And the Norse, Diamond nonewithstanding, were big, big on fish. It was one of the major exports to the British Isleas around this time.
I know, right. Even the greenland colony would have thrived with access to that.
And the Norse, Diamond nonewithstanding, were big, big on fish. It was one of the major exports to the British Isleas around this 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.
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.
And the Norse, Diamond nonewithstanding, were big, big on fish. It was one of the major exports to the British Isleas around this time.
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.
???? 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.
???? the icelanders ate a lot of fish. The GREENLANDERS didnt.
And how were the Icelanders and Greenlanders so different, that the latter would not consume fish?
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...
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.
And how were the Icelanders and Greenlanders so different, that the latter would not consume fish?
Thats a very good question that we dont know the answer to. But the archaeological evidence seems clear.
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?