The Vinland Pandemic...why not?

I've been reading some of the various posts on Vikings in NA and noticed that the board consensus seems to be that a Norse-settled NA is not going to suffer the same pandemics that devastated the Amerind population OTL.

Best I can tell this consensus is based on the thin and isolated populations of the suspected "Vinland" area(s). That and perhaps the Jared Diamond theory that the colder northern climate kept the diseases from bridging to NA OTL.

However, disease certainly reached Greenland OTL. And OTL never saw more than limited short-term occupation of NA best as we can tell.

If we assume the Norse manage to establish a permanent settlement, complete with families and livestock and assume some semi-regular communications with Iceland, and if we assume the new Vinlanders keep up the old cultural perogative for exploring strange new lands, meeting strange new people and new civilizations, and boldly going forth to trade with and/or kill/enslave them, what keeps diseases from eventually bridging the distance to Vinland (as they did to Greenland OTL) and from there what keeps them from eventually travelling deep into the interior? Assuming the Vinlanders eventually travel up the *St. Lawrence to the *Great Lakes, and possibly even over the many portages to the Miss/Ohio rivers, what keeps these diseases from reaching, and likely quickly devastating the densely-populated (and far-trading) Mississippians and from them farther still?

I'm certainly no expert in either Norse Culture or infectious diseases, so I may well be missing some vital key here that the consensus has already established. So...Vinland pandemics...why not? Please enlighten me, O sages of the interwebs. :D
 

Riain

Banned
I daresay that Norse intorduced disease would kill off Amerindian virgin field populations. But would the conditions which prevailed in 1500 in the Carribean occur in 1000 Vinland? Vinland lacks the population density to rival Mexico and Peru and disease feilds, and I doubt the Norse would be albe to do to the locals what Cortez and Pizzaro did to the societies in Mexico and Peru. Would the slower pace and smaller scale of Norse settlement slow the rate at which each successive infection arrived and give the locals time to recover? After all, in conjunction with war and famine it took disease 150 year and dozens of outbreaks to reduce the population of Mexico by 90%.
 
That theory is heavily based off the idea that with the limited number of settlers from Vinland and the distance it take to cross, it would be unlikely for any disease to cross over. And that even if it dead there wouldn't be a big enough population for it to really spread.
 
Have the Norse settlers bring over a lot of pigs, who eventually escape and become feral (enough are needed so that they can survive and form new populations in the New World). I have heard estimates that it was the escaped Spanish pigs, which did the most damage in the Mississippi Region (where the die-off is estimated to have been high, but where the initial number of Spanish was low).
 
I've been reading some of the various posts on Vikings in NA and noticed that the board consensus seems to be that a Norse-settled NA is not going to suffer the same pandemics that devastated the Amerind population OTL.
It is? :confused:
 
That theory is heavily based off the idea that with the limited number of settlers from Vinland and the distance it take to cross, it would be unlikely for any disease to cross over. And that even if it dead there wouldn't be a big enough population for it to really spread.

That certainly makes sense in the short term and explains OTL's lack of a 1000 AD pandemic, but what happens in an ATL case of a permanent settlement with families and livestock (including pigs, *tip of the hat* ;) )? Eventually with a suitable climate for the Norse lifestyle (seems likely given the medieval warm period) the population will increase, and assuming survival and baring a major shift in cultural perogatives eventually they would begin to travel and trade, concievably deep into the interior waterways to the semi-urbanized Mississippian chiefdoms just then starting to form (c1000-1200).

Obviously the massive die-offs of the Conquistodor Pandemics would be less, and the death rate would likely be much slower and smaller from a hypothetical Vinlander Pandemic for all the reasons stated, but even a "much reduced" 30% casualty rate (as seen in Europe via the Black Death) will be devastating.
 

Well, at least there appeared to me to be a strong and sizable "faction" that believes so. ;)

Your post count indicates you are a board veteran...what's your take on the board thoughts? Is this one of those deadhorse debates I've gone and resurected? If so, my n00biest appologies...I'm an inadvertant expert at equine necromancy. :p
 
It really does depend on how big the settlements are, however, I personally think that if they are of any significant size, disease will be the result, especially if escaped livestock is involved. The Nordic lands were suffering from overpopulation in this era; however, they did not have the same resources as did Spain or Portugal in the early sixteenth century, so I think it is more likely that disease will be largely propagated initially by escaped livestock and then (as it spreads outwards) by contact between indigenous people.
 
I believe Norse husbandry were more cattle-oriented than pig-based?

Also, the Norse had a somewhat higher level of personal hygiene back then. Colder climate may have made trasmission of some diseases less effective, but I have my doubts.

I think the big killer in OTL was smallpox, and it seems to have burned through most areas including the less population-dense ones.
 
I started two aborted timelines with a Viking-disease but lacked the time or stamina to do much with them.

A Viking-disease happened OTL. When Leif Erikson was sailing back from Vineland to Greenland he encountered a wrecked ship, he rescued the crew and . . .

in return for the rescue, Leif took for himself everything that could be salvaged from the wreck. He invited Gudrid and her husband to stay with him, but that winter sickness set in. Gudrid's husband and most of the other people Leif rescued died - as did Leif's father, Eirik the Red.

(from
The Far Traveler )

This "winter sickness" killed some Greenlanders, another one mentioned in the sagas killed 18 members out of a household of 30 - pretty serious stuff.

It usually took 12 days to sail from Norway to Greenland (and 9 days from Greenland to Vineland). Diseases could, and did, make the journey.


A sticking point is the sparse Indian population in the New World. Agriculture was still a couple of hundred years from reaching North-East america and there were few people living in Vinland. Leif stayed for a year without seeing any of the Skraelings. Other settlements (like the one in Hop) lasted several seasons before encountering the locals. A disease has to not only make it from Europe to Vineland - it has to stay in Vinland long enough to infect some Indians. But even then there may not be high enough population densities to get a pandemic going.

If you can get the Viking settlements in Vinland to last a hundred years or so, then agriculture will make its presence felt with the locals, and then the locals can be wiped out by some nasty little bug.

---

Toss'n out a POD: Corn reaches NE America a couple hundred years sooner than OTL. Gudrid's ship wrecks within reach of Indian farmers. Indians hammered hard by the "Winter Sickness" the crew was infected with. Norse expeditions #2, 3, 4 etc. find Vinland cleared of pesky locals.
 
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Fatal Wit

Banned
I may be wrong, but I seem to remember from a National Geographic article that some North Americna populations along the coast did prove immune to some diseases.

NG did seem to think it was just random chance(certainly did not proclaim the immunity was the result of Vikings). But it is certainly a possibility, right?

In which case, the vikings may have actually "passed on" some diseases.
 
Even if the pandemics are as bad as they were in OTL the over-all impact on native American society might not be. By this I mean that if immigration is largely confined to a very small Norwegian population then perhaps the NA societies will have enough time to recover before the interlopers have enough power to dominate. Or maybe not.

This refers back to the hypothesis that the rolling pandemics shattered the abilities of the NA societies to effectively resist invasion and colonisation. If the invasion pressure is a lot less then a recovery could occur
 
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Certainly so, Julius. I see a core "Norse" society in the NE with perhaps a displaced and adventurous few moving into, say, abandoned or devastated Mississippian areas (Minnesota Vikings?!). Undoubtedly Norse culture and genetics makes its way into recovering NA populations, perhaps even some creole cultures develop over the centuries. All in all "better" for the NA peoples than OTL. No coast-to-coast Nordiwank, for certain!
 
If you want more than one epidemic, then you need regular contact with Europe - each new outbreak has to brought over again fresh. Even as late as the ARW only Philadelphia had a large enough population for Small Pox to be endemic - the rest of NA had an entire virgin population every generation.

Still, a single outbreak in Vineland should be enough to keep the Norse in Vineland indefinitely.
 
Certainly so, Julius. I see a core "Norse" society in the NE with perhaps a displaced and adventurous few moving into, say, abandoned or devastated Mississippian areas (Minnesota Vikings?!). Undoubtedly Norse culture and genetics makes its way into recovering NA populations, perhaps even some creole cultures develop over the centuries. All in all "better" for the NA peoples than OTL. No coast-to-coast Nordiwank, for certain!

Huzzah!

I would imagine it would be more like Africa or Asia - colonisation happens, but the natives are either a majority or strong minority
 
Assuming regular trade with Iceland (very likely if Vinlanders discover some ultra cash crop like tobbacco) regular contact is assured.

This, of course, leads to the very real possibility of Bubonic Plague in America! That'll FUBAR the NA and Vinnys both, and escaped rats could concievable carry that nasty bug far indeed. Ugly.
 
Huzzah!

I would imagine it would be more like Africa or Asia - colonisation happens, but the natives are either a majority or strong minority

Good analogy! Vinland as a "South Africa" with a large Nordic population that more closely resembles the original European culture and the rest retaining more "local" feel, perhaps with some Norse minorities or even rulling class (I can't shake this idea of a nordisized quasi-Mississippian theocracy led by blond-haired "people of the sun").
 
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