Got a link?
I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. People didn’t throw much away in those days, and sooner or later, stuff gets around.
Apparently it takes at least 9 years for a Viking to get to India.
I have an authentic Chinese vase on my mantel. Does that prove the Ming Dynasty explored Wisconsin in 1620?
Well, if you listen to Gavin Menzies…
Viking did get to India. Just by then they were no longer Vikings.
It’s not hard to believe someone among them may have traveled overland after going as far up waterways as they could. People underestimate the ancient peoples. Marco Polo is often considered the first Italian in China, but the historian JM Roberts has mentioned there’s a record of at least one seemingly high-ranking Roman soldier visiting the Chinese court.
Raoul McLaughlin’s book Rome and the Distant East: Trade Routes to the ancient lands of Arabia, India and China (2010) is all about how trade moved from India to ancient Rome and vice versa. This will give you some idea of how difficult and perilous such a journey was, and would still be a thousand years later during the age of the Vikings.
For a Roman merchant, the best way to get to India was via Egypt. From Alexandria you’d head south for 12 days down the Nile river to Coptos, where you’d pay a tariff and get a travel permit that would be inspected at later ports. You then had two options. One was overland 12 more days to Berenice, at the very edge of Roman territory. The other was a 6 or 7 day journey to Myos Hormos, which was generally preferred, not just for reasons of time but also because the sea at Berenice was very rough. The canal that linked the Nile to the Red Sea wasn’t dredged out until the reign of the emperor Trajan, but once it was it allowed you to sail directly from Alexandria to Clysma to Berenice or Mos Hormos.
You would wait in Berenice or Mos Hormos for favorable weather conditions; July was considered the best time. Some ships followed the Arabian coast to Qana (now Al Mukalla, in Yemen) while others sailed along northern Somalia to Cape Guardafui. This would take some weeks, as you stopped in ports, traded, stocked up on supplies, etc. The Somali coast was then, as it is now, a haven for pirates, and ships would sail together, or even hire bodyguard ships to go with them.
Hey, Ulfie - If you really want to make the case that the vikings reached India there is a much cooler artefact to help you “prove” your point. A statuette of Buddha from northern India was found in a viking hoard on Helgö back in 1954:
Yes, that was most likely a trader. The Persians were in the way of the Romans.
I just happened to see this discussion. A childhood mentor to whom I am distantly related ardently believed that our family descended from Vikinigs who came to what is now the U.S. in the 15th century. He believed they possibly came here out of religious persecution, as they were Hindus. He was a retired professor of philosopy and mathematics (though not history or archaeology) and not otherwise given to delusions. He had found some relics with both Old Norses runes and swastikas, and possibly other Hindu symbols, if I remember correctly. The Indians were also seafaring people and it’s possible they came into contact at some point. It seems unlikely, but then again how likely was it that people got to Tahiti and Hawaii from Japan in tiny canoes? Out of curiosity I recently had my DNA tested, and it turns out I am not the pure Icelander I had thought. I am 1/16 Indian; the other 15/16 is likely Icelandic, though of course that ethnicity is only about 1000 years old. I was at firsts excited to learn this, but then I realized that dates my Indian ancestor back conclusively only to the 19th century, not the Viking era. Some geneological research turned up my great great grandmother was in fact Indian. My great great grandfather was the son of a shipbuilder who moved to Scotland, and he was a solider in the British army and sent to Rajasthan. So no genetic proof of older connections in my genetic history. Anyone know if this source below is reliable? It claims Viking brought a Native American to Europe:
http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2010/11/-dna-reveals-vikings-brought-1st-native-american-indian-to-europe.html
There is a wide ranging podcast from the BBC “In our Time” radio program on the “Volga Vikings” the discussion ranges to all the Vikings trade routs etc well worth a listen. (IN Our Time has hundreds of Podcasts available free)
There were no vikings at all in the 15th century and no records of Scandinavian hindus at the time. The story sounds extremely unlikely.
And what information we have about Norse contact with native americans does not mention anything about bringing any of them to Europe.
So…Viking Hindus, who settled in America.
Sure, why not?
Of course the 10 year old OP’s buddies were misremembering the Varangian Guard who were elite troops and bodyguards for the Byzantine empire, which is pretty damn far away from Sweden.
The trouble for any Vikings who wanted to move to India is the same problem that everyone had during the Age of Exploration. Either you sail around Africa, or you trans-ship at Suez, or you go overland. And sailing around Africa is, like, really hard, even for bad-ass Vikings. If you catch a Red Sea transport to India you’re sailing as a passenger on someone else’s boat. And overland is a really long way to walk. Traders made money along the Silk Road, but you had to pay tribute to each local potentate along the way.
Of course while most people lived their lives within a few miles of the place of their birth, other people traveled vast distances. So it’s certainly plausible that a Viking or two or more ended up in India. But not frequent trips. Vikings certainly made frequent trips all over the Mediterranean basin, looting or trading whichever seemed profitable.
They may be “runes” but that doesn’t necessarily mean that Vikings made them. People traveled around most of the known world at the time and people in what are the Balkans, Asia Minor and The Levant knew of India through trade. It is possible that they traded items for the runes or that they transported them there if they weren’t too heavy.
There’s another possibility: Prior to The Crusades there were Norse raiders in the Mediterranean. Giving the distance between there home and the Med, there’s no doubt that some never made the return voyage and were either captured or killed. Captured prisoners would either be ransomed, if someone could pay, or were sold into slavery.
It is conceivable that enslaved Norsemen traveled as afar as India. Once you were taken captive back then, it was unlikely that you would ever be freed. Also escape was nearly impossible (as the Franks found 100-150 years later during The Crusades) as captured people didn’t look like the natives and couldn’t speak the languages.
A Norse slave could have found himself in India and perhaps wrote some things to remember his lost homeland. It would depend upon the quantity of runes found and where they were located, of course.
Can anyone cite an article, book, or archaeological paper concerning the alleged Norse runes found in India?
The Buddha found in Sweden likely fell into Viking hands in a roundabout way. It was found in a hoard alongside an Egyptian scoop and a Byzantine bowl, which suggests it was part of some merchant’s haul. Likely the statue journeyed down the Silk Road either to some bazaar in Constantinople – where it could have ended up in the hands of a Varangian – or to the Black Sea and from there to the Baltic, where a Swedish merchant could have snapped up such an exotic item. It may have taken the Buddha hundreds of years to go from hand to hand and end up in Sweden.
Yeah, the story of the Helgo Buddha sure would be fascinating. But it surely did not end up in Sweden because Hrolf Svensen sailed his knarr around the Cape of Good Hope in 743 AD to establish a colony of Vikings in Punjab, and then buggered off back home the same way carrying a load of buddhas and spices leaving blue-eyed children in every port along the way.
The Norumbega legend is hard to kill. There are even statues and memorials to Leif Erikson scattered around Boston.
Named Eben Horsford?