Vinland Succeeds-- My First TL

Again... I don't have the reference, but OTL, I believe there were sources citing turkey pens & demi-domestication pre-columbian. I want to say Iroquois or Cherokee, but that's only because they are a part of a hobby... Maybe the Algonquins??
??? The Mesoamericans domesticated turkeys, certainly. Googling "turkey domestication" suggests that the Pueblo dwellers of the US southwest independently domesticated turkeys. None of the articles I saw talked about woodlands Indians of the northeast doing so.

Of course, once you've got Norse that know about domestic geese (?and chickens?), you may well get northeastern turkeys domesticated.

Changeable ITL, but in OTL, according the sagas, Leif didn't. Bjarni, who sighted land south of New Foundland first, *did* -- some 2500 colonists with full farming supplies (seeds) and livestock (horses included). They were blown offcourse and turned back to join Bjarni's father (Eirik the Red) in Greenland.

Now, don't ask me how they got HORSES on LONGBOATS! :) I think the sources might be... misinterpreted?
1) they're ponies
2) the HBC got stallions (as in modern riding horse uncut stallions) up to the Selkirk settlement in York boats which are a lot smaller than a longboat, let alone a knarr. http://www.archive.org/stream/selkirksettlemen00belluoft/selkirksettlemen00belluoft_djvu.txt
I distinctly remember one HBC factor getting a horse all the way to Cumberland House, but I can't document that ATM.
 
Erik wasn't the first to Greenland was he? and I've seen other references to 'Skraelings' in Greenland, but it's almost as elusive as the Christians in Iceland that yielded to the first Vikings there.
There certainly were Inuit there, to the north LATER. Not at the time of settlement, AFAIK. THe only occurence of the word in the sagas refers to the settlement at Leifsbuðir.

Not in the far northeast was it? Mississippian maybe, Central America and south, sure. Do you have any reference for pottery in NE North America circa 1000-1200AD? I can't find it.
Pottery predates agriculture. The Cree had pottery, the Ojibwa had pottery. The Beothuk were so incredibly primitive they DIDN'T have any.

For instance
http://images.library.wisc.edu/EcoNatRes/EFacs/NAPC/NAPC14/reference/econatres.napc14.kkarst.pdf
talks about Cree pottery in western Manitoba 800-900 years ago and Assiniboin [sic] pottery in Saskatchewan 1000 years ago. These were purely hunter-gatherer peoples, and not agriculturalists at all, I believe.

So, certainly the hunter-gardener types that Norse would have encountered anywhere in the northeast (south of Newfoundland/Labrador) would have had pottery.
 
There are big profits to be made, but not quickly. Norway, Sweden, Finland, Poland... all of these were at margins of Europe, and features like stone castles spread there over 12th and 13th century - but they managed to avoid getting taken over by adventurers. The only land that WAS taken over by adventurers without any organized backing was Norman Southern Italy. In Ireland, King of England followed on the heels of adventurers, and Scotland was flooded by adventurers invited by kings who kept King of England out, but the other countries kept native nobility. The Norse population of Vinland would not exceed that of Finland in 12th century.

I'm not suggesting they attack the norse, rather they go looking at the Americas in general.
They know there's more land out there...maybe the land of prester john?
 
Would these Norse have smallpox though?
They;'re coming from small isolated communities on the fringes of Europe, not major trading cities.
I'm doubtful they would bring over many diseasses with them right away. It wouldn't be until large numbers of Europeans become interested the diseases will hop over.
https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=CEA2010&paper_id=407 said:
6. In 1241 the first smallpox epidemic in Iceland is estimated to have killed about 30 percent
of the population (Fenn 2001: 229). Another outbreak in Iceland in 1707 is estimated to have
had similar mortality (Ramenofsky 1987: 161).
It looks like Iceland did not have endemic small pox, but only epidemics that happened at longish intervals. I see a 1707 epidemic and a 1785 one, for instance.

While increased trade with Europe would probably increase the Icelanders' exposure to major diseases, the fact is that OTL they didn't have a lot of the worst ones. Vinland isn't going to be hit as badly or quite as often as North America was OTL.
 
Remember that Markland also includes Labrador, at least it does in my TL. So the Norse who traveled around Vinland might also settle nearby in southern Markland.

Sker means "rock."

Sorry about the names but I can't think of many ideas except for rock bay, green island, Eric's town, etc. What do most Norse place names mean?
Reykjavik=Smoky Bay
Mývatn=Fly Lake
Vestmaneyar=Islands of the Westmen
Ólafsfjörður=Olaf's fjord
Egilsstaðir=Egil's stead (farm)
etc.

A lot of places are X's farm/fjord/peninsula, etc.

And wouldn't the names be in Old Norse, instead of Icelandic? I just use this dictionary.

http://www.yorku.ca/inpar/language/English-Old_Norse.pdf
C&V and Zoëga are Old Icelandic - which IS Old Norse. Remember that most of the documentation we have for Norse is from Icelanders - as they were the literate ones. There were dialect differences - every area in Norway probably had its own slight differences, and Denmark and Sweden were perceptibly different, but when we talk about "Old Norse" unqualified, we're really talking about Old Icelandic. (And modern Icelandic is hardly different. A modern Icelander can read the sagas easily. Oh, there's a few spelling differences, and even a couple of minor grammatical tweaks, but the two versions are probably as close as contemporary and Shakespearean English...).
 
Pottery predates agriculture. The Cree had pottery, the Ojibwa had pottery. The Beothuk were so incredibly primitive they DIDN'T have any.
And Iceland did not have pottery, either. They used iron cauldrons, and soapstone.

I'm not suggesting they attack the norse, rather they go looking at the Americas in general.
They know there's more land out there...maybe the land of prester john?

The Norse have all the advantages - homebase in Vinland, experience navigating, knowledge of geography, outposts at portages, knowledge of languages - by the time the first European adventurers show up in 12th century. What they do not find, no one else will.

And North America will not be awfully rewarding for a random adventurer in 12th century - roughly for the same reasons that Spaniards and others found it unrewarding in OTL 16th century. The maize-growers of Atlantic Coast are poorer and less organized than the Mississippi Culture. Not much to get by raiding, no empires to take over by rallying the opposition as could be done in 16th century Mexico, but numerous enough and fierce enough to make a farming settlement untenable like Roanoke Colony.

So, as I mentioned, the Norse explore the Atlantic Coast all the way to Florida, find Skraelings for small-scale trading but unfamiliar climate and local settlement discourages them from colonizing. Eventually they do settle on Boularderie Island and Aquidneck Island in 11th and early 12th century.

Meanwhile, up Sumara River, they are trading with remote but rather wealthier Mississippi Culture. In 1079, the Metis settle Wellesley Island, and start trading with maize growers on west end of Lake Ontario. They soon discover Niagara River and Falls, and lake Erie.

So, the next logical outpost to settle would be Grand Island in Niagara River. When?

(BTW, they may have conflicts with Skraelings as well. In any case, there are multiple tribes of Skraelings, feuding with each other - so siding with one makes them enemies anyway. The Norse have technology of iron, but they cannot keep it monopoly simply because it is the Number 1 thing they are selling. Founding forts may make sense.

And since the Indians are building as well as burning log stockades of their own, the Metis would be rather interested if some master masons from Europe taught them to build stone castles.)
 
Sorry but I think that for now I'm gonna have to pull out of this. Apparently I have too much revising to do and with school about to start I won't have much time. Nevertheless, I do like the names and genealogy that I've established quite a bit, and I might start a new one from the ground up, with faster exploration, especially up the Sumara. In the meantime, I'm going to work on a simple World War Two TL with an alternate British armored vehicle, so this will be on hold for at least six months.
 
Top