To be a Fox and a Lion - A Different Nordic Renaissance

[X Oristos]

Newfoundland may be a harsh, windswept land, but it's certainly more habitable than Iceland.

Oh yeah! The OTL British and French had no actual reason to establish pastoralist communities. Comparing Lincolnshire - a center of english sheep farming with Iceland is literally comparing the Shire with Mordor as envisioned by Tolkien.

And gradually as contact between the Union and north America is being established there are the other populations I mentioned that are prime settler material. To be honest, the norse atlantic islands, remind me of the portuguese atlantic islands. While the latter were or temperate climate, they too had an issue of supporting their populations. These tiny islands alone provided a great percentage of the Portuguese colonists to Brazil. And Portugal was the state that exported the most people during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Greater contact, also means more exploration of the atlantic seaboard of Canada and finding places much better suited for agriculture and grazing. The boreal forests of e.g. PEI would seem a really nice place for Icelanders and Feroese.

The beauty of the POD is that it is early. Very early. Even extremely limited migration of first a few dozen and then a few hundred people per year would lead to a demographic boom. The 1666 population of New France was 3,125 people. At 1670 french migration to Canada basically stopped. Even so, in less than a century, New France had a bit fewer than 70,000 people, just by natural increase despite the crown's mismanagement.

Perhaps the Beothuk take up shepherding from a few intermarried Icelanders, thereby forming a more viable niche for their nomadism via transhumance?

That seems quite plausible to me. In any case they will be devasted by epidemis, but the survivors have a better chance surviving as pastoralists.

 

[Jürgen]

I think frequent communication with Newfoundland and the Maritimes will result in significant migration of Icelanders. I am currently reading Tomasson's "A millennium of misery: The demography of the Icelanders" that a main constraint on population increase was the available fodder for sheep. Moreover, the 15th and 16th century saw the decline and finally abandoment of grain cultivation in Iceland. In contrast to most Europeans, Newfoundland being unsuitable for grain cultivation is not a big issue for a population used to surviving basically without grain. What Icelanders needed was pasture land with green things growing on it. There are few reasons for a peasant from Devon or Normandy to settle Newfoundland, but many more for an Icelander.

Certainly, we don't many data on Iceland's population before the 18th century, but having a stagnating population for centuries means a dearth of available resources and frequent famines. So, Newfoundland sounds better than the place Tolkien thought it would be a nice place for what remained of Morgoth's Thangorodrim. It is also important that Icelanding sheep herders in Newfoundland do not come into competition with the seasonal fishermen. In contrast, they can develop a symbiotic relationship where the Icelanders provide mutton and pork while the fishermen provide metal goods and textiles.

Not to mention that with close contact to Newfoundland, they would soon find out the real prize in Acadia and the mouth of St Lawrence. They will soon find out that there is a lot of coin to be made by fur trade. The tidal flats of Acadia being excellent cattle pastureland and close to the sea are ideal destination for Feroese, Icelanders, Norwegians and Frisians.

Another interesting aspect with a Danish colonization of America is that Iceland tended to have large surplus of women thanks to how deadly life as a fisherman is. The Danish state forced the local Icelandic landowners to take care of impoverished people which included widows and orphans. So Iceland will likely send a lot of women to the Danish American colonies, which was alway something the early colonies lacked. This will also push the assimilation of the different groups that the mix of Danes, Dutch and Finnish adventures will marry Icelandic women.

 

[Gabingston]

Oh yeah! The OTL British and French had no actual reason to establish pastoralist communities. Comparing Lincolnshire - a center of English sheep farming with Iceland is literally comparing the Shire with Mordor as envisioned by Tolkien.

And gradually as contact between the Union and north America is being established there are the other populations I mentioned that are prime settler material. To be honest, the Norse Atlantic islands, remind me of the Portuguese Atlantic islands. While the latter were or temperate climate, they too had an issue of supporting their populations. These tiny islands alone provided a great percentage of the Portuguese colonists to Brazil. And Portugal was the state that exported the most people during the 16th and 17th centuries.

Greater contact, also means more exploration of the Atlantic seaboard of Canada and finding places much better suited for agriculture and grazing. The boreal forests of e.g. PEI would seem a really nice place for Icelanders and Faroese.

The beauty of the POD is that it is early. Very early. Even extremely limited migration of first a few dozen and then a few hundred people per year would lead to a demographic boom. The 1666 population of New France was 3,125 people. At 1670 French migration to Canada basically stopped. Even so, in less than a century, New France had a bit fewer than 70,000 people, just by natural increase despite the crown's mismanagement.

I think Iceland's population at this time was around 50,000, which isn't a lot, but as you mentioned, the Azores and Madeira were among the biggest suppliers for Portuguese settlers in Brazil, and Macaronesia is certainly more habitable than Iceland, so I imagine a huge percentage of Iceland's population will emigrate, to the point where emigration could become some sort of rite of passage in Icelandic culture (same with the Faeroes and, if the Danes still hold it, the Shetlands as well). I'm imagining that the main lifestyle of the Norse settlers in Newfoundland (or Vinland) won't be pastoralism, but fishing, as the Grand Banks off the coast of the island are possibly the best fishing ground in the entire world, meaning that famine won't be a risk, and when famine hits in Iceland, they could export fish to the island so that their brethren back home won't starve. Iceland was also entirely deforested by this time, while Newfoundland is almost entirely forest even today, so I think wood will be exported from Newfoundland to Iceland. I could see the Danish nabbing the entire Gulf of Saint Lawrence by 1600, thus giving them exclusive access to the Great Lakes, which will make the Danish the premier power in Northeastern North America.

 

[Gabingston]

Chapter 31
The Garefowl Feud
The victory at Cape Battle thereby not only signalled the beginning of the long and deadly Gejrfuglefejde (Garefowl Feud) between Sivertsen and the Beothuk on one side and the Mi’kmaq and their eventual French backers on the other, but also marked the foundation of one of the most devoted European-Indian alliances of the early modern period.​

So, the Danes are going to have competition from the French in the Gulf of Saint Lawrence/Canadian Maritimes. I was assuming that the Danes were going to get the Gulf of Saint Lawrence unopposed, but with this info I'm assuming that French Acadia may still exist ITTL.

 

[Gabingston]

Another interesting aspect with a Danish colonization of America is that Iceland tended to have large surplus of women thanks to how deadly life as a fisherman is. The Danish state forced the local Icelandic landowners to take care of impoverished people which included widows and orphans. So Iceland will likely send a lot of women to the Danish American colonies, which was alway something the early colonies lacked. This will also push the assimilation of the different groups that the mix of Danes, Dutch and Finnish adventures will marry Icelandic women.

Many colonies had a problem getting women to settle, but the Danish colony in North America doesn't look like it'll have that problem.

 

[Jürgen]

Many colonies had a problem getting women to settle, but the Danish colony in North America doesn't look like it'll have that problem.

Yes and that will have some interesting consequences in how the colony develops. In OTL New England was the main colony where you saw something similar purely demographic with high birth rates and little mixing with the native population. But it will differ in the male population of Danish America will be far more heterodox and Icelandic women will serve as the homogenizing factor in creating a koine colonial culture.

 

[Gabingston]

Yes and that will have some interesting consequences in how the colony develops. In OTL New England was the main colony where you saw something similar purely demographic with high birth rates and little mixing with the native population. But it will differ in the male population of Danish America will be far more heterodox and Icelandic women will serve as the homogenizing factor in creating a koine colonial culture.

I wonder what the linguistic situation of Vinland will end up looking like. I could see the various settlers adopting standard Danish as a lingua franca (with it becoming the first language of their Vinland-born children), but I could also see Vinland remaining more linguistically varied, perhaps varying from town to town, at least for a while. Either way, I expect a strong Icelandic influence on whatever language/dialect Vinlanders end up speaking.

 

[Neoteros]

I wonder what the linguistic situation of Vinland will end up looking like. I could see the various settlers adopting standard Danish as a lingua franca (with it becoming the first language of their Vinland-born children), but I could also see Vinland remaining more linguistically varied, perhaps varying from town to town, at least for a while. Either way, I expect a strong Icelandic influence on whatever language/dialect Vinlanders end up speaking.

How many settlers would actually know standard Danish however, as opposed to the dialect spoken in their own city or town? Even if you take into account the high degree of mutual intelligibility between mainland Scandinavian languages, Faroese, Icelandic and even Norn (that will probably survive here, since Orkney and Shetland have gone back to being under Norway) are a whole different matter entirely, and if you throw Basque and Beothuk into the mix, you might get a whole another language entirely, albeit one that someone from Copenhagen would be able to decode quite easily.

 

[Sian]

How many settlers would actually know standard Danish however, as opposed to the dialect spoken in their own city or town?

None ... mainly because there weren't a standardized language at this point, but rather a dialect continuum

 

[Quinkana]

None ... mainly because there weren't a standardized language at this point, but rather a dialect continuum

I think ittl we'd see Scandinavia and American Scandinavia forming two 'official languages' with a bunch of various dialects in between. For example I'd think American Scandinavian would have some native American (Beothuk? Iroquois?) influence in the early days, which may not stick tho. Icelandic would definitely be one of the main influencers of the new language, with most of the early female settlers being Icelandic, so they'll teach them to speak in a more Icelandic way.

 

[Jürgen]

I expect that Danish officials and clergy will serve to standardize the local dialect, it’s what we saw in Denmark-Norway with as example a complete replacement of the central Jutish dialect [1] with Rigsdansk [2] and the shift of many dialects toward standardization. Even if Denmark doesn’t go Lutheran, the Danish state will still try to enforce the use of Copenhagen educated clergy and civil servants on as much of the realms as they can get away with. With the lack of a dominant dialect in the America and likely a high degree of internal assimilation between groups talking different languages and dialects, I think the dominance of Rigsdansk is pretty much given, as I mentioned earlier central Jutland around Silkeborg speak the closest thing Denmark have to 16th century Rigsdansk, so I expect the standard “Amerikansk“ dialect will sound something like that.

[1] this happened in the 17-18th century.

[2] Rigsdansk (Realm Danish) is the standard Danish dialect and is based on a Copenhagen/Malmö koine of the Zealandic and Scanian dialects spoken around the Sound in the 16th century.

 

[Quinkana]

I expect that Danish officials and clergy will serve to standardize the local dialect, it’s what we saw in Denmark-Norway with as example a complete replacement of the central Jutish dialect [1] with Rigsdansk [2] and the shift of many dialects toward standardization. Even if Denmark doesn’t go Lutheran, the Danish state will still try to enforce the use of Copenhagen educated clergy and civil servants on as much of the realms as they can get away with. With the lack of a dominant dialect in the America and likely a high degree of internal assimilation between groups talking different languages and dialects, I think the dominance of Rigsdansk is pretty much given, as I mentioned earlier central Jutland around Silkeborg speak the closest thing Denmark have to 16th century Rigsdansk, so I expect the standard “Amerikansk“ dialect will sound something like that.

[1] this happened in the 17-18th century.

[2] Rigsdansk (Realm Danish) is the standard Danish dialect and is based on a Copenhagen/Malmö koine of the Zealandic and Scanian dialects spoken around the Sound in the 16th century.

I'd think they would speak Rigsdansk in an Icelandic/Swedish accent and pass that on to their children, which would sound distinctive even to an outside observer.

 

[Gabingston]

I'd think they would speak Rigsdansk in an Icelandic/Swedish accent and pass that on to their children, which would sound distinctive even to an outside observer.

I think there will be more Norwegians than Swedes in Kalmar America. The Swedes will have their main priorities in the Baltic, while the Norwegians would be focused on the Atlantic and the New World. I expect Norway and Iceland to be the areas where the largest amount of Nordic settlers in North America will come from. Other than that, your point stands.

 

[Gabingston]

On another note, has the Kalmar Union gone Protestant, and if not, will they do so?

 

[Jürgen]

I think there will be more Norwegians than Swedes in Kalmar America. The Swedes will have their main priorities in the Baltic, while the Norwegians would be focused on the Atlantic and the New World. I expect Norway and Iceland to be the areas where the largest amount of Nordic settlers in North America will come from. Other than that, your point stands.

I'm not so sure, Denmark usual spend its Zealandic surplus population to repopulate Jutland and Scania between war with a unified Nordic state, the Danish surplus population would go elsewhere, especially because it will also have surplus population from Scania and Jutland without the population being regularly culled in wars every few generations. A lot of the Scanians will move into borderland with Sweden, but Jutland and Zealand still have their surplus population.

 

[Sian]

of the Kalmar populations I'd expect Finns and Swedes to be the least represented in America, not because they're actively (or even passively) kept away, but rather because they don't have the same population surplus that are hard to relocate internally

 

[Gabingston]

of the Kalmar populations I'd expect Finns and Swedes to be the least represented in America, not because they're actively (or even passively) kept away, but rather because they don't have the same population surplus that are hard to relocate internally

And because they're more Baltic focused than Atlantic focused, although X Oristos did mention Finns in the colonization update (I've heard a good number of the settlers in OTL's New Sweden colony were Finns). Still, I expect Norwegians to be the largest group in the colonies, followed by Icelanders and Danes.

 

[Jürgen]

of the Kalmar populations I'd expect Finns and Swedes to be the least represented in America, not because they're actively (or even passively) kept away, but rather because they don't have the same population surplus that are hard to relocate internally

The most likely Finnish group to be represented would be Forest Finns simply because they're great frontier settlers.

 

[Wolttaire]

I wonder how much internal migration there will be in the kalmar union cause I could see many danes moving across into sweden and norway cause of their surplus population and all the relatively empty land compared to denmark, might see the language Swedish and denmark language maybe more start to blend in some areas.

 

[Zek Sora]

On another note, has the Kalmar Union gone Protestant, and if not, will they do so?

I recommend reading the update before last (chapter 30).