Why didn't contact with the Norse devastate native populations like the Spanish?

[MrDibble]

Previous recent threadthat touched on this. My answer to the OP’s question from there:

@MrDibble

Smallpox and measles (two candidates for highest body count in the New World) weren’t established in the Viking part of Europe at the time they voyaged West. Also, Viking culture wasn’t highly urbanized, and a certain level of urbanization is needed to sustain a pool of infectious diseases inbetween epidemics. The rise of plagues like the various poxes goes hand-in-hand with the rise in urbanization, and the people coming to America after 1492 were from those highly urban cultures (so often were asymptomatic carriers or recovered victims), unlike the Vikings.

@velomont

Another thing that I learned was that Vikings tended not to conquer and occupy but, instead, did “hit and runs (while doing maximum damage)” and that, when they stayed, tended to become assimilated.

Tell that to the Britons…