alternatehistory.com

Newfoundland is a sizable island. Slightly bigger than Iceland. It has warmer summers than Iceland. Certain similarity with northern Norway.

In Iceland, the settlers found the land forested all the way to the mountains - but it was a sparse birch forest with a scattering of rowans, a few junipers but no pine or spruce whatsoever. Something that the Norse knew well from the timberline of their own mountains, and northern Norwegian coast. But this forest does not give much large and straight timber, nor does it grow back fast when cut. In a century after settlement, the Icelanders got rid of 90% of it. Then most of the rest.

Newfoundland has warmer summers. Conifer forests that do offer straight trunks and grow back better. Clearing them for pasture would have been possible, and the hardy grains of Norse - barley, oats, rye - would grow rather better than in Iceland.

Skraelings would have outnumbered the initial settlers. But the summers of Newfoundland, while warm enough for the Norse grains, are too chilly for maize. This means that the Beothuk are pure hunter-gatherers few in number and scattered far and wide. If the Norse seize and hold a small chunk of land, this directly antagonizes one small band, too few to resist, while the rest have little urgency to combine against Norse.

And the Norse can trade with Beothuk. They did coexist with the Lapp hunter-gatherers in Northern Norway. In over a millennium, the Lapps have been oppressed, but by no means exterminated.

How would an agricultural Vinland Colony develop over 11th century?
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