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

[Colibri]

@Ludovic

Did anyone else read the thread title as implying that the Spanish were the native populations and were expecting to read a thread about disease in Visigothic Spain?

If they did, they probably don’t want to admit it.

[Pleonast]

@Colibri

If they did, they probably don’t want to admit it.

Well, that actually was my first thought, but I’ve lately been playing a lot of Crusader Kings II in the ninth-century (usually as the Norse ).

[dtilque]

@TriPolar

Don’t get me wrong, the Vikings may have been to many more places and met many more North Americans than we know about, there’s just scant evidence to show that.

The “stone ruins [at Tanfield Valley] bear a striking resemblance to some Viking buildings in Greenland” according to the page I linked to. Plus there’s other evidence pointing to the Norse, so it’s very likely to have been a Norse outpost. A trading outpost, trading metal and wood (a rare commodity in the Arctic) for walrus ivory and pelts. Radiocarbon dates seem to put it about 300 years later than L’anse aux Meadows.

[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…

[Mr.Kobayashi]

Thanks for the replies fellas, seems a bit more involved than I first thought.

[Snorri_Thorfinnsson]

There is some evidence that the Church actively forbade contact between the Norse and the native Americans - which depending on how seriously the Greenland Norse took such things would have limited contact. (From the archaelogy of Greenland it appears that there was relatively little trade occurring between the two groups.)

In terms of the North American coast there were some other factors that could have limited the spread of disease. Norse cargo ships were notoriously slow so cases of infection would likely have gone beyond the incubation stage by the time they arrived from Greenland. And the sailing season between the two areas was severely limited - basically mid-June to mid-August (the latter month to ensure a safe return before mid-September) - a time when airborne diseases would have been less likely to spread since people would have spent (and wanted to spend) more time in the open air. From what I have read I find it doubtful that the Greenlanders wanted to colonize NA at that time - they were more interested in what cargos they could pull out of the area to support a Greenland whose resources were growing ever more scant. The L’Anse aux Meadows site certainly isn’t big enough to suggest a colonial attempt - more likely a waystation for ships to stop at on their way to and fro. So whatever contact there was between the two groups would have been much more sporadic than if permanent settlements had been in place.

[Andy_L]

@Ludovic

Did anyone else read the thread title as implying that the Spanish were the native populations and were expecting to read a thread about disease in Visigothic Spain?

Yes.