So this is a fun idea. It may take some doing, but the Norse were very well and far traveled traders, so it is not outside the realm of imagination. What if the Norse discovered Australia and made efforts to settle?
This is probably very far fetched but some Norse are sailing down the coast of North Africa and get caught in a storm that blows them near the cape.
They somehow survive this and sail east surviving on fish and looting whatever coastal settlement is in sight. They get caught in a major Indian Ocean current after nearly a year at sea and end up on the northwest clad of Australia.
They'd need a heck of a lot of luck and probably the help of a god(or ASB as this site calls them) but maybe just maybe they could pull it off.
Pretty much the only way. Get insanely unlucky and just decide to keep sailing since they'd probably never reach home again.
If they get past the cape of South Africa and they travel east in a straight line they won't find much in the way of raiding.
Which would defeat the point of the original post.They could travel north and establish a trade route into India and the Far East.
Which would defeat the point of the original post.
I suppose if they did establish some sort of post or settlement in South or East Asia then it would make the possibility of them reaching Australia far more likely than a ship blown off course.
But it is stretching the bounds of possibility. It isn't impossible in the slightest and the Norse are probably more likely to find Australia in this era than a Chinese armada. They were the sea farers of the age.
I'd love to see a story about Vikings trekking across the outback or conquering what would one day be Sydney.
Dreaming and wondering about home on the other side of the world.
I don't think it would be a pleasant one. The aborigines might die off from the imported disease. Or be hunted down and killed. Their technology was very much inferior to the Norse and I honestly don't think in a stand up fight it would be much of a contest.I would be interested in the interaction with the Aborigines.
I don't think it would be a pleasant one. The aborigines might die off from the imported disease. Or be hunted down and killed. Their technology was very much inferior to the Norse and I honestly don't think in a stand up fight it would be much of a contest.
Maybe depends on how much intermixing goes on with the natives, and how long the settlement lasts.It would probably go the same way as in Newfoundland. They'd leave a genetic legacy too.
They end up in India, not in Australia. Ok, that's unfair. They probably won't even reach India.Whatever power rules Persia hires a bunch of Norse, who keep showing up in the Caspian Sea, to do a mission for them in the Arabian Sea. Then, on a dark and stormy night...