Norse North America

Hi Guys,

Thanks for your comments on Toronto/Buffalo/Niagara. I really appreciate it. I think we have to look at where it (the founding city) is being colonised and that reflects on why and by whom. For instance a huge natural harbour could be considered by those who can forsee the need for such a thing (i.e. the British and French who knew about deep(er) draft ships. I don't think the Norse would think of such a thing. Something that protected a couple of hundred longships with wide beachings would be preferable to something that could anchor a similar number of tallships.

Go to google maps Toronto, you see that island? It (and the peninsula to the east) protect the Toronto harbour from rough waters. It wasn't an island when it was found but that makes it even better, do you see how huge of a coast that is for anchoring ships? Even just the stuff on the mainland? For a harbour in the middle ages it's much better than Buffalo and Niagara.

A pagan Jarl or Petty King would give little regard to a Christian ruler, and a rogue warlord could probably muster a sizable pagan fleet with lots of Irish slaves.

There weren't any pagan nobility left.
 

Delvestius

Banned
There weren't any pagan nobility left.

There almost certainly was, being that half the population of Iceland were still pagan. Even if there weren't. literally all it would take is for a pagan to say "I'm descended from Jarls, so... I'm a Jarl." bam. Instant fleet to the new world.
 
There almost certainly was, being that half the population of Iceland were still pagan. Even if there weren't. literally all it would take is for a pagan to say "I'm descended from Jarls, so... I'm a Jarl." bam. Instant fleet to the new world.

The nobility is only about 1-2% of the population. The remaining pagans were almost all peasants, why on earth would a Catholic king ever tolerate pagan nobility? There is no benefit to him. He could just confiscate their lands in the name of the lord and add them to his personal Demesne to further his own power and riches or use it as an excuse to remove problematic nobles and give the land to more loyal Catholic ones.
 
The nobility is only about 1-2% of the population. The remaining pagans were almost all peasants, why on earth would a Catholic king ever tolerate pagan nobility? There is no benefit to him. He could just confiscate their lands in the name of the lord and add them to his personal Demesne to further his own power and riches or use it as an excuse to remove problematic nobles and give the land to more loyal Catholic ones.

What if, in one of the last of such removals, the noble & his peeps go to Vinland and beyond instead of being killed/made common?
 
What if, in one of the last of such removals, the noble & his peeps go to Vinland and beyond instead of being killed/made common?

Well these quotes from the Wikipedia page on the Christianization of Scandinavia could prove useful:

Christianity only gained a strong hold in Denmark following the baptism of Harald Bluetooth.[14] Initially, Harald had remained pagan, although he had allowed public preaching by Christian missionaries as early as 935. Around 960, Bluetooth converted to Christianity,[14] reportedly when the Frisian monk Poppo held a fire-heated lump of iron in his hand without injury. Harald's daughter, Gunhilde, and his son, Sweyn Forkbeard were baptized, too. There was also a political reason for conversion. German histories record Harald being baptized in the presence of Emperor Otto I, Sweyn Forkbeard's godfather.

In 995 Olaf Tryggvason became King Olaf I of Norway. Olaf had raided various European cities and fought in several wars. In 986 however, he (supposedly) met a Christian seer on the Isles of Scilly. As the seer foretold, Olaf was attacked by a group of mutineers upon returning to his ships. As soon as he had recovered from his wounds, he let himself be baptized. He then stopped raiding Christian cities and lived in England and Ireland. In 995 he used an opportunity to return to Norway. When he arrived, Haakon Jarl was already facing a revolt, and Olaf Tryggvason could convince the rebels to accept him as their king. Haakon Jarl was later betrayed and killed by his own slave, while he was hiding from the rebels in a pig sty.
Olaf I then made it his priority to convert the country to Christianity using all means at his disposal. By destroying temples and torturing and killing pagan resisters he succeeded in making every part of Norway at least nominally Christian. Expanding his efforts to the Norse settlements in the west the kings' sagas credit him with Christianizing the Faroes, Orkney, Shetland, Iceland and Greenland.
After Olaf's defeat at the Battle of Svolder in 1000 there was a partial relapse to paganism in Norway under the rule of the Jarls of Lade. In the following reign of Saint Olaf, pagan remnants were stamped out and Christianity entrenched.

Note: Sweden doesn't matter for this discussion.

It seems I had been overestimating the influence of Christianity in Scandinavia. While I still don't think your proposal is possible IOTL a fee changes to the TL would make it easy to accomplish. Just preventing Olaf Tryggvason from converting or failing to get the rebels to recognize him as king would make the establishment of a Pagan Vinland very easily. It was a Colony of Norway after all.
 

Delvestius

Banned
The nobility is only about 1-2% of the population. The remaining pagans were almost all peasants, why on earth would a Catholic king ever tolerate pagan nobility? There is no benefit to him. He could just confiscate their lands in the name of the lord and add them to his personal Demesne to further his own power and riches or use it as an excuse to remove problematic nobles and give the land to more loyal Catholic ones.

Pagan on paper and pagan in practice were to different things. Iceland was one of the most pagan countries, the original founders were those fleeing Christianization, so the lasting influence shouldn't be ignored. As mentioned, they would be enough to spearhead a rather organized foray into North America.
 
(On another subtopic entirely) If they start basically anywhere in Vestland(should it be OTL Quebec, or the whole New World?) other than Vinland they will be better off in terms of resources & maybe natives, right?
 
(On another subtopic entirely) If they start basically anywhere in Vestland(should it be OTL Quebec, or the whole New World?) other than Vinland they will be better off in terms of resources & maybe natives, right?

Not entirely. You need to take into consideration three things.

1: The distance involved. The further south you go the longer it takes to ship supplies there from Greenland, it would also take longer to sell produced goods (like furs) to Europe due to the increased distance of travel. This could be a serious issue in setting up a new colony.

2: Further south = more natives and less Norsemen. If I walked up to a bunch of almost Vikings and told them to come with me to settle a fertile land to the west and told them it would take about a week to get there I might get almost a hundred people like IOTL. If it takes months to get there they might just be all like, "You know, something came up." Plus there is less cargo space in a Knarr compared to a Caravel per person so less provisions (Also Greenland's scarce food). So while you get less colonists the land gets better in terms of food production so there are more natives around to deal with. Numbers man.

3: North =/= lack of resources. What you said was that further south means more resources and that is entirely true, I just want to point out that the north is not necessarily a bad place. The Grand Banks as I have said before is one good example and the entire Labrador Coastline, while rocky, is quite warm due to the mediation effect water has on temperature which makes hotter summers and colder winters further and further inland. It also has plenty of wood to make boats and the Norse really, really, love their boats. It's also the closest thing to Norway you can find in North America in terms of climate and geography.
 
Were the Beothuks especially aggressive? I've heard it said so, hence my idea of a better native situation elsewhere.

I don't think they were particularly aggressive, just very isolationist. They didn't want to cohabitate.

In the later periods they did do some raids, but mostly it was 'lets get out of here'... which is kinda hard to do on an island.

There were deaths on both sides, but it was more a case (I believe) of 'them lot over there' and 'us lot here' with the occasional spat.
 
Go to google maps Toronto, you see that island? It (and the peninsula to the east) protect the Toronto harbour from rough waters. It wasn't an island when it was found but that makes it even better, do you see how huge of a coast that is for anchoring ships? Even just the stuff on the mainland? For a harbour in the middle ages it's much better than Buffalo and Niagara.

Yeah, right, a nice beautiful harbour RIGHT UNDER THE FLIGHT PATH OF A 747!!! (JK).

Yeah, it does look good you're quite right... but I just would like to be something OTHER than what will eventually become the Canadian capital city (it is the capital let's be realistic, it's just people like to THINK Ottawa is). I suppose it makes sense though - it became a major city for a good reason.


There weren't any pagan nobility left.

It also doesn't go the direction I want my TL to go. They have to be Christian. Well, I guess they COULD be Pagan, but that means changing my mind and I don't do that easily :)
 
The King of Norway did not outright control Iceland or Greenland until 1255-1264.

Iceland did have Althing, which in 1000 made a decision to accept Christianity. Between, say, 1000 and 1024 - which enforcement activities did Althing undertake against remaining heathens?

In Greenland, Erik the Red was a heathen till his death in 1003 - his wife became Christian. Of his children, Leif was given the mission of converting Greenland to Christianity - but his sister Freydis stayed heathen.

Suppose that it is Freydis whose Vinland expedition goes better than OTL, with the result that a permanent settlement is founded.

Freydis had a husband, named Thorvard, but she managed to get him to do as she wanted.

So, say Freydis and Thorvard successfully found a settlement. She bears a son, named Snorri as per OTL, and after a few years, e. g. Thorvard dies leaving Freydis an unchallenged leader of the settlement (her brother Leif is far away in Greenland and it wasn´t him who made the Vinland settlement last, while her sons are a few years old). In Iceland, there were 13 first settlers who were women, out of 435 or so total. These included:

  1. Ljot who came from British Isles with her brethren Hildir and Hallgeirr; unlike most other sisters who came with their brethren and soon married and moved to husband´s settlement, Ljot founded her own Ljotarstadir
  2. Thorgerdr whose husband died at sea on the voyage to Iceland - the widow arrived with their sons and, since the sons were apparently young, it was Thorgerdr who was regarded as the settler
  3. Asgerdr Asksdottir - after her husband was killed in Norway, took their children (again presumably young) and also her half-brother to Iceland, and seems to have been treated as the guardian of her brother
  4. Audr, who moved to Iceland with a bunch of granddaughters after her husband and her son the father of the granddaughters had both been killed. She was a Christian all her life, but after her death, her descendants converted to paganism.
What were the names and stories of the other 9?
So suppose Freydis Eiriksdotter is the leader of a successful colony (her husband having had less influential relatives and being dead, her sons being small). And even when her sons come of age, she keeps her entrenched leadership position till she dies of old age. She also is openly heathen, and while she may not outright persecute Christianity (too much bad relationships with her brother Leif and later her nephew Thorkell), she does favour the settlers who are heathens and felt uncomfortable in increasingly Christian Iceland and Greenland.

What next? When Snorri Freydisson (sure, the name of Thorvard is remembered, but Freydis is the leader who is important... King of Denmark Svend also stuck with the name of his mother Estrid Svendsdatter and not of his father Ulf) finally inherits in his middle age, say 1050s, what is the heathen/Christian ratio in Vinland? And what will Snorri do?
 
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