WI: Viking Australia

Sorry, but I have to agree with the skeptics. Vinland would have been generally superior to Australia regarding Norse living conditions and was closer, but the Norse still didn't manage to settle it permanently. While it might have been possible for a very bold explorer on a single ship to reach Australia, that isn't nearly enough for a permanent colony. You need not only consistent travel to get enough men and women for a genetically viable population without being subsumed by the aboriginals, but you'd also need easy enough travel for viable trade just to make it attractive enough for the vikings and to maintain cultural exchange to keep it Norse.

I see only one real possibility. Vinland succeeds for whatever reason. We'll say Erik the Red was blown off course, settled Vinland instead of Greenland. Then King Olaf's crusade to Christianize Norway by the sword starts a mass migration of all the remaining pagans to Winland as Erik the Red sent his sons to talk all about it in hopes of drawing colonists. The challenge of keeping contact between Vinland and Europe forces an improvement in naval technology. With improve naval technology, two paths open up.
1) The Norse focus on trading as their ability to conquer starts failing, their naval capabilities and culture giving them an advantage. Maybe they take the Canary Islands, Cape Verde, etc, to control the african ivory trade that strangled Greenland's economic viability. They eventually reach South Africa, and decide to try and undercut the spice trade that the Middle East controlled through the Silk Road and the Red Sea-India trade route. They might thus reach the point where they could reach Australia and might even view it as a decent place to put a colony since taking a chunk of India or Indonesia might be more difficult.
2)The other option is that as the Viking Age in Europe winds down, the vikings, or at least Norway, decide to focus on taking Vinland by the axe. They settle the coast gradually southwards, relying on their naval capabilities over venturing inland. Eventually they control the western coast of the America's all the way down to Pantagonia. By that point they might have the naval capabilities to cross the Pacific Ocean west to Australia. Although New Zealand would probably be the more attractive proposition.

Now obviously these two possibilities are very much a stretch, and rely on POD's either early in the Viking Age or a Vinland POD. Even then, you're talking about hundreds of years of development without the other European, Africa, or Middle East powers trying to put a stop to it or the vikings successfully beating them off. Unlikely. Even then, I really don't see anything less than 250 years being enough for them to spread far enough for it. Probably closer to 400. So 250-400 years after your POD. By that point its less a story about 'vikings settling Austrialia' and more 'vikings expand across the world to the point that they settle even Australia.' It'd be a viking/Norse wank by then.

So, yeah. Unless you literally make it ASB like having a portal appear that leads from Scandinavia to Austrialia or having a great population be teleported to Australia, not really going to happen. Australia is basically as outside the sphere of viking influence as anywhere in the world. If the vikings went southeast, they'd likely focus on Africa and they'd be dealing with the vast amounts of peoples and cultures of Central Asia/Middle East. If they went southwest, both North and South America would be more opportune targets for colonization.
 
Small colonies surrounded by other peoples, without continued immigration in, are going to get subsumed. They won't be able to maintain much a separate identity. You're talking about a handful civilizations that were able to do that in pre-1492 times- such as Armenians and Jews, and even those groups did have communication and ability to get their own people from other "colonies"; except maybe some Jewish colonies in Ethiopia, India, and China, but then there's the reason that those communities look indistinguishable from their "host countries"... at best I think we could see a controversial minority of Aborigines who have some cultural, linguistic, and runic inscriptions that have similarities to Scandinavian counterpart and in the late 1800s it's considered controversial whether these are coincidence or Vikings actually made it there. I see that no definitive answer is given until genetic testing shows a minority have some in the male Y chromosome of unique coding to northern Europeans. Other than that, I don't think this impacts history much because the idea that an empire or raiding community is established and grows is highly unlikely.
 
There is some evidence that the Norse may have made it as far as India....maybe. Its always a maybe.

https://www.lionsroar.com/the-buddha-statue-found-in-an-ancient-viking-hoard/

My immediate thoughts, which the article echoes, is that it's much more likely to have made its way north through merchantile means. Transfer from trader to trader.... not evidence of Vikings sailing successfully to the subcontinent.

And I'd say the idea is entirely out of the realm of possibilities. Posters within the thread have already admitted it would take what basically amounts to ASB measures to find Australia in the first place. One ship does not a colony make, and if mere luck and chance brought them there, they'll have a hell of a time getting back. Even if they somehow managed these two interventions from god, there would be no desire to repeat the journey.

Unless we pulled up a hotline to ASB for every suicidal expedition, which will be desired by very few, all it's gonna lead to is a lot of sunken ships.

Also, the assertion that the Vikings were more likely to find Australia than the Chinese is entirely a fallacy.
 
Australia is not just far away, it is far away with many more pleasant options for stopping on the way. And people back then didn't think about "empty" lands in the way we do. They tended to settle where they had the support of kin.

One possibility I suppose is temporary great success in Byzantine campaign against the Muslims, ending up with Varangian guards having land around todays Oman/Yemen coast. A generation later there is a resurgence, and the Norse is forced to flee to the sea with every coast hostile to them.
 
Viking Australia, Viking Australia,
Who'll come a-viking to Australia with me
And he sang as he raped and pillaged all the countryside
Who'll come a-viking to Australia with me.
 

ben0628

Banned
Perhaps a company of Viking mercenaries seek employment in the far east and in a military campaign, their ships get hit by a storm and end up shipwrecked in Northeast Australia. A native tribe takes them in and cares for their weak and wounded. Vikings repay the favor by helping said tribe conquer neighboring tribes. Eventually they decide to stay and use their might to conquer the region and establish a viking dynasty.

Or we could have a viking king go off on some adventure.
 
Perhaps a company of Viking mercenaries seek employment in the far east and in a military campaign, their ships get hit by a storm and end up shipwrecked in Northeast Australia. A native tribe takes them in and cares for their weak and wounded. Vikings repay the favor by helping said tribe conquer neighboring tribes. Eventually they decide to stay and use their might to conquer the region and establish a viking dynasty.

There probably wouldn't be many changes on Australia then, just some Aboriginals with Nordic ancestry.
 
There probably wouldn't be many changes on Australia then, just some Aboriginals with Nordic ancestry.

Arguably there could be some interesting effects on that region's religion and culture. More of a naval raiding style of warfare? And maybe an animist pantheon more influenced by fatalistic Norse theology? Perhaps if this tribe is powerful enough, these ideas could spread throughout the region and latch on. Not every butterfly has to be continent-spanning or map-altering to be interesting or meaningful.
 
Top