Alternate Vinland Site

The north-eastern based tribes such as the Mi'kmaq and the Boethuk in Newfoundland remained hunter-gatherers, even long after those tribes and ethnicities further inland were adopting agriculture at the turn of the millennium. The (pre)Boethuk in particular never seemed to number more than about five thousand at any one time. If the Norse could concentrate their settlement on one of the peninsulas of Newfoundland for about thirty years, and encourage more settlers from Iceland, they may grow to a number where either the Boethuk or the Innu, living in scattered kinship groups, won't be able to budge them.
 
If the Norse could concentrate their settlement on one of the peninsulas of Newfoundland for about thirty years, and encourage more settlers from Iceland, they may grow to a number where either the Boethuk or the Innu, living in scattered kinship groups, won't be able to budge them.

It's not a matter of 'budging' them, though. The Norse didn't leave Newfoundland because they were defeated, they left because they didn't want to put up with the stress of constantly defending themselves, even against a foe that was scattered and didn't use metal weapons.
 
It's not a matter of 'budging' them, though. The Norse didn't leave Newfoundland because they were defeated, they left because they didn't want to put up with the stress of constantly defending themselves, even against a foe that was scattered and didn't use metal weapons.

It depends on how badly they need the timber, though. If they didn't have that incident with the bull getting loose and alarming the natives, they may have kept at least one settlement on the island.
 
And the Norse, Diamond nonewithstanding, were big, big on fish. It was one of the major exports to the British Isleas around this time.

???? the icelanders ate a lot of fish. The GREENLANDERS didnt.

As for exports south, im pretty sure they werent significant for a couple hundred years.
 
It depends on how badly they need the timber, though. If they didn't have that incident with the bull getting loose and alarming the natives, they may have kept at least one settlement on the island.

IIRC, the incident with the bull didn't cause the falling out, it was one of the natives trying to steal a steel tool or weapon, and getting killed in the attempt.
 
???? the icelanders ate a lot of fish. The GREENLANDERS didnt.

I simply cannot believe that. Its not how human beings are hardwired. Its what first made me question Diamonds agruments.

As for exports south, im pretty sure they werent significant for a couple hundred years.

Actually, fish exports from Norway and Iceland to the British Isles really took off around 1 000 when the British started a shift from freshwater fist consumption to saltwater.
 
hudson valley

I've been pondering an ASB timeline in the hudson valley, 5th-7th century Irish Scotti displacement and then Culdee displacement. I considered Long island, but decided to go Inland to just east of the Shawangunk Ridge. The reason being the Indians in New England regularly raided Long island and eventually received regular tribute, probably wampum. I've wondered if the Norse didn't come further south than Newfoundland much because of the current going the wrong way along the New England Coast.
Tori
 
Could Anticosti Island be good place? As much as I can see, there were no native population there, but they did use it as hunting ground.

But I agree that the numbers of Norse were too small...

Anticosti Island is largely swampland, though - at least in OTL.
 
The north-eastern based tribes such as the Mi'kmaq and the Boethuk in Newfoundland remained hunter-gatherers, even long after those tribes and ethnicities further inland were adopting agriculture at the turn of the millennium. The (pre)Boethuk in particular never seemed to number more than about five thousand at any one time. If the Norse could concentrate their settlement on one of the peninsulas of Newfoundland for about thirty years, and encourage more settlers from Iceland, they may grow to a number where either the Boethuk or the Innu, living in scattered kinship groups, won't be able to budge them.

Here's a problem - by the time of the initial contact around ~900-1000, the Beothuk are relatively new to Newfoundland, having displaced an earlier culture [an offshoot of the Tunit] that was so sedentary (relatively speaking) that whatever weapons they may have used (i.e. harpoons) they largely lost knowledge of. So the Beothuk found it very easy to conquer Newfoundland. So that the Beothuk acted the way they did - if we believe the sagas - are understandable in that light, as they are trying to figure out their new home and the Norse are thus competition no different from the Tunit the Beothuk displaced just several years earlier.
 
And how were the Icelanders and Greenlanders so different, that the latter would not consume fish?

Of which here's the question - in the case of Greenland, which fish are we talking about? After all, IIRC they did eat walrus meat, and ivory was one of Norse Greenland's big exports to Europe (the ivory coming from the walrus tusks).

An interesting irony in all this is that the Greenlanders themselves preserve, in their oral tradition, legends and stories that show that during most of the time the Inuit lived alongside the Norse in Greenland, relations were more or less friendly (as possible as it could be, under the circumstances). Supposedly, even the local name the Greenlanders call themselves - "kalaal" (as in the name of the country "Kalaalit Nunaat") - could be derived from the word "skræling", albeit simplified to adapt to Greenlandic pronunciation (as Greenlandic does not tolerate consonant clusters, which is found in some varieties of Eskimo-Aleut) - and also some aspects of Greenlandic traditional culture trace their origins back to the Norse who lived there. Who's to say that, if this view of Norse-Aboriginal relations got carried across into Vinland, that the local Aboriginals could more or less feel the same way in this case?
 
Of which here's the question - in the case of Greenland, which fish are we talking about? After all, IIRC they did eat walrus meat, and ivory was one of Norse Greenland's big exports to Europe (the ivory coming from the walrus tusks).

An interesting irony in all this is that the Greenlanders themselves preserve, in their oral tradition, legends and stories that show that during most of the time the Inuit lived alongside the Norse in Greenland, relations were more or less friendly (as possible as it could be, under the circumstances). Supposedly, even the local name the Greenlanders call themselves - "kalaal" (as in the name of the country "Kalaalit Nunaat") - could be derived from the word "skræling", albeit simplified to adapt to Greenlandic pronunciation (as Greenlandic does not tolerate consonant clusters, which is found in some varieties of Eskimo-Aleut) - and also some aspects of Greenlandic traditional culture trace their origins back to the Norse who lived there. Who's to say that, if this view of Norse-Aboriginal relations got carried across into Vinland, that the local Aboriginals could more or less feel the same way in this case?

Walrus are not fish, and in regard to actual fish, their tiny and fragile bones don't endure for very long. To say that the Greenlanders abstained from eating fish where the rest of their culture did not is simply ludicrous.
 
The Norse came from a rather marginal environment. Greenland was even more marginal and deteriorate over time. We also know that there was starvation towards the end. Newborn animals were butchered in winter rather than provide next years food source, dogs were butchered, carrion-eating flies numbers boomed as famrs stopped being inhabited.

The Norse Greenlanders came from a culture heavily invested in fish. Stockfish was an export item and food for long journeys. Childrens games involved catching fish. When a Greenlander married a woman from Iceland, she came to her new home knowing all the ways of preparing fish that her mother taught her.

Starvation does things to people emotionally. People who starve will do things that seem unthinkable at other times. They will abandon their children. Or eat them. During the great leap in China, families would trade children so they wouldn't have to eat their own. The origin of the "Wendigo" tales....

To assume that a population like the Greenlanders, starving in a deteriorating marginal environment, coming from and still interacting with a culture (and religon?) that is heavily into fish consumption would just ignore the resource...its not how human beings are hardwired.

I would consider it far more likly that as conditions worsened, they found uses for the fish bones. Grinding up to use as flour etc.
 
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