Af Vinland - The Norse Colonization of America (A Vinlander Saga/TL)

Af Vinland

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Foreword

Greenland was green, once. Home to thousands of Norse and Icelanders, Greenland was once home of the exiled Eirik the Red, and barley was farmed as far north as the 90th Parallel. It was from this host that several hundred would eventually travel to Newfoundland and Canada - tracing the top of the globe toward the habitable L'anse Aux Meadows, home to the only archaeological site of Norse colonization in America.

Though the site failed, according to the saga of Eirik the Red, due to the madness of a bull threatening the natives into repeated attacks on the settlement, this did not have to be the end. It wasn't - not really - there's evidence of continued contact from the time of L'anse (950 - 1050 CE, with it most likely being in the 1010-later range.) to as late as the 1300s for timber runs to Markland, OTL Newfoundland.

It's always been my idea for a TL involving Norse colonization, which I tried once in the Tamed Bull. I found myself losing scope a bit, getting too bogged down in people, places, things - and for that, I hope to regain focus in this new tale. Af Vinland. I fully admit, at start, that I am no expert in the Norse language. Nor Swedish. Nor Norwegian. I don't know as much about Norse culture as I'd like. Much of it comes from Crusader Kings, which is such a beautiful repository of historicity.

Still, I think this is worth writing. It may be a bit fanciful. It certainly won't be completely realistic, but what TL is? Reality isn't.

The story begins with this premise: with cold winds rising in the year ~1100, during a harsh winter, a large group of ~500 Norsemen and women set out on sixteen ships from western Greenland, organized by a local clansman - young, charismatic, named Arvid. His father was one of the few born at L'anse, and he grew up on stories of the butternuts and wild grapes.

He is Arvid Asmundsson Af Vinland.

This is his saga.

==

The Saga of Arvid Asmundsson

The snows had grown cold that year. Colder than they had ever before. Under the wood tree where the children played stickball, wearing coats with lightning bolts and feathers stitched to them. Long had they trialed one another, one prevailing, one not. All the while, their fathers knew the truth. The game had to end eventually.

In the land that was once green, there would be little food. The harvest was weak. Many had grown old. Come winter there'd be fewer grains and more mouths to feed with them. The time of the Greenland was coming to a close. Iceland was too far east, and full enough as it was. Return to Norway? A long sail, one fraught with danger, and no guarantee of food or good conduct. The King was not a charity. He had wars to win, women to woo, his wife to spurn as she grew fat from babe and bread. For those that lived on the western isle, the future looked darker than ever.

The good Bishop Hjalmar Ragnarsson had ruled de facto, if not de jure. Few called any man Jarl in Greenland, but all answered to god. Few followed the old faiths - though they were there. Butchered rabbits in the night weren't uncommon, and the priests dared not lose followers with admonishment. They knew dues would come in heaven. God understood.

For Hjalmar, though, he knew naught what to do. He could appeal to the Pope - to the Archbishops. None would help. He could not demand food. He could not advocate the murder of the old and infirm. It was against god's will. He prayed nightly for salvation, eating little for his frail figure. On long walks through the empty fields, he could find no respite. His nights had little rest.

Until he called at a small hamlet by the western sea - one of those furthest from them all. The home of Arvid Asmundsson, who was a gentle man. He kept to himself. Visited church once in three sundays, when he had time and energy to. A cross was nailed above his door - the thatch of his home hiding a family of five. His wife and four children - all daughters. The eldest walked like a man*, carried an axe at her side, and trod the fields with her father.

Hjalmar knew not what to make of that. He broke bread with Arvid under a tree planted in his yard - a great one, one that dropped tasty nuts that tasted like butter. He claimed it had been his father's - a last memory of an old home. One he'd barely seen.

For Hjalmar, it was inspiration. Moses had fled across water. Though he could not split the sea, god had given the people of Greenland something else - ships. With effort, he gathered many priests - told them to preach of the virtues of travel and escape. He needed to gather the flock, and first he called once more on Arvid - asking him to lead an expedition ahead of the rest. Arvid was no expert sailor, but Hjalmar had the ear of every great trader in western Greenland, and for that he was thankful to god.

Hjalmar gathered a longship's captain and crew, giving Arvid the command. Nominally. His daughter, Freya Arvidsdottir, came with him - leaving his wife and other daughters to tend to his lands. The Bishop promised to watch over them. With that, at the cusp of 1100 AD, he set off with thirty men aboard a ship - sailing south towards what was once known as Markland - where his forefather's home was once located. A calm journey for such a harsh fall, he arrived at the site to find it overrun by natives. Hostile bowfire waved them away - and they threaded a gap between two coastlines into a great bay. After some sailing, the bay gave way to a flowing river, where they anchored (OTL mouth of the Saguenay River).

The locals were less present here, though not absent. They were far less hostile - reacting only with curiosity and good friendliness once weapons were doffed. Though they respected the danger of steel, once they saw a sailor chop a tree down with several swings - trading began in earnest. Steel weapons for various valuables, plus a horridly communicated intent to return. They seemed vigorous in their want to have it happen.

As soon as they'd arrived, the Norse had left - making friends and allies among the tribe. Arvid and his daughter returned post haste - informing the Bishop of the new and irreligious masses beyond the sea. With haste, he began disseminating word, hoping many would be willing to travel the distance. In all, sixteen captains were willing to set their sails for Arvid's new destination. Over four hundred responded - many young and willing to give up their roots. The old and the stubborn stayed. Stayed to die. The Bishop packed up his church and valuables - taking the second ship into sea. Other churches left as well, leaving perhaps a dozen to govern those that remained.

Hjalmar would create another Bishop, as was with his authority, leaving those beyond to be ordained by Eirik af Island. He came from Iceland, and was strong in his faith. Stubborn, too - perfect for those that would not leave.

As such, the sixteen ships - split between seven hundred passengers - set off. They'd lose two in the transit, and a further third floundered on the rocks (with the crew survived) leaving thirteen ships to land at the site Arvid had selected. The natives were ecstatic as hundreds disgorged onto the beaches, finding empty woods to build a half-dozen villages in by the dark of winter. Much food had come with - but the first winter would be scarce. Bishop Hjalmar was struck with a terrible fever, and threw fits regularly that god had abandoned him while in his terrible dreams.

Many turned to Arvid in this darkness. Calm and collected, he followed his forefathers' legends, gathering treenuts that'd fallen, and trading for food with church valuables and other items of importance. Despite starvation, over five hundred survived the winter. Planting in the spring among various fields, along with continued construction, gave great purpose to those that remained.

Communication grew with the locals, calling themselves the Ituwak. Friendlier than most of their ilk, the Ituwak quickly became a part of the dozen settlements clustered around the central site - a hastily forged port called Styriborg. Named for the rudder of a ship, Styriborg, at the mouth of both the Quebec City river and Saguenay River, was a central site to start colonization.

Arvid and his family did not know it.

But all was not perfect. Many local tribes aside from the Ituwak* were hostile. Mass cutting of lumber and hunting of animals left a bad taste in their mouth - and the first hostilities began in the winter of 1102. Raids burned settlements on both sides, leaving stretches of forest in ash. Armed with steel and leather armor, the Norsemen were more skilled and equipped at arms. This did not make them winners. The natives knew their land, knew how to maneuver in it, and many died in those first years.

With blood in the snow, the Norse had fled Greenland.

==​

*1= There's some debate as to the prevalence of shieldmaidens and the state of women under the Norse. It's clear that some women did fight/bear male duties, especially widows, but not that it was common or indeed regular. For a small isolated society of Greenlander Norse, it would likely be more prevalent. Less society, less control.

*2= A fictional subtribe of the Innu peoples of Quebec. Many tribes and other groups went extinct in the great disease epidemics that predated most arrivals to the region. It's just a name, don't read too far into it.
 
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Haven't read all of it yet, but before I forget: barley has never been grown at 90 north. That's the pole!
 
Hm, this should be interesting! Never seen your earlier works, but it should be fun seeing how you've revised it.

Looks like you might be up against Bavarian Raven for the title of Vinland TL :p
 
Haven't read all of it yet, but before I forget: barley has never been grown at 90 north. That's the pole!

There's a few quotes I've read that have barley growing well into the furthest north of Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period. Perhaps I wasn't fact-checking amazingly while reading about it, but people were living rather comfortably until temperatures dropped in the 14th century.

Is it a spinoff of Land of wine, pagans and blood" :confused:

Nah, it's a reimagining of my Tamed Bull TL, another surviving Vinland TL. It predates Lands of Wine/etc.

I just lost interest/went the wrong direction with it, I think.
 
Furthest north of the settlements, surely? That's quite far from the north shore iirc, let alone from the pole.
 
Really there's a large difference between Af Vinland and LoWPB. For the most part you have Christian Greenlanders settling Vinland whereas Bavarian Raven has some mostly pagan colonists thrown off to Vinland (where they otherwise would have died OTL).

I'm eager to see how both unfold :)
 
There's a few quotes I've read that have barley growing well into the furthest north of Greenland during the Medieval Warm Period. Perhaps I wasn't fact-checking amazingly while reading about it, but people were living rather comfortably until temperatures dropped in the 14th century.



Nah, it's a reimagining of my Tamed Bull TL, another surviving Vinland TL. It predates Lands of Wine/etc.

I just lost interest/went the wrong direction with it, I think.
Norsemen didn't even live that far north on Greenland.
The north was full of arctic natives.

Norse Greenland, at it's peak, was a few thousand people living between the southern tip and the edge of the arctic circle.
 
Not true, at least if you're talking about the original settlement. The Inuit didn't arrive until after that. Of course, by 1200 or 1300 or so, that statement is true.

Very true.
The Inuit weren't there yet, but there's evidence of the Dorset living in the northwestern reaches of Greenland in 1100.
 
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Styriborg - The Town That Was​

In another world, the first settlement site of the Vinlander Norse would be called Tadoussac. Home to the French trappers, it was a trading post between natives and Frenchmen for many different furs and other luxuries in Canada.

For the Vins, though, they entered into a different world. Where Tadoussac found mostly friendly natives, the Vinlanders were a foreign invader. They claimed land. Chopped down forests. Built palisades, and spoke no language the locals knew.

Also different, was disease. Smallpox and Bubonic Plague - the Black Death - were not present in the Norse populations of Greenland. Indeed, few diseases were - they wouldn't survive the journey to Iceland - or on to Greenland - and the relatively scattered population of Greenland was not prone to disease outbreaks.

As such, their arrival at Styriborg's site was met with far more natives than historically existed when the French arrived. The Innu were numerous, organized, and warred constantly with the proto-Iroquois of the Great Lakes for lands and resources.

These new invaders were unwelcome foes - and while some groups, like the Ituwak and Harenwan tribes of the Innu, were more peaceful and interested in trade, greater ones like the Essipit, Pessamit, and Mashteuiatsh (A note - these are real, historical tribes: my logic here is that the tribes that survived to present day were more suspicious of outsiders, therefore had a greater chance of surviving the diseases that ravaged them IOTL.) preferred to take in the same way that the Norse did. Eye for an eye.

Tooth for a tooth.

And soon enough, forests burned and turned all blind. The ravaging flames of an initial skirmish burned the land east of the initial settlement in the summer of 1102, leaving surprisingly fertile land for the Norse to settle. With lands stretching primarily down the River Saguenay, ITTL the River Nyr (Meaning New - I'll be using a mixture of Swedish/Norwegian/Old Norse for nomenclature. Proto-Norse will eventually turn into Vinnish, but I'm not a Tolkein-level language specialist either.), conflict with the Essipit in OTL Saguenay was primarily focused in this tract.

The city of Styriborg itself took shape as a twin Motte and Bailey, with the two hills of OTL Tadoussac (Which meant 'Bosom'. Literally a town named Boobs.) becoming the two small wooden halls, surrounded by palisades with three towers each. Around the hills, homes and shops were clustered - built entirely from local woods and shore rock. In the hills north of town, Iron was found in some measure, and dug immediately for use. With a lake and river to the west (Anse a l'eau + associated lake on the RL google map) and mountains beyond, the locals had trouble assaulting in force, preferring to fight those who ventured beyond to the west, or attack from the north and burn the eastern farming fields (where the city of OTL Tadoussac sits).

Fishing and farming were the main methods of food production, and the actual site of Styriborg was home to ~300 of the ~500 to survive the first winters. Additional babes and children would bump this up by around fifty within a year.

Styriborg would eventually grow with the arrival of reinforcements - detailed below. As it did so, the port grew - and eventually, people would be driven down the St. Lawrence River - to the site of Quebec City. As IOTL, certain selection pressure gravitate people to certain city sites (OTL St. Louis and Cahokia are a really good example). While Styriborg would eventually serve as a capitol to the future Vinnish Kings, it would remain more as a tourist destination. Less as a major city.

==​

Survival War (1101-1105)​

For the Vinlanders to survive that first winter into 1102, the next threat came from the west, along the River Nyr. Dark-skinned natives, shoes built to travel over snow, attacked in the spring snows that drifted feet high. Villages of starving children and mothers were left barren, their heads stripped of skin and hair both.

Scalped.

It was a new kind of war. The Norse raided, true, but they never fought like this. The people of Greenland, especially, were no seasoned warriors. They farmed. Traded. Fished. They played stickball and skated on the ice - but they did not kill. Not regularly.

Some raiders had fought great battles in ages past. Against perfidious Charlemagne, who murdered to see conversions made.

Others still had fought in the south. Or in the east. Legends of the first Vinlanders, too, carried some measure of skill. Arvid af Vinland had seen his share of training from his father. He was also the first to skirmish with the natives, having traveled to gain their trust. In all of it, he had survived.

And he had lead.

But 500, more than half women and children, would not win a war. As it was, women wore armor with the men - boiled leather, wood shields, axes all - and died alongside them. Young boys and sickly old men - even Bishop Hjalmar, now free of fever dreams - cut and sliced to stay alive.

In old times the Karls had followed their Jarls. Though he never took that name, Arvid had become a Jarl in spirit. Native thralls followed his commands building the palisades. The Karls who lived in Styriborg and surrounds listened when he spoke.

And so it was that they listened, taking three ships east - one to Greenland, one to Iceland, and one further still to the homelands of Norway and Sweden. All three to ask for aid. All the while, raids and battles. Deaths. Arvid's eldest daughter died. And his wife. He had no time for another, leaving the care of his remaining daughters to thrall women.

Despite many wounds, he held off the foe in desperate battles, and numbers dwindled to only three hundred in the months since the ships' leaving - most villages outside Styriborg burnt to cinders as the skirmishes dragged on.

Soon enough, it was the January of 1105. Little food. One town. Native tribes fighting outside the gates - Ituwak versus Essipit for the survival of the Nores, the former fighting with new iron against their enemy. The natives burned the gate, setting it alight. Despite saving the palisades, Arvid lead a desperate defense of the frontal gates. Bells chimed from twin halls, the last of the children hiding within. Bishop Hjalmar fell with two priests behind the line, fighting those who got through. He died naming the last, Arnbjorn, as Bishop. He slew ten men before he, too, died.

There were no priests left in Vinland.

There were barely any men. Arvid and six others remained with over twenty women at the gates, hacked corpses of natives in a heap, as a great horn blew in the bay. In the distance, dozens of sails filled the horizon. Ships beached themselves beneath the palisades, armored warriors charging over the field and slaughtering those few natives that remained. The Ituwak threw down their arms as Arvid charged out to meet the Vikings at the gates.

A boy, no more than eighteen years, stood at the head of them. He was Sigurd, son of Magnus - who conquered as King of Norway. Jointly king with his brother Eystein, Sigurd came across the sea. Having heard the pleas of those sent, and having gathered the men and women willing, he traveled across the sea for god and kingdom.

They wintered a fleet of twenty-six ships in the harbor, having sufficient food for a stay, and quickly expanded the settlement. Arvid was named Jarl formally by Sigurd, who lead his own expedition up the River Nyr to the heart of the Essipit tribe's lands. Burning and pillaging went both ways. Many thralls were taken, and villages established by settlers. By the end of 1105, Sigurd packed up with his Housecarls and those warriors only come for a fight. Two thousand norse, a Bishop, and change had come across the sea, plus another fifteen hundred warriors and retainers who would go home.

Old villages were rebuilt. New ones were forged.

The war for Survival had ended, and Arvid Asmundsson was Jarl of Vinland, owing his fealty to the Kings of Norway.

Of course, across seas hundreds of miles wide, filled with ice, much can change.


==​

I hate writer's block. I really do.

Here's some more stuff, guys.

Sigurd the Crusader, joint monarch of Norway with his brother Eystein, went on a three year crusade in 1107-1110 as part of the First Crusade. He had ~60 ships and ~5000 soldiers. I figure he can muster thirty ships and ~1500 men given time, plus settlers leaving the increasingly chilly Iceland and Greenland for warmer climes in Vinland.
 
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