Expansion of various aspescts of successful Vinland

[Gwyain]

That is with modern cultivars. Maize cultivation on the Lower Saint Lawrence and in adjacent areas like New Brunswick and Nova Scotia and much of Maine was marginal and not enough to support the native populations there even during the Medieval Warm Period (hence why they extensively hunted, fished, and gathered) and by the time of European contact they had practically abandoned agriculture.

I keep seeing people saying that Maize was marginal in the North-East, but every academic article I can find points to Northern Flint Maize being rather productive, so much as I hate to ask it, what source are you basing this on? The Iroquois in particular are noted for the agricultural practice, but so are the Algonquin.

Edit: To add, I acknowledge the Maritimes are largely marginal, they still are to a large extent today with modern cultivars, there's a reason why agriculture there is livestock based. The Norse bringing Barley and wheat isn't going to be changing anything dramatically there. What I could see happening is Norse farmers slowly domesticating native grains in those areas, such as Canadian Wild Rye, Meadow barley, and the semi domesticated Little Barley. Again, even today modern wheat cultivars have a hard to growing there. It should be noted that there seems to be no evidence of Norse bringing wheat or barley to L'Anse aux Meadows, which seems to indicate they were using native species for any livestock grazing they did.

 

[Gloss]

But why would a Norse settler go clear across the Northern Atlantic, past the British Isles, past Iceland, past Greenland even, to Newfoundland, and then onto elsewhere when they could settle much closer to home in the British Isles or Baltic, which are wealthier and still in need of settlers.

This is a non question, I believe Idon't have to show the dozens of populations that engaged in long distance migration where one can argue whether it was the most "optimal" choice, the very example of Iceland there already shows, why would Norwegians or Norse groups in Britain migrate to Iceland or Greenland and not Iberia or the Loire valley?

You can come up with so many scenarios, overpopulation in Scandinavia, exile, commercial activity, religious justification. We don't need hundreds of thousands of people, even a couple dozens of thousands of initial settlers in a century or 2 would be a lot.

We never saw that kind of settlement pattern OTL because it just doesn't make since.

You literally mention the Norse forming colonies that eventually have dozens of thousands of people right below.

Norse settling in the North Atlantic is almost a series of Matryoshka dolls, each one populates a smaller settler group.

The comparison only works insofar as you are dealing with territories with increasing lower capacity and that experience no internal growth. About internal growth, even the highest estimates for the migrant population in Iceland show a growth of 2-3 times within 3 centuries, and up to 15 times for the lowest estimates(between 0.2% and 1% annual growth).

Iceland's population during the Medieval period fluctuated between 40-50,000, Greenland in turn had perhaps 10,000 at most, how many people either really afford to send to Newfoundland, much less onward to the Saint Lawrence and beyond? The demographics just don't work, Newfoundland is basically as marginal as Iceland is, and its going to be settled with a population dramatically less than Iceland was. Going into the Saint Lawrence you finally get to decent land, but its already fairly well settled by Algonquin and Iroquois, the Matryoshka scheme is going to run out at some point.

Like I said above, you don't need that many people, not more than what the early English colonies had and certainly less given we have time for internal growth to kick in. The Scandinavian world at the time had about 1 million people already, and eventually grew to between 1.5 and 2 million. If we only consider the Norwegian and insular Norse world in the West we still have 250-500 thousand people around this period.
With Greenland, we can postulate the relocation of the colonies to Vinland if we see a similar decline as IOTL.

Except no where in the Norse world did they maintain their language where there was an established population, they assimilated into local power structures and language within a generation of conquest. The great lakes might become a powerbase if the Matryoshka dolls somehow make it that far, but that group isn't going to be Norse speaking, and it probably won't be on the Saint Lawrence either.

Apple and oranges, a thousand people would already overrun the Beothuk population in Newfoundland, if we postulate a not impossible figure of 10k settlers in a couple centuries, probably Nova Scotia, Prince Edward island, Anticosti, Labrador and also New Brunswick would become Norse lands. All those territories had no agriculture at time I believe.

The underlying theme here is that the Norse will have an impact overtime in the New World, writing, ironworking, and shipbuilding will slowly spread along the rivers and lakes of North America. Some crops and livestock might dissipate outwards too, but the Norse being as prone to assimilation as they are won't replace the Natives anywhere outside of Newfoundland.

This is just ridiculous, how in the world would writing, ironworking, shipbuilding spread if you postulate that Norse are somehow so few and so weak don't replace anyone in the mainland? This idea makes no sense, iron working took centuries to spread in the old world, writing even more and they often involved real colonization and demic changes, if not outright state based conquest. Why would it be so much faster in North America without major demographic changes?

The Norse are not prone to assimilation anymore than any other population, their history IOTL simply geared them to be assimilated in many different regions, but one could easily have seen a Norse takeover in Northern Scotland or even a stronger hybridization in England, which had more than 1 million people, probably more than the entirety of Canada had.

 

[Arkenfolm]

I admit most of this is based on the Mikmaq who to my knowledge did not extensively farm and they'd be among the first encountered.

 

[Gloss]

Yeah, but I'm more wondering how much Norse influence would spread, rather than Norse themselves. I can see it spreading in concentric circles, with leaps here and there for reasons both ecological and historical (short for "who knows?").

The 2 are ultimately connected if you want to have any kind of real spread, having the point of contact be only Atlantic Canada would mean very slow spread of technology or techniques through thinly populated regions and through vast distances.

 

[Mikestone8]

Any thoughts on what happens when Europe rediscovers the place c1500? Would a King of Denmark/Norway be strong enough to lay claim to it, or would England or some other power just grab it?

 

[Gwyain]

This is a non question, I believe Idon't have to show the dozens of populations that engaged in long distance migration where one can argue whether it was the most "optimal" choice, the very example of Iceland there already shows, why would Norwegians or Norse groups in Britain migrate to Iceland or Greenland and not Iberia or the Loire valley?

You can come up with so many scenarios, overpopulation in Scandinavia, exile, commercial activity, religious justification. We don't need hundreds of thousands of people, even a couple dozens of thousands of initial settlers in a century or 2 would be a lot.

You literally mention the Norse forming colonies that eventually have dozens of thousands of people right below.

The problem is if we use OTL as an example the Norse didn't do that. The Matryoshka analogy I used plays out very accurately with Norse settlement patterns. We see Norse arrival in the British isles before an eventual group, predominately from the British Isles settles in Iceland (it should be noted that much of the Icelander population's ancestry can be trace back to Ireland). A further group from Iceland established themselves in Greenland, and for the most part any further settlers came from Iceland as well. By 1000 there was essentially no new settlers coming to Iceland from the Isles or Scandinavia - let alone going to Greenland! Vinland in turn was colonized mostly by Greenlanders, which is especially notable given that Greenland had ~2500 people at the time. Best we can tell is that the Vinland population numbered at 150 at most. Those are the population numbers we're working with, its incredibly small, and yet still people are postulating that the Vinlanders are going to spread out over the entire Saint Lawrence Seaway and even overcome the Mississippians, its utter nonsense. The Vinlanders are going to have a hard enough time establishing themselves where they are for quite some time. Sure, Vinland sending settlers out itself is pretty par for the course for the Norse, but once they hit the Saint Lawrence they're going to come up against settled semi-agriculturalists, and the Norse settled population isn't going to displace them, they didn't do so in places much closer to home where they *had* a potential settler population advantage. Vinland isn't going to have that. They can do it on Newfoundland where the Beothuk are a small hunter gatherer population, but that's not going to happen on the much more populous - and agrarian - Saint Lawrence.

The comparison only works insofar as you are dealing with territories with increasing lower capacity and that experience no internal growth. About internal growth, even the highest estimates for the migrant population in Iceland show a growth of 2-3 times within 3 centuries, and up to 15 times for the lowest estimates(between 0.2% and 1% annual growth).

But even with a rather aggressive 1% growth rate the combined Greenland/Vinland population is numbering barely above 10,000 after 150 years! Vinland itself probably won't make up half of that number, Newfoundland is not exactly paradise after all, and Greenland has a head start.

This is just ridiculous, how in the world would writing, ironworking, shipbuilding spread if you postulate that Norse are somehow so few and so weak don't replace anyone in the mainland? This idea makes no sense, iron working took centuries to spread in the old world, writing even more and they often involved real colonization and demic changes, if not outright state based conquest. Why would it be so much faster in North America without major demographic changes?

As I've said elsewhere in this thread, I don't in fact think this will be fast. It will however slowly filter out to communities around the Norse settlers with time. It sure as hell isn't going to reach Mesoamerica, I'm doubtful of any of it penetrating much further than the great lakes.

The Norse are not prone to assimilation anymore than any other population, their history IOTL simply geared them to be assimilated in many different regions, but one could easily have seen a Norse takeover in Northern Scotland or even a stronger hybridization in England, which had more than 1 million people, probably more than the entirety of Canada had.

But if they could not do that close to home, where there demographic numbers are, why on earth are they going to do so on the other side of the Atlantic? The Varangians couldn't even do it the scattered Slavs and Finnish tribes in the Rus lands which are right next door to Scandinavia and directly connected by well established trade routes to their homeland! Aside from Iron tools and domestic animals, the Finns and Slavs in Rus are not dramatically different in lifestyle to the Saint Lawrence natives at this point. It bares repeating: if the Norse settlers can't supplant a population right next to there Heartland, how are they going to do it somewhere where they are barely even established?

 

[Mikestone8]

once they hit the Saint Lawrence they're going to come up against settled semi-agriculturalists, and the Norse settled population isn't going to displace them,

Any thoughts what happens on the disease front?

 

[Gloss]

The problem is if we use OTL as an example the Norse didn't do that. The Matryoshka analogy I used plays out very accurately with Norse settlement patterns. We see Norse arrival in the British isles before an eventual group, predominately from the British Isles settles in Iceland (it should be noted that much of the Icelander population's ancestry can be trace back to Ireland). A further group from Iceland established themselves in Greenland, and for the most part any further settlers came from Iceland as well. By 1000 there was essentially no new settlers coming to Iceland from the Isles or Scandinavia - let alone going to Greenland! Vinland in turn was colonized mostly by Greenlanders, which is especially notable given that Greenland had ~2500 people at the time. Best we can tell is that the Vinland population numbered at 150 at most. Those are the population numbers we're working with, its incredibly small,

Well Leif Erikson himself was from Iceland and Greenland was just being settled at the time, your matryoshka example fails there outside a strictly geographical perspective given the settlement of Vinland happen virtually concurrently with Greenland. In any case while the insular Norse would be in a better position or more prone to migrated to Vinland, they don't need to be the only one, when a stable settlement is created we can have Norwegians join in too.

and yet still people are postulating that the Vinlanders are going to spread out over the entire Saint Lawrence Seaway and even overcome the Mississippians, its utter nonsense.

Well the English settlers didn't overrun the Sioux or many other Amerindian groups until the 19th century, but they certainly built strong and permanent settlement over large territories within the previous 2 centuries and they also started incredibly small and with a couple of failures. We are always talking about centuries there, not just a couple of generations.
I don't see why out of all the hundreds of population replacements or just major demographic changes that happened just about everywhere in the world this one is impossible, someone should'tell the Austronesians or Polynesians that they had no chance in settling Madagascar or Hawaii or contacting South Americans.

The Vinlanders are going to have a hard enough time establishing themselves where they are for quite some time. Sure, Vinland sending settlers out itself is pretty par for the course for the Norse, but once they hit the Saint Lawrence they're going to come up against settled semi-agriculturalists, and the Norse settled population isn't going to displace them, they didn't do so in places much closer to home where they *had* a potential settler population advantage. Vinland isn't going to have that. They can do it on Newfoundland where the Beothuk are a small hunter gatherer population, but that's not going to happen on the much more populous - and agrarian - Saint Lawrence.

But if they could not do that close to home, where there demographic numbers are, why on earth are they going to do so on the other side of the Atlantic?

Who should they have displaced? Also this is pure circular reasoning, we can point at actual events behind why the Norse didn't have a lasting linguistic impact in various regions and even in IOTL we see plenty of lasting effects, with the important Norse influence in English grammar(more than any Celtic substratum ever really did) or the the Cait, Orkeney and Shetland were Norse speaking into the early modern era.
Also none of the populations encountered by the Norse in Europe(outside the Sami) were comparable to the non-agricultural populations in Atlantic Canada, in density, raw population numbers or technology.

But even with a rather aggressive 1% growth rate the combined Greenland/Vinland population is numbering barely above 10,000 after 150 years! Vinland itself probably won't make up half of that number, Newfoundland is not exactly paradise after all, and Greenland has a head start.

Newfoundland is not worse than Iceland, if anything cliamte-wise most of Newfoundland is better than most of Iceland. This alone would make settlement there more favorable and really allow for thousands of people to move within a couple centuries given the right circumstances.

The Varangians couldn't even do it the scattered Slavs and Finnish tribes in the Rus lands which are right next door to Scandinavia and directly connected by well established trade routes to their homeland!

The Kievan Rus had probably many times the population of any Atlantic Canada or even Northern Scotland. It's not comparable, it's apples and oranges.

"The Spanish did not replace linguistically Neapolitan or Dutch despite them being next door in Europe, why would they assimilate the natives in the Americas?", that's the idea. Those are 2 different processes, involving populations with different cultural ties, there is no Christianity or universal organized religion in the Americas which already massively changes things.

Aside from Iron tools and domestic animals, the Finns and Slavs in Rus are not dramatically different in lifestyle to the Saint Lawrence natives at this point. It bares repeating: if the Norse settlers can't supplant a population right next to there Heartland, how are they going to do it somewhere where they are barely even established?

First of all, no they are completely different, high medieval Estonia alone had between 100k and 200k people and I believe between 50k and 100k in the viking period, that's quite dense compared to Atlantic Canada and by itself it's 10-20% of the total population of pre-Columbian Canada(according to the Canadian institutions I believe).
Also those populations have been agricultural for millennia and Estonians themselves were active groups, raiding the Norse and maybe participating in the Finnic expansion/colonization of Finland that was undergoing during this period. So their shipbuilding was good too, on top of iron working, horses, livestock and a millennium of experience with all the previous listed points.

Second, as far as we can tell the pagan Norse never really conquered the Finns or Slavs in a direct fashion like we see in England or later with the Christian kingdoms, their role in the Rus state as far as we can tell was one of middleman elite with small numbers and openness to intermarrying. This is not some universal statement on how the Vikings or people with Norse genes are going to act at any point in time in history anywhere on earth.

The estimates I know for the at-contact Iroquois-speaking populations around the Great Lakes and the St.Lawrence are about 40 thousand and 60 thousand. The St.Lawrence is certainly accessible to an established Vinland in Atlantic Canada with anywhere between 20 and 50 thousand people by 1300 if we assume about 10 and 20 thousand migrant settlers from outside over 3 centuries and an average annual growth of 0.5%(compared to the 0.2-1% growth in Iceland during this period or the 0.2% growth in Scandinavia).
Edit: The Iroquois figure can certainly be too low, using this map:

https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/attachments/precol-jpg.212199/

I estimate between 80k and 200k Iroquois, the higher figure is maybe too high for the overall figure for Canada of 500k, it still doesn't make a Norse infiltration impossible or unlikely given the demographic situation outlined above.

 

[altwere]

By 1000 Ad Iceland was fully settled, making it a less attractive for new settlers. Climaticly Greenland was just habitable with the Norse package. Newfoundland was much nicer and no worse than Iceland. IThe Norse agricultural package would do very well there. It could replace Iceland as a settlement draw for people upset with the political and religous changes taking place in Scandanavia.
The British Isles and Northern French were no longer attractive places of the Norse to settle at this time.

 

[chornedsnorkack]

By 1000 Ad Iceland was fully settled, making it a less attractive for new settlers. Climaticly Greenland was just habitable with the Norse package. Newfoundland was much nicer and no worse than Iceland.

Newfoundland was positively better than Iceland.
Norse found lowlands of Iceland forested... but it was only shrubby birch an some rowan. No straight growing conifers at all in Iceland or Greenland.
But Newfoundland was mostly forested with straight conifer forests.
Slightly warmer and longer summer make the difference that Norse crops would grow much better in Newfoundland than in Iceland or Greenland.

IThe Norse agricultural package would do very well there. It could replace Iceland as a settlement draw for people upset with the political and religous changes taking place in Scandanavia.
The British Isles and Northern French were no longer attractive places of the Norse to settle at this time.

Britain and France had a dense, well-organized population.

 

[Gwyain]

Well Leif Erikson himself was from Iceland and Greenland was just being settled at the time, your matryoshka example fails there outside a strictly geographical perspective given the settlement of Vinland happen virtually concurrently with Greenland. In any case while the insular Norse would be in a better position or more prone to migrated to Vinland, they don't need to be the only one, when a stable settlement is created we can have Norwegians join in too.

Lief Ericson's father had discovered Greenland 30 years beforehand and had lived there much of his life. We tend to associate him with Iceland today, but the man was a thoroughly Greenlandic settler. Even post Vinland he went back to Greenland, not Iceland. Contact from Iceland to the Scandinavian mainland was sporadic though, and it was even moreso to Greenland, Vinland is going to aggravate that problem. Norse ships just aren't making any of these legs in one go, the entire series of Norse island settlements are a series of waystations along the way, and population movement across more than one leg was largely unheard of. This is not the Spanish or English colonzation of the Americas, it is a very different means of ocean transport and settlement, a fact which is often forgotten in any surviving Vinland scenarios. English settlers have the demographic weight of surplus population of England (and elsewhere in Europe too) behind them, Vinland is looking at the surplus population of ... the Norse isles, optimistically. That's a very different story, and those settlers did so with the full weight of Old World diseases and gunpowder behind them, things that the Norse don't have.

I don't see why out of all the hundreds of population replacements or just major demographic changes that happened just about everywhere in the world this one is impossible, someone should'tell the Austronesians or Polynesians that they had no chance in settling Madagascar or Hawaii or contacting South Americans.

None of these are involving population replacement, the Polynesians and Austronesians were encountering uninhabited islands, and that comparison breaks down for the Norse on the Saint Lawrence, as I keep saying.

Who should they have displaced? Also this is pure circular reasoning, we can point at actual events behind why the Norse didn't have a lasting linguistic impact in various regions and even in IOTL we see plenty of lasting effects, with the important Norse influence in English grammar(more than any Celtic substratum ever really did) or the the Cait, Orkeney and Shetland were Norse speaking into the early modern era.
Also none of the populations encountered by the Norse in Europe(outside the Sami) were comparable to the non-agricultural populations in Atlantic Canada, in density, raw population numbers or technology.

It is certainly not circular reasoning to argue that if they couldn't use their demographic base to displace at home that they probably won't be able to away; that's induction. Once again, I'm not arguing against potential Norse influence on local languages, they left a distinct substrate most places they settled, though they notably had little influence on the development of Russian, so this still isn't a certain to happen. My argument is that the Vinlanders won't have the demographic numbers to displace agriculturalist groups on the Saint Lawrence and beyond, and they won't. As you mentioned, the Norse could not do that to the 50,000 people over hundreds of years in Estonia, literally right across the Baltic from their million+ numbers. Vinland settlers in the Saint Lawrence have at best a few dozen thousand in a very optimistic scenario. They couldn't even displace the relatively small population of the Beothuk in OTL, and they were hunter gatherers, again I ask, how are they going to do so to the larger - agrarian - populations on the Saint Lawrence?

"The Spanish did not replace linguistically Neapolitan or Dutch despite them being next door in Europe, why would they assimilate the natives in the Americas?", that's the idea. Those are 2 different processes, involving populations with different cultural ties, there is no Christianity or universal organized religion in the Americas which already massively changes things.

Kievan Rus (and the Rus Khanate beforehand, which is really the relevant one) did not have any of these ties. This is Pre-Christian Scandinavia settling Pre-Christian Slavs and Finns, they rapidly assimilated there, just as they did in Normandy, England, the Hebrides, and even Ireland, all of which have settler populations many times what Vinlanders will have on the Saint Lawrence.

I estimate between 80k and 200k Iroquois, the higher figure is maybe too high for the overall figure for Canada of 500k, it still doesn't make a Norse infiltration impossible or unlikely given the demographic situation outlined above.

150k would be my estimate, the Saint Lawrence has always been the most populous part of Canada, and that was just as true pre-contact.



Look I get it, a surviving Vinland is cool, but it has a lot of challenges to overcome that can't just be handwaved away. Small populations almost never displace larger ones, they assimilate or create something new there, and like it or not, Vinlanders on the Saint Lawrence are invariably a small population.

 

[Gwyain]

Any thoughts what happens on the disease front?

Past discussions have generally concluded that large disease transfer is unlikely, which I tend to agree with. Iceland and Greenland are fairly small population that are isolated from the European mainland where they only have sporadic contact. That just is not a recipe for diseases to become endemic in a population, and Vinland colonists are going to be even smaller and more isolated than that.

 

[Jürgen]

Past discussions have generally concluded that large disease transfer is unlikely, which I tend to agree with. Iceland and Greenland are fairly small population that are isolated from the European mainland where they only have sporadic contact. That just is not a recipe for diseases to become endemic in a population, and Vinland colonists are going to be even smaller and more isolated than that.

Iceland were hit by two pandemics in the 15th century, which each killed around 25-50% of the population. In fact one of the theories about the disappearance of the Dorset culture is that European diseases did them in, allowing the Inuit to spread over their former range.

 

[Gwyain]

Iceland were hit by two pandemics in the 15th century, which each killed around 25-50% of the population. In fact one of the theories about the disappearance of the Dorset culture is that European diseases did them in, allowing the Inuit to spread over their former range.

I know, but pandemics don't tend to lead to a community developing resistance for more than a generation or two. If it doesn't become endemic there's no survival pressure towards resistance, so it doesn't do much long term. From my understanding, Iceland went through waves of disease later as well, which seems to support that conclusion.

 

[Jürgen]

I know, but pandemics don't tend to lead to a community developing resistance for more than a generation or two. If it doesn't become endemic there's no survival pressure towards resistance, so it doesn't do much long term. From my understanding, Iceland went through waves of disease later as well, which seems to support that conclusion.

The point is that their death rate when hit by all those waves of pandemics was significant lower than for Native Americans. If a pandemic kills 50% of the Norse in a region and 90% of the Native Americans, this still favor the Norse as population group even if it’s a disaster for the individual Norse.

 

[Gwyain]

To elaborate a bit on my point about demographics, let's look at just one possible example of Norse-Native contact. The Island of Montreal had a pre-contact population of somewhere between 2-3000 people, and the island being where it is in the Saint Lawrence is going to become an ideal spot for Norse settlers. Take say 500 settlers, a number which is just supported by a 1% yearly growth rate for Iceland (Iceland’s actual growth rate once settlement stopped in 1000 seems to be much lower than this), so this is a substantial number, and have them settle around Montreal. They are already outnumbered by around 5 to 1, and that’s just in their immediate area. Iron weapons and armour are great, but not enough to overcome 5 to 1 odds in a battle, so any settlement that survives is going to be doing so through peaceful interaction with its neighbours. That means trade, and probably means intermarriage. Within a 2-3 generations you’re not going to have a Norse settlement, but a mixed Norse-Native group of settlements, something an awful lot like the OTL Metis. We might get some additional colonists from the Islands during that time, but we can just as easily get other neighbouring natives as part of this complex too, so the Norse-Metis population is going to be the majority before long. The Norse language will definitely have a substantial influence on this population’s language (especially agricultural, boat, and metallurgical terms), but it is going to trend more towards Algonquin than Norse due to sheer number of speakers.

As a culture, this is invariably going to be the most advanced group in the North East, they’ll have iron tools, writing, and at least some domestic animal species which bring a host of benefits. The Norse-Metis population is going to grow along the waterways over the course of the next few hundred years and probably become a decent sized polity, but it won’t be “Norse.”

This is ultimately just one location, if it continues Norse settlement will invariably be spread out; the North American north-east is enormous and that is going to lend itself towards assimilation or hybridization even more so.

 

[Gwyain]

Iceland were hit by two pandemics in the 15th century, which each killed around 25-50% of the population. In fact one of the theories about the disappearance of the Dorset culture is that European diseases did them in, allowing the Inuit to spread over their former range.

The more I think about the more I think my earlier comment was irrelevant. Endemicness doesn't matter much if the diseases just aren't present in the population yet. There's still every chance that contact with Vinland/Greenland is lost as it was OTL, and that's going to be before Iceland's epidemics. Are then any earlier disease outbreaks in Iceland?

 

[Arkenfolm]

To elaborate a bit on my point about demographics, let's look at just one possible example of Norse-Native contact. The Island of Montreal had a pre-contact population of somewhere between 2-3000 people, and the island being where it is in the Saint Lawrence is going to become an ideal spot for Norse settlers. Take say 500 settlers, a number which is just supported by a 1% yearly growth rate for Iceland (Iceland’s actual growth rate once settlement stopped in 1000 seems to be much lower than this), so this is a substantial number, and have them settle around Montreal. They are already outnumbered by around 5 to 1, and that’s just in their immediate area. Iron weapons and armour are great, but not enough to overcome 5 to 1 odds in a battle, so any settlement that survives is going to be doing so through peaceful interaction with its neighbours. That means trade, and probably means intermarriage. Within a 2-3 generations you’re not going to have a Norse settlement, but a mixed Norse-Native group of settlements, something an awful lot like the OTL Metis. We might get some additional colonists from the Islands during that time, but we can just as easily get other neighbouring natives as part of this complex too, so the Norse-Metis population is going to be the majority before long. The Norse language will definitely have a substantial influence on this population’s language (especially agricultural, boat, and metallurgical terms), but it is going to trend more towards Algonquin than Norse due to sheer number of speakers.

As a culture, this is invariably going to be the most advanced group in the North East, they’ll have iron tools, writing, and at least some domestic animal species which bring a host of benefits. The Norse-Metis population is going to grow along the waterways over the course of the next few hundred years and probably become a decent sized polity, but it won’t be “Norse.”

This is ultimately just one location, if it continues Norse settlement will invariably be spread out; the North American north-east is enormous and that is going to lend itself towards assimilation or hybridization even more so.

But the Norse would have:
-Ironworking/metalworking in general
-Superior weapons and armour
-Superior tools
-Domesticated animals, including horses (although limited in number and size)
-Literacy (on some level) which ties into:
-Christianity, a powerful faith with accompanying philosophy which no doubt would be soldified as an "Us vs Them" thing against the non-Christian natives
-Connections to their kin on Vinland and in Iceland and Greenland

Introduction of all this would upend local societies in a manner much greater than in Ireland or the Baltic, so it could easily be the Norse-Metis culture would be more like the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England where a smaller number of invaders managed to rule over and assimilate a much larger local population.

I also think growth of Vinland/New World would come at some expense of Greenland, since why move to/stay in such a marginal land when you could go to another Iceland?

 

[Gwyain]

But the Norse would have:
-Ironworking/metalworking in general
-Superior weapons and armour
-Superior tools
-Domesticated animals, including horses (although limited in number and size)
-Literacy (on some level) which ties into:
-Christianity, a powerful faith with accompanying philosophy which no doubt would be soldified as an "Us vs Them" thing against the non-Christian natives
-Connections to their kin on Vinland and in Iceland and Greenland

Introduction of all this would upend local societies in a manner much greater than in Ireland or the Baltic, so it could easily be the Norse-Metis culture would be more like the Anglo-Saxon conquest of England where a smaller number of invaders managed to rule over and assimilate a much larger local population.

I also think growth of Vinland/New World would come at some expense of Greenland, since why move to/stay in such a marginal land when you could go to another Iceland?

A new culture doesn't preclude kinship ties back to Vinland/Iceland, the Rus, Norse-Gaels, and Normans all maintained some forms of kinship ties to Scandinavia for quite a while, but they still became integrated with the locals. As far as siphoning off from Greenland, yeah probably, but Greenland's population is only 2500 at the time of Vinland's development, so that's not really changing the population dynamic by much. Christianity is a wildcard I think, Iceland has only just officially become Christian, and there is still a good sized pagan minority there. Greenland as far as I know hasn't yet converted either. That has the potential to be a very interesting dynamic in Vinland/Saint Lawrence, since you may well have some Norse pagans coming over, but also potentially Christians as missionaries, there's a lot of ways that could end up going.

 

[Jürgen]

A new culture doesn't preclude kinship ties back to Vinland/Iceland, the Rus, Norse-Gaels, and Normans all maintained some forms of kinship ties to Scandinavia for quite a while, but they still became integrated with the locals. As far as siphoning off from Greenland, yeah probably, but Greenland's population is only 2500 at the time of Vinland's development, so that's not really changing the population dynamic by much. Christianity is a wildcard I think, Iceland has only just officially become Christian, and there is still a good sized pagan minority there. Greenland as far as I know hasn't yet converted either. That has the potential to be a very interesting dynamic in Vinland/Saint Lawrence, since you may well have some Norse pagans coming over, but also potentially Christians as missionaries, there's a lot of ways that could end up going.

The idea that the Norse would assimilate into Native culture because they did in areas, which was as advanced as them or more advancedand those culture already had some similarity is pretty weird. Especially as we do have the historical precedence of the Norse not being assimilated into the Dorset culture, the Norse expansion into Saami land and even Norse assimilation of the Picts in the Norn lands. For the Norse the natives of Vinland wouldn't be the Eastern Slav, who was military powerful and had a pretty similar culture to their own.