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.
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.