Long-term relations between Norse settlers and Native Americans?

Any exile from the Norse area who isn't on the run will take any tools and live stock that they can, And pigs do very well in most environments.

Pigs don't do well in marginal environments where they destroy pasturage that cannot regrow quickly. By the 13th century, pigs were gone from Greenland and Iceland. But if the POD is back in the 11th century then importing pigs from Norse colonies to Vinland/Markland is very possible. They would butterfly the flora, though. Especially in Newfoundland near L'Anse aux Meadows where "trees" are rather small. I remember little tiny fairy forests when we were up there.

There is evidence of more extensive contact between the Greenland Norse and the Dorset/Thule around Baffin Bay. I attended a lecture by an archeologist from Parks Canada at the Smithsonian back in 2000. She said that when she'd checked on the artifacts dug up from Dorset and Thule sites from when the Greenland Colonies were vital, every single site had at least one Norse artifact. Some of those were from a shipwreck but others were probably trade goods or good will gifts. So there was certainly contact between the cultures up North.

What was the disease load of the Iceland/Greenland Norse back then? Would it have been as devistating to the North Americans as the small pox?

ULTRAGOTHA
 
What was the disease load of the Iceland/Greenland Norse back then? Would it have been as devistating to the North Americans as the small pox?

The answer is 'not much'. Smallpox didn't reach Iceland until the 1200's according to Fabilius, so it could not have reached Vinland before then. Even if it did, the small populations of Greenland and Vinland could be wiped out by the disease before being able to transfer it to mainland North America, and even if it does make it to mainland North America, the population in the northeast may be too small to sustain it as the people there were only just adopting full time maize agriculture (though if the disease makes it to the moundbuilding culture in the southeast, it might become endemic there).

Perhaps lesser diseases like chicken pox or the flu could be transferred from Iceland to North America.
 
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