives never had a real chance to recover their pre-columbian numbers, but I'm not sure the number of births during 3 centuries (up to 1900) was so low especially in Latin America that it didn't equaled (or was comparable) to the population loss.
 
Remember that several of the diseases such as mumps and chicken pox were not yet in northern Europe. The black plague was later and any small pox may well have burned out on the trip over. North America will benefit in the short term from the length of the trip.
An initial die off by the natives will help the Norse. By the time the colony get on it's feet the Natives will have started to recover.
 
However the main disease that ravaged Native population, smallpow, was well known at this date, certainly as much as Early Middle Age even in Scandinavia, probably before. It should be noted that smallpow and chickenpox were often considered as the same disease and identifying the era of appearance of the latter is quite hard.

Measles as well was known by Europeans, and probably had important incidence on post-columbian epidemics themselves.

I don't think the epidemics would have easily died off. If something, it could have been more virulent : unlike Castillan journeys that were made on a row, Norses would have included many steps (Iceland, Greenland, Vinland) creating closer and "viable" virulent nests.
 
I'm certainly discounting the effect of disease. I just think that the overall long term effect will be be better for the natives in TTL than the OTL.
 
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