I’ve heard that the Viking colonies established in northern Canada a thousand years ago failed partly because of conflicts with the local native tribes. Is this so? What other reasons could there have been, and how might history have been affected if they had lasted?
Their hockey teams just couldn’t match true Canadian blood. They got eliminated early in the playoffs.
You might try here for an overview. The page implies that there was both trouble with the Natives and the shear isolation from the rest of Viking culture had parts to play. There is, however, very little in the way of direct evidence.
It was difficult for Europeans to gain a foothold in North America centuries later, even with guns and with true oceanic sailing vessels to provide regular resupply- advantages the Vikings didn’t have.
Even though explorers after Columbus soon learned about the northward extent of the coast, it was not permanently settled for nearly 100 years. The Spanish concentrated on exploiting their Carribean/South American empire. It’s been argued that settlement in North America wasn’t possible until after the native Americans had been decimated by European diseases, and even then the threat of attack persisted for decades.
In addition, the Viking settlements were in the far north and not the more temperate regions further south.
Finally, it may simply have been a historical fluke. If the luck of draw had been slightly beter, maybe the Vikings would have successfully colonized North America.
Too much room-temperature beer.
Another probably cause was the little Ice Age…You saw global cooling starting in the 1150s, finally hitting its peak in the early 1500s. As the climate cooled, colonies like Greenland, which were marginal and dependant on food imports anyway, became uninhabitable.
Jared Diamond’s Guns, Germs and Steel (a great book I just finished yesterday) touches upon this very question. Bascially, while the Vikings had advantages like steel weapons, some farming and (perhaps) disease resistance, they didn’t have true ocean-going vessels (they had to hop from Scandinavia to Iceland to Greenland to Baffin to Newfoundland), which meant that settlements couldn’t be steadily supplied. This also meant that the American colonies weren’t that much of an advantage to the homelands, so there was no big incentive to keep sending ships. Added to all that, the Vikings also lacked the horses (at least on the voyages to America) and guns that gave the Spaniards such a huge advantage over the Incans and everyone else they encountered in the Americas. Steel swords and axes just weren’t enough to make up for the Vikings’ small numbers.
Or, as the Icelandic pastor Olafur Einarsson complained in a poem in the 1500s:
http://www2.sunysuffolk.edu/mandias/lia/decline_of_vikings_iceland.html
Post-Columbian, the more virulent African diseases took a greater toll on American aborigines than did European diseases. The Vikings of course would not have brought any African strains to the New World.
No Spam!
It’s been a while since I read Guns, Germs, and Steel. Does Jared Diamond not mention this at all, Sublight?
There were conflicts with Native Americans, whom the Viking called “Scraelings,” a word of uncertain etymology. There were several skirmishes with the Scraelings but also murders amongst the Vikings themselves that led to their abandoning the colony. You can read about it in a translation of Erik the Red’s Saga: http://www.nlc-bnc.ca/2/16/h16-4207-e.html There is another saga, The Saga of the Greenlanders, which covers the same events but differs in many of the details. I can’t find it online.
The Greenlanders didn’t go away for good. They continued making timber runs to Labrador at least until 1347.
Sock:
As to your last question, if the vikings had succeeded in colonizing America, we’d all be a bunch of lilly-livered peacenik Scandanavian types with even worst food than we have now. On the plus, though, we’d have topless beaches!
Skraelings, not Screaelings. The modern Icelandic form is Skrælingjar and the Old Norse was Skrælingar (both plural).
RM Mentock-
Its been about a year since I read Diamonds GG&S, but yes I do beleive he mentions the “little ice age” as a important factor. Though I beleive he stresses the lack of guns, and germs- those after all being the cornerstones of the book’s thesis. Dont take that as a criticism of the book, I think its spectacular, and should be required reading in college level western civ.
Per Diamond:
I would add that at that time Europeans had neither the compass nor the printing press, two inventions that later proved decisive in the conquest and exploitation of the Americas.
The printing press was decisive to conquering the Americas?? Please elaborate.
Because seafarers did not have to rely solely on word of mouth and hand-written directions. Also the travelers’ accounts and discoveries could be more widely distributed.
He does.
Even before the Little Ice Age, though, organized agricultural settlements on Greenland were next to impossible. Almost everything they needed, including timber, had to be brought from Norway.
Of course, that’s assuming the British didn’t eventually kick them out anyway.