The POD is that the Mongols conquer Europe including England, Ireland, and Scandinavia and only Iceland is left because it's too poor. They are raided for slaves (as has happened in OTL) because the Mongol invasion let in the Plague and they needed to rebuild the population of Europe.
Say, 80% of the population dies in the plague and secondary kill, leaving maybe ten thousand or so. The surviving Icelanders move to Greenland and overcrowding soon sends them further on to Vinland. They explore further down the coast and find areas that are better than Greenland and the trading posts/colonies hopscotch each other down the coast to Nantucket and other small islands that weren't permanently inhabited by natives.
The Vikings take the easy way of just trading along the coast all the way down to Argentina. The natives are always fighting with their neighbors over hunting grounds. The Vikings trade iron as their entry and then different crops up from cold areas to warm areas.
The Viking iron works are in Labrador and Newfoundland where there aren't many natives, but most of the population is farther south. Eventually they find Bermuda and that's as close to a center of their culture as they get. After a few hundred years they have moved potato crops to North America and set off a population boom. They brought wheat and barley, peas and lentils, radishes, onions, carrots, and turnips, and possibly some orchard crops like apples, plums, cherries, apricots, pears, European grape varietals, and maybe oranges if they got some seeds in trade from the Europeans before they finally moved out of range and cut off communications.
And of course they have chickens, cows, sheep, horses, bees, and maybe goats. Bees are important for pollinating lots of European crops like apples. They used a lot of dairy in Greenland before the little ice age. I don't know if they had bees there.
The metal trade would have been gold, silver, copper (native and ore), various stone and wood products, some shell and fur products, and of course the important iron products for weapons and tools.
Say, 80% of the population dies in the plague and secondary kill, leaving maybe ten thousand or so. The surviving Icelanders move to Greenland and overcrowding soon sends them further on to Vinland. They explore further down the coast and find areas that are better than Greenland and the trading posts/colonies hopscotch each other down the coast to Nantucket and other small islands that weren't permanently inhabited by natives.
The Vikings take the easy way of just trading along the coast all the way down to Argentina. The natives are always fighting with their neighbors over hunting grounds. The Vikings trade iron as their entry and then different crops up from cold areas to warm areas.
The Viking iron works are in Labrador and Newfoundland where there aren't many natives, but most of the population is farther south. Eventually they find Bermuda and that's as close to a center of their culture as they get. After a few hundred years they have moved potato crops to North America and set off a population boom. They brought wheat and barley, peas and lentils, radishes, onions, carrots, and turnips, and possibly some orchard crops like apples, plums, cherries, apricots, pears, European grape varietals, and maybe oranges if they got some seeds in trade from the Europeans before they finally moved out of range and cut off communications.
And of course they have chickens, cows, sheep, horses, bees, and maybe goats. Bees are important for pollinating lots of European crops like apples. They used a lot of dairy in Greenland before the little ice age. I don't know if they had bees there.
The metal trade would have been gold, silver, copper (native and ore), various stone and wood products, some shell and fur products, and of course the important iron products for weapons and tools.
