Indigenous Icelandics
- Thread starter Dorozhand
- Start date
To ICELAND? With Neolithic technology, I think that's a tad too ASB. Lower sea levels allowed people to get to the Shetland Islands around at least 4000 BC. Yet studies of the Faroe Islands, which are a hell of a lot closer to the Shetlands and the the rest of Europe than Iceland, has settlements going back to only 400 AD. If the Faroes were beyond the ability of Neolithic Europeans to reach, then Iceland's way out of the question.
Dorozhand
Banned
What I really meant was an indigenous settlement much much earlier than OTL. The idea being that the Norse encounter natives when they get there.
There was a settlement before the Norse arrived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_Iceland#Gaelic_monks
Though, naturally, none of said hermits lived to tell the tale.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Settlement_of_Iceland#Gaelic_monks
Though, naturally, none of said hermits lived to tell the tale.
Not good for the natives, I'm afraid. And probably not good for the Norse.
The Norse colonized Iceland as virgin territory. Early accounts spoke of plentiful seals, virgin stands of timber, etc. In short, Iceland was rich enough to be appealing.
An indigenous population would have probably despoiled those virgin resources, and what you'd have would be a subsistence population in a bare subsistence environment.
This might have discouraged or slowed Icelandic settlement.
On the other hand, the indigenous population would have been extremely thin, resource poor, genetically isolated and vulnerable, and technologically and socially outmatched.
The Norse colonized Iceland as virgin territory. Early accounts spoke of plentiful seals, virgin stands of timber, etc. In short, Iceland was rich enough to be appealing.
An indigenous population would have probably despoiled those virgin resources, and what you'd have would be a subsistence population in a bare subsistence environment.
This might have discouraged or slowed Icelandic settlement.
On the other hand, the indigenous population would have been extremely thin, resource poor, genetically isolated and vulnerable, and technologically and socially outmatched.
Dorozhand
Banned
These natives would also find virgin territory, though, and might be able to work the land and achieve prosperity in the same way that the Norse did later IOTL.
Being of European stock and descent might help their image in the eyes of European colonial powers if, indeed, the Norse don't see a need to colonize or conquer it in the middle ages. Establishing, instead, a trade relationship with Europe at this time (they have the benefit of possessing enough resources to be a valued trade partner without being a colonization target) would give them enough long-term contact to get used to European diseases in time for the age of colonization, and would also increase their technological development to something comparable to European tech given enough time to adapt, and the fact that Iceland is a rather fertile place.
Iceland could, therefore, become in this time simply another European kingdom, and perhaps even a colonizer in North America in its own right.
Nope. These are Neolithic or post-Neolithic hunters and gatherers. They will bring no plants or animals with them, save possibly dogs. They will not work the land, there will be no crops, no agricultural package, no domesticated animals.
What's going to happen is what usually happens when a hunter-gatherer culture encounters a virgin space - they'll kill all the easy game, and eventually hunt it to extinction. They'll consume the vast accumulated store of edible plant resources. They'll basically expand to the point of collapse.
Then they'll stabilize in a post-collapse environment, where the original bounty is severely pruned down. And they'll maintain just enough population to survive at a level that will keep the post-collapse environment from regenerating.
Which means a thin population of technologically backwards hunter gatherers.
Now, I can imagine a seasonal cycle built around fishing and sealing in the summer, sucking back lichen and berries, and burning moss in the winter.
The Norse will show up with a fully formed and tested agricultural package which includes a suite of plants, a suite of animals, a suite of tools, and social organization to sustain all that.
The indigenous Icelanders won't have any of that going in, and they're not likely to be able to develop it on their own. There's just not enough of a suite of edible plants available. And there's no land animals except Arctic fox and the occasional polar bear. If Caribou or Reindeer ever colonized the Iceland, they didn't survive the coming of the norse and may well have been extinct before then.
The Norse will show up and find an impoverished island where the resources are barely above subsistence levels. They're not going to find fish and game easy. So it's not going to be all that attractive.
But they'll have no trouble taking it from the natives.
I doubt it on both counts. The Europeans and the Norse never really gave a rat's ass for concepts like European stock and descent. Sorry. As for the Norse not taking Iceland... I don't see that happening. It just means that the taking happens more slowly and more violently. The Norse population of Iceland within the first hundred years was up to 80,000. It might only be 40,000.
The Norse might do better long term. Since they wouldn't have the virgin land bounty to fuel a bubble population, they might grow more sustainably, and with fewer dislocations.
Trading ... what? What does Iceland offer for trade by the indigents? The really desirable trading goods - Walrus hide and rope, Ivory and Polar Bears were all to be found in Greenland. There's unlikely to be enough natural resources available to the indigenous to sustain any kind of trade. OTL, the Norse' biggest trading items from Iceland were fish and wool. Well, the wool industry they brought with them and developed. As for Fish, they can probably access that more easily and on a larger scale than the indigenous. Indeed, OTL Icelandic Norse lost control of much of their fishery to their European cousins.
And 'Iceland is rather a fertile place' .... compared to Svalbard?
I won't say impossible or ASB. But unlikely to an extreme degree.
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Dorozhand
Banned
What if the initial colonization is done by Celts or Proto-Goths from Britannia, Hibernia, or Scandinavia within the first millennium BCE? They might bring with them something.
How about a complete (but hard fought) Roman conquest of Hibernia and Caledonia resulting in great bloodshed and genocide, and large numbers of Celts from these islands fleeing by sea to the Orkneys and Hebrides, eventually making it to Iceland in a few centuries?
What have they got for an Agricultural package? And how much of that Agricultural package are they going to be bringing with them? Refugees generally eat what they carry.
The other problem you have, is the same problem that the Polynesians had when they got to New Zealand. The Celts or proto-Goths are going to find an environment at the outer limits of, or outside whatever sort of Agricultural package they had.
The Norse, for their part, had a cold adapted agricultural package of crops that tolerated short summers and cold winters and relatively moderate summer temperatures. They invested a vast amount of time and energy into protecting and extending that package north - they built huge barns for cattle, and put a lot of time and energy into making sure that cattle thrived far north of their natural range. That package boomed during the medieval warm period, and allowed them to have a population explosion, spread into Europe and Asia and the New World.
But when the little ice age hit, even the Norse package wasn't working so well, their population declined in the homeland, Greenland and North America failed or were abandoned, and Iceland went on hard times.
So how do your Celts and Proto-Goths survive? What sort of package do they have? That's not a rhetorical question - I want you to go and research it, look it up and come back and tell us.
And then we can have a conversation about how likely that package would be to make it to Iceland, and how likely it would be to survive there... particularly when Iceland hits hard times or cold spells.
Neolithic by definition means post agricultural revolution, so they will have a crop/livestock package with them.
The Neolithic era doesn't necessarily mean that all societies converted over to Agriculture instantly during that period.
It only means that some areas began developing agriculture and domesticating plants and animals.
It doesn't mean that everyone gets a universally portable package, or that they transport that package.
Take a look at the precedent of Polynesian colonization of New Zealand. The Polynesians were sophisticated colonists, they prepared massive expeditions and transported tools, animals, plants and skills to virgin soil lands.
New Zealand was at the outer range of their agricultural packages zone. So what happened? They wiped out the indigenous big game completely. The Agricultural package did not work in the south Island at all, and the population there was reduced to a thin smattering of coastal hunter gatherers, living off of fish, seal, whatever birds they could catch, and whatever wild plants they could harvest. The North Island could, with great difficulty, sustain partial agricultural package - some of the plants wouldn't grow, some grew extremely poorly, they managed to domesticate and farm a fern. But it wasn't by any means all that effective. So they made out like crap in a burning paper bag. And these were people who were extremely good at colonizing and transporting their culture's package.
So, going to Iceland, 25% is glacier, 60% is tundra, maybe 15% is capable of supporting any kind of agriculture or animal husbandry in optimum conditions, with an already sub-arctic specialized agricultural complex being imported by the Norse, people who were efficient colonizers. And even they hit hard times.
There are no candidates to do even that well before them. The likelihood is that any refugees that get out there are probably going to lose most of their domesticates within a generation... within the first decade... hell, those may not survive the first winter... or the first landing feast. The plants are not going to do well in a very harsh environment.
Even if they did get an agricultural package out there with them, the likelihood is that the package fails to adapt, fails, and you end up with a residue of hunter gatherers.
Basically, beothuks.
Now, you want to convince me different? Work for it.
Don't forget the seabirds that have nest around Iceland's shores & on outlying islands: Harvesting those stocks (and their eggs) is probably going to be useful too...
They could always have been colonized from the "other side" so to speak.
What if the Dorset cultures had migrated to Iceland probably by walking their accross the ice in a particularily cold series of winters searching for better sealing groundes.
I realize they are Hunter-Gatherers but they might adapt and change given that this is pretty much a land of plenty by their standards and stranger things have happened...
What if the Dorset cultures had migrated to Iceland probably by walking their accross the ice in a particularily cold series of winters searching for better sealing groundes.
I realize they are Hunter-Gatherers but they might adapt and change given that this is pretty much a land of plenty by their standards and stranger things have happened...
Good point. But indigenous human presence is probably going to have a negative effect on those populations as well, given what's happened in other areas.
If the culture was really smart and adaptable, or perhaps just lucky, it might manage its seabird harvest to maintain the population. But the cycle for occupying a virgin land seems to be boom, bust, crash.
I was thinking of St Kilda as an example from not too far away: They managed to keep the seabird harvest sustainable, as one of their main (probably, for much of the time, the main) food sources, although admittedly that was probably starting with a smaller human population than these 'Indigenous Icleanders' would have. The fact that seabird populations are likely to be scattered over offshore islands does leave potential to hope that over-exploiting the nearer stocks teaches people a lesson before they repeat the processs further out...
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The most direct route is 500 miles. That's a hefty walk across ice. And for perhaps 300 or 400 of those miles, even the highest peaks of Greenland or Iceland would have been invisible, so that they'd have no land reference to go by. The sea birds wouldn't be terribly active. And sea ice is a treacherous thing.
But Arctic fox did make it to Iceland, and the occasional polar bear shows up today, so it's not beyond the boundaries of possibility that some Dorset might have wound up there by accident. And if you're very lucky, you might get a breeding population.
But then this would still follow the model I laid out - boom, devastation of the easiest or most accessible natural resources, bust, collapse to a lower level, and a vulnerable subsistence population at that lower level.
I recognize that I may come across like a meanie on this thread, given my apparent unceasing negativity - particularly when I'm doing something as ambitious and off the wall as an inuit agricultural complex, like Ice and Mice. But the thing is that on practically all my timelines, I'm constantly challenged, have to fight literally every step of the way to persuade challengers. I think that defending and advocating ideas, and actually putting some effort and research into doing so, is an important part of the process.
To me, the likeliest outcome of an indigenous Icelandic population is the same sort of cycle we saw on so many other island colonizations. Would it have actually turned out different? Would there be new opportunities? Would it have changed how the Norse dealt with Iceland? Maybe, but that has to be shown and argued for.
Dorozhand
Banned
I agree.
Maybe there's potential in the pre-Roman Iron Age cultures of Scandinavia. Iceland does have Iron in abundence, and these Germans knew how to get at it in the same ways they would have to in Iceland as in Germany.
Pytheas of Marseille seems to point to a very healthy agricultural complex.
According to Wikipedia:
Perhaps this culture could have adapted its lifestyle to Icelandic conditions like the later Scandinavians did. The problem is getting them to move, which doesn't seem like something that would happen.
There is much greater potential, I think, in the celts of Caledonia and Hibernia. I can't figure out to what degree of development or sophisticastion their agriculture was, or what their package was, and Wikipedia seems to be in love with metalworking rather than agriculture
Does anybody know what a population of Roman era Hibernians or Caledonians could bring with them, or to what degree their seafaring capabilities developed?
Iceland itself doesn't really have the soil to support "a healthy agricultural package, though". In most areas it had only a thin layer of topsoil over a thicker base of volcanic dust, and when the Vikings broke that crust up (whether by ploughing or with their livestock's hooves... or just by clearing the scrubby vegtation for various uses) the whole lot tended to blow or wash away...