WI: Significant Technical Exchange Between Norse and Indigenous Americans

What it says on the tin, what if the Norse contact with the americas had facilitated a transfusion of old world technologies and domestic animals into the new world. Regardless of whether or not the Norse population in the americas is sustained for much longer than in OTL. This isn’t so much about long term Norse settlement as it is about the impact of an “Eriksonian Exchange” on the americas.
 

SwampTiger

Banned
The major problem is the area of contact. The Newfoundland Beothuk were stone age hunter gatherers with no prior experience in metal working, agriculture or animal rearing (beyond dogs). These tribal bands would require substantial contact to learn even a small part of the Norse technological and cultural package. If contact had been further south, say Connecticut or New Jersey, you may have tribes better able to absorb some knowledge quicker. Thus, you need at least a generation or two of contact to transfer something more than feral animals and a few iron items.

As far as the most useful transfers, I see are agricultural. New foods, grains, onions, rutabagas and cabbage will augment the native trinity of maize, beans and squash. Pigs, cattle, sheep and chickens will impart a large, sedentary protein package. Cattle or horses combined with the plow will increase the area under cultivation. Therefore, you will see much greater population growth. I would expect an increasingly centralized tribal culture, an increase in warfare to claim greater lands, and some technological advancement.

Metal use is more complex. The area of transfer would need nearby sources of ore. A group of specialized miners and/or smiths will need support by the community. A ready source of fuel must be found once wood reserves run low. I would expect a political organization similar to a Greek Bronze Age within two centuries.

No reason to bump so quickly.
 
The Norse lived among indigenous Greenlanders for four centuries without spreading any tech package to them. Hunter gatherers really don’t want to become farmers, its a totally different way of life for them.

Maybe the best way for this tech transfer to happen would be if the Norse goes up the St Lawrence river to harvest lumber. They enlist natives to cut and transport lumber by giving them axes and horses for the job. The Amerindians in this region are farmers so they would adopt crops and livestock easier. The Norse would probably be reluctant to transfer the knowledge of iron making as this would be a trade currency.

The Amerindians might get it by abducting some Norse, and if they’re lucky, get the right ones. New England Indians once abducted two English girls hoping they knew how to make gunpowder, of course they didn’t. The Indians couldn’t believe they couldn’t make gunpowder as every Indian knew how to make everything the tribe knew to make.

I would regard the adoption of Norse crops, animals as unlikely but possible, iron and plow usage as very unlikely unless there is a substantial sustained Norse colonization. Nevertheless the impact of this tech transfer outside of the north Atlantic region would be limited. Even in five centuries none of this may be adopted by the Mesoamericans who are far away and live in a different climate.
 
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