WI: Successful Norse Colonization of North America?

I think there are sufficient evidence for an AH autor to simply state "I am assuming that the hypothesis of 1142 as the date for the founding of the league is correct" Or 1000, or what have you. If he needs it.
One of the pieces of evidence for an earlier founding was adding up the tenures of all the chairpersons recorded in oral tradition, which gave a date of 1090.

In any case, I think there are two paths to take on Norse settlement of Vinland.

First, OTL, the Norse was at the end of a very long supply chain. Norway to Iceland to Greenland, each link in the chain involved a large drop in population. At Greenland, there were only a few thousand people to provide a pool of settlers.

If we want significant Norse settlement, we need some reason for a larger numbers of people to come in from Scandinavia.

The second path would need only a small number of Norse settling in, but involves significant tech transfer to the natives.

Longships. Iron. Horses and stirrups.
 
@Umbral: I mainly agree with you. To me, the first path would work if we wanted to create a viable Norse settlement lasting until the present day in TTL, whilst the second path would be if we wanted something akin to the Greenlandic population in OTL regarding a Vinland settlement in TTL.
 
This tread made me wonder what would happen if a Norse colony actually survived in its Viking form. Would Vinland be a independent country today? Would the Europeans conquer it? And if they did, would its Norse traditions and cultures survive? What would Vinland look like in modern times? Similar to the Noedish countries, or would the British integrate it too?
 
This tread made me wonder what would happen if a Norse colony actually survived in its Viking form. Would Vinland be a independent country today? Would the Europeans conquer it? And if they did, would its Norse traditions and cultures survive? What would Vinland look like in modern times? Similar to the Noedish countries, or would the British integrate it too?

I think that depends very much on whether they managed to keep contact with europe (butterflies) and if they were/stayed Christian.
 
I think that depends very much on whether they managed to keep contact with europe (butterflies) and if they were/stayed Christian.

If they would stay on Newfoundland, or expand more South, they would have to stay in contact with Europe. But would we have a Scandinavian-type country or an American Island there by the 19.-20.th century?
 
Um what?
No.
American democracy is clearly a outgrowth of Britisih democracy which in turn evolved from Germanic tradition. Not at all the native Americans.

The Teutonic Germ Theory is about 70 years out of date, and even when it was introduced as part of racialist theories in the late 19th century, it wasn't that widely accepted by American historians. Are they still teaching that in the schools where you are?

Obviously US democracy has a lot of influence from British traditions, also the Roman Republic as well.

But the indirect Iroquois influence on the US Constitution, through Ben Franklin and his Albany Plan, is also well documented and accepted by most historians.

http://www.amazon.com/Forgotten-Founders-Benjamin-Rationale-Revolution/dp/0876451113
Forgotten Founders: Benjamin Franklin, the Iroquois, and the Rationale for the American Revolution (Hardcover)
by Bruce E. Johansen



To me an even better series of accounts are here.

http://www.amazon.com/Exiled-Land-F...=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1253889191&sr=1-1
Exiled in the Land of the Free: Democracy, Indian Nations & the U.S. Constitution (Paperback)
by Oren Lyons (Author), Donald Grinde (Author), Robert Venables (Author), John Mohawk (Author), Jr. (Author), Howard Berman (Author), Vine Deloria (Author), Laurence Hauptman (Author), Curtis Berkey (Author)


There are still some diehard conservatives and in some cases hardcore racists horrified at the idea that nonwhites could've influenced the US Constitution. But don't let their efforts to dismiss the evidence, and in some cases their anger and bile, confuse you.

The Iroquois also influenced many other Euro philosophers, Rousseau, Voltaire, Marx and Engels, Thomas Moore, early US feminists Lucrecia Mott and Elizabeth Cady Stanton

And two of the philosophers they influenced, John Locke and Baron Montesquieu, influenced America's Founding Fathers. From Montesquieu we get the idea of Checks and Balances. The Iroquois practiced C and B between tribes and genders, where the US govt has it between branches of govt.

I'm curious myself and want to ask those who know Icelandic history (certainly far more than I do), how they think a mix of Iceland's early democratic practices combine with Iroquois? What practices from Viking democracy would be most useful, and what might cause the most problems or be the most likely to be dropped?

The Iroquois Law of the Great Peace is here.
http://www.indigenouspeople.net/iroqcon.htm
 
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This tread made me wonder what would happen if a Norse colony actually survived in its Viking form. Would Vinland be a independent country today? Would the Europeans conquer it? And if they did, would its Norse traditions and cultures survive? What would Vinland look like in modern times? Similar to the Noedish countries, or would the British integrate it too?

Let's break it down here:
*First off, it all depends on butterflies, first and foremost. The British might not colonize the northern reaches of the Western Hemisphere in TTL.
*As Umbral put it:

I think that depends very much on whether they managed to keep contact with europe (butterflies) and if they were/stayed Christian.

If a monarch (say, from Denmark or Norway) wished to consolidate all the Norse territories into one empire, s/he might conquer Vinland and have it remain as a colony. Likewise, the retention of Norse traditions and customs depends on Christianity. If you go for a POD circa 900-1000 AD/CE and later, it is very likely that there will be a significant Christian community in Vinland. Whether or not they totally accept Christianity or modify it to suit local conditions is up to them, but I can guarantee that at least one church would be built.

Regardless of the circumstances, whether it be independent or not, I would think that if Vinland were to be transported to OTL, it would probably be a very poor country - not Haïti-level, but still very poor, especially if the offshore petroleum reserves had not been discovered yet. The best comparison would be to Newfoundland now - Newfoundland now heavily relied on the fisheries for the economy; there is some industry, such as the now-defunct newsprint factory in Grand Falls-Windsor, but most of the industry was to support the fisheries. Once the fish stocks collapsed, leading to a moratorium on fishing, Newfoundland was greatly devastated. There is economic recovery now due to the offshore petroleum reserves, but that was because there were no other options. In this scenario, unless the offshore petroleum reserves were found, Vinland would be in a worse-off position than Iceland, Norway, even the Faroes.
 
I expect that eventually western historians will acknowledge they are right. After all, some historians rather Eurocentrically used to claim that Iroquois learned their democracy traditions from the British colonists, not the other way around as we now know. (Actually it's more of an indirect influence, since the Iroquois influence the Articles of Confederation, Montesquieu, and Locke, and they in turn influence the Constitution.)
It's not as simple as that either. The British Colonists couldn't have 'learned' democratic traditions from the American natives, British democratic traditions date back to Magna Carta after all. As with all cultural exchange, it'll likely be more reciprocal.
 
I'm curious myself and want to ask those who know Icelandic history (certainly far more than I do), how they think a mix of Iceland's early democratic practices combine with Iroquois? What practices from Viking democracy would be most useful, and what might cause the most problems or be the most likely to be dropped?

Hmm, that would be interesting. In the case of Vinland, I'm not too sure how the Innu and/or the Míkmaq organized (though the old Míkmaq style of government does sound a bit reminiscent of the Haudenosaunee), but I can guarantee you this - it would be interesting, particularly since it was possible for people to ignore decisions made at Alþingi since there was pretty much no executive to enforce the laws and the judiciary was ineffective (anarchy at its finest, in a positive sense).
 
Let's break it down here:
*First off, it all depends on butterflies, first and foremost. The British might not colonize the northern reaches of the Western Hemisphere in TTL.
*As Umbral put it:



If a monarch (say, from Denmark or Norway) wished to consolidate all the Norse territories into one empire, s/he might conquer Vinland and have it remain as a colony. Likewise, the retention of Norse traditions and customs depends on Christianity. If you go for a POD circa 900-1000 AD/CE and later, it is very likely that there will be a significant Christian community in Vinland. Whether or not they totally accept Christianity or modify it to suit local conditions is up to them, but I can guarantee that at least one church would be built.

Regardless of the circumstances, whether it be independent or not, I would think that if Vinland were to be transported to OTL, it would probably be a very poor country - not Haïti-level, but still very poor, especially if the offshore petroleum reserves had not been discovered yet. The best comparison would be to Newfoundland now - Newfoundland now heavily relied on the fisheries for the economy; there is some industry, such as the now-defunct newsprint factory in Grand Falls-Windsor, but most of the industry was to support the fisheries. Once the fish stocks collapsed, leading to a moratorium on fishing, Newfoundland was greatly devastated. There is economic recovery now due to the offshore petroleum reserves, but that was because there were no other options. In this scenario, unless the offshore petroleum reserves were found, Vinland would be in a worse-off position than Iceland, Norway, even the Faroes.

To continue from your suggestion above, if an independent Vinland is conquered by Denmark c.a. late 16th century - early to mid 17th century, it would be a distinct possibility for it to end up as a "Danish Quebec", you'd think. Part of modern day Canada, but with Danish as the main language, and there sometimes being rumblings about making it independent, but economic reality (among other things) keeps it from happening. Not that it has to happen, but it strikes be as a fitting development.
 
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