The Great Viking North

WI the Vikings had been able to establish a permanent presence in Greenland, and then pushed on into what is now Newfoundland and established trade routes with Europe? How would this earlier colonization of North America have affected midieval Europe?
 
Uhmm, they did you know!

Problem was numbers or rather lack of it.
And they did establish a presence in NA mostly to gain timbers, quite scarce in Greenland you know. And one Greenland bishop did visit NA.

Still lack of numbers... but an interesting scenario if you can make it run.

Real problem is the Little Ice Age that served to cut off the Greenland colony. With the island hopping communications that would serve, most probably! to cut off any colony in NA.
 
There would still be diseases that would rip through the native populations, but other than that I have to think this scenario is a win for the natives.

While they had armor, medieval Europeans are going to be on a much more level playing field with the indigenous peoples, technologically. It's not out of the realm of possibility that by capturing some they could really develop their iron-working skills and within 100 years of the horse being introduced to the Great Plains you had lancers/horse archers popping up and it's not a stretch to think they would have given the Europeans fits in the New World as they did in the old.

Aside from that, you are not going to be able to send huge numbers of people over there, first why? It's not that rich in those regions the way it was in the south and the natives are mostly hostile. Once the demographic pressure in Europe is eased then it's less important. Second, you are not going to have the ease of the crossing that occurred later, could a cog make it over the ocean? Maybe but again less likely.

But also there are far fewer people in Europe anyway, so you're not going to get massive die offs+massive European settlement. By the time that starts the natives are probably going to be immune to most of the deadlier diseases and start rebuilding the population base.
 
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