AHC (it's a doozy): Vinland Survives and...

If ITTL Harold defeats William at Hastings the political developments in the North will have major butterflies that will definitely affect Vinland (or whatever they decide to call it.)

Early on, France will be consumed with internal fights dealing with the succession in the Duchy of Normandy. The English will not have much to do with that, but may get involved first with consolidating things in England. Post 1100 or so, Harold's successor may get involved with Danish or Norwegian affairs. Let's say a series of wars like the OTL Brits had with France. This results in refugees fleeing first to Iceland and then to Vinland the Good.

By 1250 the population has grown to 10,000 to 20,000 folk, making the biggest settlement, perhaps by now calling itself a kingdom stronger than any single Indian tribe. The influx of settlers brings with it new diseases further weakening the mainland tribes. By now there are settlements as far south as OTL Virginia and the Vikings are aware of the Caribbean islands and trading with them.

Personally, I don't think slavery or serfdom will have much importance just yet. Slavery in the New World depended on mass production of commodity crops like sugar and tobacco, which won't be the case here. The native Americans had slaves, but mostly as prisoners from raids on other tribes.

As to governance, maybe a proto-democracy like the Icelandic Allthing takes root, where any freeborn male has the right to speak.
 
The basque map

There is a allegedly old map that shows a good part of Eastern Canada. It shows the north bank of the St Lawrence River, the Saguenay River with Lake St Jean, plus the Ottawa River. But it does not show the South bank. Although it is called the Vinland Map, it was found in Barcelona Spain. If a viking wank wanted to forge the map, why would he deposit it in Spain instead of in Scandinavia? And why would he make only half of the map that did not show the South Bank?
I think it may have actually been a Basque map. They would have sailed up the St Lawrence River before Columbus. As with the French some hundred or so years later, they would have had good relations with the North Bank natives, but bad relations with South Bank Iroquois. they would just have shown the friendly Left Bank, and not the unfriendly Right bank. They could have sailed up the Saguenay to catch whales in the confined area. If they did not have gunpowder, the Iroquois could have driven them out as they almost did to the French.
After the had retreated from the St Lawrence, they would have taken the map with them and preserved it in Bilbao. Then when Bilbao was about to fall in 1937, they would have taken it to Barcelona for safe keeping.
 
I started a TL once that goes some of the way towards this. Ogedei Khan does not die in 1241 like he did in OTL. The Mongol invasion of europe goes on. This sparked a bit of a millennial panic in Norway and Scandinavia. Where Vinland was perfectly well known of, but not considered interesting.

Its remotness became an advantage, and a large number of people emigrated, first from Norway, later from Sweden, Denmark and the British Isles.

Large intial waves of settlers cause a disease-shock to the natives. The first generations enjoyed very high population growths. Utill the Black Death knocked numbers down again. Plagues and worsening climate cut off contact with Europe for many generations. A big empire arose in the wake of the Black death, but did not last. The result was an age of chaos, with rapide developments and darwinian weeding of previously static areas and cultures.

You ended up with a large number of domains compaeting. Manybe this could later coalesce into something similar to the USA, although the north-south extension of the area would likly have exceeded the east-west.
 
Yes for sure. However does that mean the Norse will look down on the Indians and try to enslave them like the white man OTL? I do not think so. Do you think if the natives teach them the ways of living off the land that they will be more grateful than settlers OTL?

Another scenario is the Norse trading Irish and English captives for precious metals and stones with the Aztecs for sacrificial use. We then watch the Aztecs running out of precious metals just like the Arabian world going broke trading Afghan Silver for Rus slaves with the Norse.
 
You could also have the Rurik tribes go and sail west, instead of establishing the various Varangian States.

Which will really change Russian and Ukrainian history. Perhaps Ukraine permanently aligns with Poland and Novgorad is the chief city-state in the north, with Muscovy as its colony.
 
Which will really change Russian and Ukrainian history. Perhaps Ukraine permanently aligns with Poland and Novgorad is the chief city-state in the north, with Muscovy as its colony.


Poland from sea to shining sea, replacing Russia as the Eastern Bear.
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
Olaf stood at the head of the warriors, following behind him wielding their broadswords. He was a warrior of the Jarl of Langstrand, his family having fled the winter famines and the tyranny of the kings in Vinland to the comparatively less intrusive jarls of the island to the south who had come there some years prior.

The jarl had dispatched him on a raid against a fortified settlement of escaped Irish thralls off to the west, on the mainland, who had been living among the Skraelings like wild dogs.

They had sailed their knarrs down to the shore and disembarked, marching some days inland.

It was winter here, but less bitter in its frigid bleakness than in his old home Vinland, or worse yet Markland or Helluland.

The kings and jarls in Markland, the Timber Lords as they called them, for they had grown wealthy from cutting and trading wood to the other Norse realms here, had been bitter rivals of the Vinlandic kings, but once, in battle against a Marklandic warrior, he had tired and offered him bread and they had sat and ate in truce and the man told him Markland was colder than Vinland and Helluland so cold as the old gods' frigid hell.

The beaches were cool, but his bones did not quake from the air's chill as they would home, in the north.

They camped and ate fish.

In the morning light, they marched towards lights they had seen in the distance during the evening before.

----------------------------------------------

There were wooden palisades and stone fortifications around the village. He saw some of the local Skraelings, the Lenape they were called, standing outside waiting to trade with the mass of escaped Irish thralls in the fort.

His berserkers steeled themselves for the rage they were about to let consume them to his rear.

On the wall, he saw a defender, a young man with red hair and a thin nose sight him and yell in Gaelic to unseen compatriots.

Arrows began to fly.

Thorvald and Harold went into their berserker furies and charged the wooden stockade.

Olaf held back and then charged with them.

Lenape fled in terror from the battle between the Norse warriors and the fugitive and grimly determined Irish thralls, a few felled by stray arrows as they ran.

Olaf grabbed a bow and arrow dropped by a fleeing Skraeling from the earth and let off arrows at the Irish men on the walls. One yelled out and then fell to his death from the ramparts.

Harold had been shot dead behind him. He saw the corpse with the arrow in his chest when he turned to look behind him, the rage of a Berserker fury his death mask.

It was then that if fell on him. The thralls had cauldrons of boiling water. A great torrent of scalding hot water came down upon him, poured by his quarried. His skin seared and he fell over with pain, steam burning from beneath his armor.

Then the first defender he had seen finished him with an arrow.

---------------------------------------

"Are the Norsemen slain, Conley?"

"Aye, High King Aengus. They lie dead in the field outside the ramparts."

"Were the Lenape frightened off?"

"They will return in time. They want our iron weapons and tools."

"They do. We shan't ever see our homes in Cork or Donegal again, so we may as well profit from the Skraelings to we might better fight off the Norsemen that took us here."

"High King...what were ye in Eire?"

"No High King, Conley. I was a farmer in a village near to Dublin when the Norse did raid and took me for a thrall. Ye?"

"I was a warrior of a clan near Limerick. They probably think me dead."

"As does my own clan."
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
Thanks. If I did not make it obvious, those escaped Irish thralls are in New Jersey. "Down to the shore" and the Lenape were hints. If a confederation of Norse kingdoms and jarl lands and althing run villages and lands with some more warlike Skraeling tribes among them were to form, perhaps the Irish thralls would be like the Vindland empire's equivalent to the US's experience with African Americans in their culture.
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
The local ATL version of "Roots" would be about an Irishman kidnapped by Vikings as a thrall to Vinland or Markland or some other area.
 

DISSIDENT

Banned
By that I mean that you have an oppressed minority brought in unwillingly as cheap labor that is mistreated and there is occasional communal violence between them and influence between cultures. Not stereotyping anybody there. Just to head that off.
 
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