Minimum Vinland

Susano

Banned
I would assume their economy would be based primarily on fishing; if that is so, then Newfoundland is a pretty good spot. And if it isn't, well, there's the St. Lawrence river basin, as much fun as Vikings in Manhattan is.

Well, in either way, it seems to me the region could feed numerous second and third sons and their families. That should be enough reason for the Norse to expand there if their colony survives.
 
I'd say the best way is the good ol' Conquistador strategy: hang on by your fingernails until you get one good smallpox epidemic rolling through. That's not too hard. The hard bit is getting settlers out to the end of the earth - Greenland never got more than a trickle and it's far closer than Newf.
 

Susano

Banned
I'd say the best way is the good ol' Conquistador strategy: hang on by your fingernails until you get one good smallpox epidemic rolling through. That's not too hard. The hard bit is getting settlers out to the end of the earth - Greenland never got more than a trickle and it's far closer than Newf.

Eh, in pre-industrial times population was the quickest renewable ressource ;)
If the territory can feed the population it will eventually reach sufficient levels. It will just be, as said, a very sloooowww expansion.
 
Eh, in pre-industrial times population was the quickest renewable ressource ;)
If the territory can feed the population it will eventually reach sufficient levels. It will just be, as said, a very sloooowww expansion.

Yeah, although having more than the one or two boatloads of OTL come over would probably be necessary, even granted less threatening natives.
 
Originally Posted by Faeelin
So, what sort of population base are we looking at? What was Iceland's population base, how much did it grow, etc? Hrmm.

Iceland is "a bit" more troublesome for settlement, as far as nature is concerned (that's as to say that Sahara is not a small patch of sand). Anyway, Iceland had been settled by 400 "families". Even by the wildest stretch of imagination it can't be more than 15K.

Gunnar Karlsson estimated the population of Iceland in this era to be about 40 thousand. The estimates, however, assumed a household to include 6 to 8 people. Others people believe that households were from 15 to 30 people. So the population could be much, much larger than 40 thousand. Iceland had not yet been completely destroyed by environmental catastrophe (or volcanic catastrophe – a volcano in the 1200's killed about 9 thousand Icelanders) so Iceland could still support lots of folks.

I would assume their economy would be based primarily on fishing; if that is so, then Newfoundland is a pretty good spot. And if it isn't, well, there's the St. Lawrence river basin, as much fun as Vikings in Manhattan is.
Viking economy is based on hay. They lived off livestock and livestock needed hay. There were stories of new settlements in Iceland who found the fishing to be so good that they neglected their hay . . . and they died during the winter.
 
Viking economy is based on hay. They lived off livestock and livestock needed hay. There were stories of new settlements in Iceland who found the fishing to be so good that they neglected their hay . . . and they died during the winter.

.... What? I don't understand how this is possible.

Also, I'm not sure that horses would matter that much; Icelandic horses are hardly warhorses, after all; I'm not even sure they can be ridden.
 
.... What? I don't understand how this is possible.

Also, I'm not sure that horses would matter that much; Icelandic horses are hardly warhorses, after all; I'm not even sure they can be ridden.

Hay feeds cows, sheep, and goats. Without hay in the winter, Icelanders would be in big trouble. The same may be true for Vinelanders. These guys lived off their livestock and the livestock lived off hay. Raven-Floki's expidition to Iceland failed because they fished too much and didn't make enough hay.

Also: Icelandic horses can be ridden. They are far from being war horses but iron armor was very rare in Greenland and NA (I've only heard of one chainmail shirt being found) so that doesn't matter too much. These horses would not be used for heavy cavalry but would still drastically change the new world.
 
Also, I'm not sure that horses would matter that much; Icelandic horses are hardly warhorses, after all; I'm not even sure they can be ridden.

I think horses would matter in NA.
Icelandic horses are rideable - those are the ones able to tölt.
You can go on a horse riding vacation in Iceland.
 
Viking economy is based on hay. They lived off livestock and livestock needed hay. There were stories of new settlements in Iceland who found the fishing to be so good that they neglected their hay . . . and they died during the winter.

Did they not fish in winter? Drift ice maybe, but the climate was warmer then...? And no stockfish?
 
Did they not fish in winter? Drift ice maybe, but the climate was warmer then...? And no stockfish?

Yes they did fish. From 50 to 80% of their diet was fish (if I'm remembering correctly). And this is one area where Jared Diamond was wrong – Greenlanders ate fish as well. They did fish in the winter but the difficulty of winters should not be underestimated. The famous ghostly deaths of Thorstein and most his companions occurred at a place with very good fishing, in the winter.

They also hunted. But seal hunting was limited to spring when the migratory seals were near by. Icelandic Viking men made hay from spring to October. The women spent a lot of time preparing for winter – making cheese and butter and stuff like that to get them through the winter. Sometimes farmers who spent all their time preparing, like they should, still died in winter.

Although they raided, hunted, and fished; vikings thought of themselves as farmers. To demand that they stop farming and only fish, is to demand that they stop being Norse.
 
Gunnar Karlsson estimated the population of Iceland in this era to be about 40 thousand. The estimates, however, assumed a household to include 6 to 8 people.
I was under the impression that all historical Islanders are offspring of 400 original "households" listed in The Book of Islanders (?). Given optimistic estimate of 20 per average family (I dunno about Norse, but Northern Slavs used "household" concept which included all sons of family's head, so family could be quite numerous), that gives us 8000 original settlers, isn't it?

Hay feeds cows, sheep, and goats. Without hay in the winter, Icelanders would be in big trouble. The same may be true for Vinelanders. These guys lived off their livestock and the livestock lived off hay. Raven-Floki's expidition to Iceland failed because they fished too much and didn't make enough hay.
Forget about Iceland, we're talking Vinland now :) And hay stockpiling is so easy in Newfoundland, that fishermen's wives were able to do it IOTL (Newfies didn't have much in terms of agriculture, but did fish and had a lot of hoofed livestock). The farther south you go, the easier it gets to prepere for winter. BTW, native population at this point wouldn't be nearly as dense as it was in Maritimes and New England IOTL, as corn-based population explosion didn't happen yet.

Also: Icelandic horses can be ridden. They are far from being war horses but iron armor was very rare in Greenland and NA (I've only heard of one chainmail shirt being found) so that doesn't matter too much.
Norse didn't fight mounted. They were dragoons when fought on land.
 
From OP:
. . . So. A society of barely literate sorta-Christians based off of fisherman, who end up being wiped out by the Black Death. . . .

Had another thought here. Some people think that Greenlanders didn't die off so much as up-and-left. When the Black Death hit Europe many people left Greenland to go back to Europe – some had inherited land, for instance.

Many of the pressures which caused people to move to Greenland in the first place were reversed by the plague.

The same sort of thing might happen in Vinland. Settlers might decide its foolish to fight Indians for land (especially when there are not enough "fair" women to go around). They could decide to go back to more civilized lands where there are more opportunities in the aftermath of the plague.
 
Had another thought here. Some people think that Greenlanders didn't die off so much as up-and-left. When the Black Death hit Europe many people left Greenland to go back to Europe – some had inherited land, for instance.

I think that it not so much the Black Death as much as climate. Remember that the original Greenland settlements were during the Medieval Warm Period, and ended when the Little Ice Age came around. Most of them fled for Iceland, IIRC. In the case of Vinland, I don't know if that will be case, since it's further south. (depending on location - here, I'm assuming the Vinland = Newfoundland theory, where it MIGHT be affected if NW Newfoundland is settled, unless they move towards the Avalon Peninsula, i.e. SE Newfoundland).
 
There are many theories about what happened to the Greenlanders. I don't think a large migration back to Iceland happened though.

When the western settlement of Greenland was found abandoned, the prevailing theory in the courts of Scandianvia was that they had reverted to paganism, killed the priest, and fled to Vinland. An expedition was even sent to Vinalnd to locate then in the 1360s.

I have sometimes toyed with the idea of a brief TL where the western settlement relocated to North America, and the inhabitants of the eastern settlement kept secret contacts with their scofflaw relatives.
Eventually the Greenlanders would bleed into the North Americans, who would enjoy a brief period of growth before clashes with the natives pushed them below replacement levels.

There were enough stories about a city of white men around when the europeans came to give at least minimal credence to the TL.
 
one of the things I've wondered about a surviving Vinland is, what if the Norse just settled Newfoundland Island itself and didn't go gallivanting around all over North America. It's a fairly large island, although smaller than Iceland... but much more fertile. Ruthless as it sounds, a determined expedition could likely wipe out the natives on it, and settle the entire island. Then, they would have access to superb (by their standards) grazing lands, vast amounts of timber in Markland, and very good fishing nearby. The problem is, it couldn't be done by a handful of adventurers out of Greenland, or even Iceland... it'd probably take royal backing out of Scandinavia itself...
 
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