Counterfactuals: Viking North America

On today’s episode we tackle the counterfactuals of some of the most popular peoples in history: The Vikings. In the tenth century norse colonists began settling in Greenland, where they found surprising success in some far-northern reaches, before making landfall in North America. The settlements had all faded away by the 1400s, but what might have happened if it had all gone differently?

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to The History Guy podcast Counterfactuals. What is a
counterfactual in the context of studying history. It is a
kind of analysis where we examined what might have happened
had historical events gone differently as a thought experiment. The
goal is to learn and understand history as it is
by talking about what it could have been as a

(00:27):
twist on the historical stories that we tell on The
History Guy YouTube channel. This is a series of podcasts
that dwell on that eternal question what if. I'm Josh,
a writer for the YouTube channel and son of the
History Guy. If you're a fan of the channel, you
already know Lance the History Guy himself. To liven up
our discussions on what might have happened, we have invited

(00:48):
Brad wagnan history officionado and a longtime friend of The
History Guy, to join us. Remember that if you'd like
to support us, you can find us on Patreon, YouTube
and locals dot com. Join us as we discuss what
deserves to be remembered and what might have been. On
today's episode, we tackled the counterfactuals of some of the

(01:09):
most popular peoples in history, the Vikings in the tenth
century Norse colonists began settling in Greenland, where they found
surprising success in some far northern reaches before making landfall
in North America. The settlements had all faded away by
fourteen hundred, But what might have happened if it all
went differently? Find out on today's episode. Without further ado,

(01:33):
let me introduce the history guy.

Speaker 2 (01:41):
The Vikings are probably best known for their raiding, but
also for their passion for the sea and exploration. In
the Viking Age, Norsemen sailed all across the North Atlantic.
They raided down the west coast of Europe. They settled
in France and created Normandy in England. Years of conflict
led to north settlement and culture of Norway, Denmark and Sweden.

(02:02):
They sailed across the Baltic Sea and established settlements along
the shores. And they sailed west and settled numerous islands,
including Iceland and eventually Greenland.

Speaker 3 (02:12):
You've probably heard of Eric the Red. He's probably one
of history's most famous Vikings, and in many ways he
lived the life of a normal Viking, except he established
reputation for himself and his family that is so powerful
that people still recognize his name more than a thousand
years after his time. He established the first permanent settlements
in Greenland and indirectly the first recorded landing by Europeans.

Speaker 2 (02:36):
On American shores. It is history that deserves to be remembered.
Eric thorrevaldsn later to get the nickname the Red was
born around nine to fifty a d. To Thorvald avald
Son in Norway. When he was about ten years old,
his father was banished from Norway, apparently because he'd killed
another Norseman. Fortunately for a tenth century Norseman, there were

(02:57):
other lands filled with Norsemen where he could mind, and
he chose to take his family to Iceland, which had
been settled by the Norse beginning around eight seventy four.
Much of the best Land had already been settled, but
Torvald was able to find a suitable place to build
his home on the island's northernmost peninsula, Hornstrender, which lies
very near the Arctic Circle. Here Torvald was able to

(03:18):
successfully make a life for his family die before nine eighty.
Eric grew up in inhospitable and cold, but beautiful land
far from Lord cities. It's possible he may have even
seen Greenland from here he made possible only by a
mirage called the Hillinger effect, in which temperature and version
at the Earth's surface bends light in a way that
lifts the image of something below the horizon into view.

(03:40):
At high points in northwestern Iceland, it may have been
possible for him to see the lands that lay so
far distant. It isn't historically clear whether he saw this
mirage or not, although a Norseman would have certainly been
familiar with the way such mirages can obscure distance. Eric
married and moved south, settling and building a new house
for himself and his wife. The land he settled may

(04:01):
have belonged to his wife's family. It was here that
his son, who would rival Eric for historical fame, was born.
Archaeologists have excavated what they believed to be the site
of Eric's house, where a reconstructed longhouse and an open
air museum now stand. Much of what we know about
Eric and his family comes from two Norse sagas that
were written some two hundred years after the events were
supposed to have occurred, the Saga of the Greenlanders and

(04:24):
the Saga of Eric the Red. By the late tenth century,
the Age of the vikings was coming to an end,
and the Norse were no longer spending as much time
writing settlements and returning to their homelands. In Norway, Sweden,
and Denmark, Norsemen turned instead to a different, equally lucrative
activity business. No other culture had the skills the navy

(04:45):
or the sheer network that the Norse mariners had built
by settling across the North Atlantic. The Norse had always
been farmers and usually went rating during breaks from crops.
Eric and his wife had at least poor children and
seemed to have prospered. They owned at least a few thrawls,
kind of slave or serve or kind of servant. These
thralls seemed to have caused the first of Eric's run

(05:05):
ins with Norse law. While doing some kind of work,
Eric's thralls had caused a landslide that did damage to
a neighboring homestead. The thralls were killed for the damage,
and Eric in turn retaliated by attacking the killer and
killing about him and another. Like his father before him,
The settlement ordered him banished. The worst kinds of banishings
in Norse law involved the forfeiting of property and could

(05:25):
even make the banished an outlaw who could be killed
without repercussion. Eric probably earned his nickname because he had
red hair, but it is possible that he also earned
it because of his short temper. After being exiled, he
chose to settle off the island of Oxney, part of
a grouping of islands that sits near Iceland's coast. While
he worked on building a new house, he entrusted some
of his most surprised possessions to a friend and fellow settler,

(05:48):
dori Yest. These were large wooden beams covered in intricate
Norse symbols, brought by his father from Norway and left
to his son. These kinds of beams were held in
high regard and were of considerable religious, symbolic and value.
When he finished his house, it returned to collect the beams,
only to find, according to the saga, that they could
not be obtained. It isn't clear what happened to the beams,

(06:09):
but Eric quickly decided to take some by force. Whether
they were his or belonged to Dorriest isn't clear. In
the saga, Eric apparently expected that Dorriest would follow, and
so waited for it. When he arrived with a band
of armed men. Eric and his own men attacked, killing
several of Thrias's sons and others. Both then fortified their
houses and assembled as many men as possible, ready to

(06:30):
escalate the dispute. Instead of resorting to more bloodshed, the
men eventually turned to the Norse law, which involved assembling
all the local men for discussion at what was called
a thing. All free men of age could participate in
the decision making, which ultimately banished Eric yet again for
three years. His family was allowed to keep his land
in possessions and to take care of it while he

(06:50):
kept himself occupied until he could return. According to Icelandic tradition,
Eric was not the first Norseman to lay his eyes
on Greenland. That otter belonged to yunborn Us, who was
blown off course during a trip to Iceland. He claims
to have seen islands in the distance which would become
known as Gunebourne's Scaries. Some Norsemen attempted to settle on
these islands around nine to seventy, but the colony failed.

(07:12):
They were apparently a populis stop on later trips to Greenland,
and settlements did exist later, although the location of the
islands isn't certain, as in fourteen fifty six they were
apparently burned up destroyed by some kind of volcanic eruption.
Eric decided that he would spend his banishment doing something
useful by taking his men and exploring the nearby waters
around Iceland.

Speaker 4 (07:31):
They heard of the.

Speaker 2 (07:32):
Land mass that lay beyond Iceland, likely from stories of
Gunebourne and others, and hoped to sail west and discover
the lands for themselves. Perhaps even then, Erik hop to
find a new place he could settle after the scandal
with George Est. The distance between Iceland and Greenland is
at least one hundred and eighty miles. The east coast
of Greenland was not terribly inviting, and he couldn't find
a good place to land, so they followed the coast

(07:53):
south until they passed the southern tip now known as
Cape Farewell, until they found a place they could make
landfall on the western side of the island. When he arrived,
he found the island deserted. While they were likely ruins
and remains of much earlier pre Inuit people who had
lived in the area nearly two thousand years before. At
the time the only people living on the island seemed
to have been far to the north. Eric and his

(08:14):
men spent their first winter on the island that he
named Eric's Island. In the spring, began exploring, sailing in
a nearby fiord, which he named Eric's Fiord. What they
found was rich, arable land and fields where they could
grace their livestock. Over the next three years, he traveled
along the coast, exploring the newfound land, finding plenty of
good coastline where Norse could settle, and well little else.

(08:35):
He may have traveled thousands of miles by both in
this time, coming across many of the things that made
Greenland a good site for a colony, especially walrus for
their tusk, and animals like the Arctic fox and polar
bear with valuable pelts. Eric named a lot of locations
on his first trip, often after himself. Despite the island's
abundant ice, He chose to call the new island Greenland,
according to the saga of Eric the Red, because men

(08:57):
will desire much more to go there if the land
has a good name. Sometime in nine eighty five or
nine eighty six, his term of banishment ended, and he
returned with a ship to Oxney, where his family had
been dutifully working the soil and taking care of the house.
Eric had decided that he wanted to take his family
to Greenland, but the job of building a new colony
wasn't when he could take on a loane. He spent

(09:18):
the winter talking people into traveling with him to establish
their new colony. It isn't certain who else went with him,
but ultimately he seems to convince some three hundred people
that Greenland was going to be a winning bet. The
Sagas implied that those Vikings living on poor land in
Iceland were the families that chose to follow him, as
well as those who had suffered from a recent famine.
The first record of famine in Iceland was in nine

(09:40):
seventy six. The following summer of the fleet set off
with at least twenty five ships, of which only fourteen
eventually reached Eric's fiord. Eric, who seems to have struggled
to fit in with society in Iceland, turned out to
be a good leader for the colony. The successfully established
two colonies in Greenland. The first called the Eastern Settlement,
which was the largest and where Eric made his home

(10:00):
and the smaller Western Settlement, which set close to the
modern day capital of Greenland, Newark. Both settlements were not
set along the coast, but miles inland, where they had
some protection from the wind and sea. One issue the
settlers ran into was Greenland's lack of trees. For the North,
trees were a vital supply before building their low, long
house homes and for building ships. In Greenland they built

(10:20):
with stone. The Eastern settlement sat at the end of
Eric's Fiord, and he built himself a house there that
he called steep Slope. He became the paramount chief of
the Eastern Settlement and seems to have finally found his
place in the world. If he killed any other Norsemen,
it isn't reported. The settlement survived by trading the rare
and valuable goods like ivory and polar belt pelts back
to Europe, where they could in turn retrieve boats, timber,

(10:43):
and other necessary supplies. They farmed and raved live stock
traded back to Iceland and Norway. Eric's settlements grew, holding
at least twenty five hundred people and likely more. They
survived around five hundred years before declining and disappearing for
as yet uncertain reasons. Possible explanations include the intervention of
the Little Ice Age, declining quality of the soil, conflict

(11:03):
with the Native Inuit, who they met sometime in the
thirteenth century, and the falling value of Walrus Ivory and
Arctic pelts. Eric's contributions to world history amount to more
than the first permanent European settlements in Greenland. His second
son is just as recognizable as him, if not more so.
Laife Erickson is now credited with the first European visit
to mainland North America. The two sagas tell slightly different

(11:26):
versions of how Leife reached modern Canada. In the Saga
of the Greenlanders, Leife first hears about the land to
the west of Greenland when a fellow Norseman named Jarny
accidentally cites land after being blown off course trying to
reach Greenland. Noting that there are no glaciers, he determines
that this land is in Greenland and sails on. According
to the saga, Leife asks his father to lead an
expedition to the new land, but Eric's horse stumbles on

(11:47):
the way to the ship and Eric injures his foot.
It is not ordained that I should discover more countries
than that which we now inhabit, his father says, and
sends his son out alone. Laife comes to be known
as Leif the Fortunate or Laf the Lucky. He set
out to follow Jarni's journey in reverse, visiting in turn
halu Land, Markland, and finally Vinland. The various locations have

(12:08):
never been certainly identified, although halu Land meaning stone slab
land may refer to Baffin Island. Life spend some time
in Vinland, so named because of the discovery of grapes.
Some have identified la Omadeau, the only certain side of
Norse in North America, as the place of his landing,
although he may have misidentified some kind of berries as grapes,
which mostly grow further south. The Greenlanders saga then relates

(12:31):
several more trips to Vinland by les brothers of varying success.
In the Saga of Eric the Red, it is Laife
who discovers the new continent, returning to Greenland after spending
some time with Norwegian king Olaf, the first to charge
Lafe with spreading Christianity to Greenland Boonoff course, he spends
the winter in Vinland before returning home. Another group led
by other Greenlanders and Lace brothers and sister then traveled

(12:53):
to Finland, where they are eventually chased out by the locals,
who they call scraaling. The sagas that taw The's histories
are written versions of oral history that were only written
down hundreds of years after the events that they described.
But archaeology and for their study suggests that much of
it is true, at least the part about settlements in
Greenland and north landings in Finland. And it's possible that

(13:15):
there were many other settlements and many other Norsemen in
North America whose sagas didn't get written down and are
now lost to history. But what is clear is that
Eric's settlements in Greenland represented the western end of a
trade route that went all the way from the Arctic
Circle to Europe, a connection between pre Inuit peoples and
the castles of medieval Europe. And it's perhaps fitting that

(13:37):
had occurred in true Viking fashion because of two things,
boats and people who couldn't control their temper. Because, of course,
if Eric hadn't killed other Norsemen, then perhaps life never
would have come to North America.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Now, for the fun part were I the History Guy
himself and longtime friend of the History Guy Brad Wagnan
discuss what might have happened if all of this went
a little differently. Okay, so today we're talking about Vikings,
and we watched an episode specific about Eric, specifically about

(14:15):
Eric the Red. But there are a lot of different
directions that Vikings can go. So I think this is
shaping up to be a very interesting episode.

Speaker 2 (14:23):
It is though, you know, with Vikings, you are already
starting off with a counterfactual because most of what we
know come from sagas, which were often written hundreds of
years after the events were supposed to have occurred. Sometimes
are conflicting with each other or vague in places where
you wish they weren't, always leaving you wondering who saga
did not get written and who was trying to sell

(14:43):
something with the saga that did. And so it's interesting
because we're already counterfactual even when we start here. But
you know, it's the only archaeologically verifiable visit by Vikings
to North America was found. It was archaeologically found through
the Binlin saga, So I mean they can actually be

(15:03):
you know, respectfully accurate. But you know, on the other hand,
you know, I don't see don't know how many people
got locked in their long house and set fire to
but it seems like more than would reasonably have occurred
if you were to listen.

Speaker 5 (15:15):
To Having read the heims Kringla in several of the sagas,
it seemed to be more or less a weekly event.

Speaker 4 (15:21):
So don't go inside that.

Speaker 5 (15:26):
I'm really not sure if this is an indication that
it was just the most sensational story that got applied
to the accidental air quotes demise of an entire family
and or a household, and it just sounded good for
the equivalent of the penny dreadfuls or dime comics of
the era, or whether in fact it was actually kind

(15:47):
of a cultural norm that if you got angry enough
at someone that.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
That's how you got rid of the local warlord.

Speaker 6 (15:54):
You locked the door and set fire to the place. Yeah,
you have to take him.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
Like like other histories, you have to assume that it's
there's lessons to be taught here, and that some of
it is purely symbolic.

Speaker 4 (16:06):
And so it is.

Speaker 2 (16:07):
We're we're already counterfactual with what we think we know
about the the the Norse, but I mean that still
has given us, you know, extradinary record.

Speaker 1 (16:17):
Yeah, there's certainly been a lot, a lot of academic
study on the on the Sagas, and people have different
opinions on which parts are true and which parts are fictional.
And except for say mentions, there's only a handful of
mentions of Vinland elsewhere in in you know, outside of
the Sagas, and of course the I mean for a

(16:38):
long time, I think that it was essentially believed to
be completely mythical or unlikely, except that now now we
found that one site, And it makes you think if
we find one, that that probably means there are at
least dozens of others that, you know, for whatever reason,
don't survive into the archaeologic archaeological record, whether they're you know,
not built as big as the one at Lonzo Meadows,

(17:01):
or if it's under the water now, which happens to
a lot of stuff that's going to be on the
on the shore. I mean, there's it makes you think
that there probably was some more connection than just the one.
It seems unlikely that we found one hundred percent of
the you know, of the visits to the to North
America there. But on the other hand, there's lots to

(17:22):
question about the sagas and how they tell those stories,
and it's hard to know exactly. I mean, some of
the people in those stories, they tend to think are
totally fake, and some of the stories, I mean, like
a Lafe's sister Frey as easy Active Fradus. Fradus, I
think is often considered to be a completely a literary invention,

(17:42):
and her story does seem a little more perhaps literary,
than some of them, but they all have a literary.

Speaker 5 (17:49):
To a portion of the show I'd like to call
let's talk about some myths. So Viking's wearing horned talbots. Yes,
we all know that that's that's pretty silly, But there
are some others that, you know, I think are far
more persistent. And one of the ones we were discussing
pre show was did vikings look like biker gangs with

(18:11):
tribal and runic tattoos from head to toe?

Speaker 2 (18:15):
That's a good question, and you know, honestly don't know
if there's an archaeology.

Speaker 6 (18:20):
To explain that.

Speaker 1 (18:22):
I do.

Speaker 6 (18:23):
What do you think did vikings look like biker gangs?

Speaker 5 (18:25):
The literary evidence is from an Arab diplomat who met
a trading delegation of the Roofs who were coming down
the Volga and the Rus at this point were essentially
Swedish Vikings who traveled up and down the Volga, and
he claimed that they were tattooed from fingertip to hairline.
So there is a literary reference to it, but it

(18:48):
seems to be the only one. The archaeology is really
tough because even though the archaeology Viking sites has made
has given us leaps and bows of just more knowledge
than we've ever had before of the Viking era, skin
just tends to break down too quickly, so actually finding

(19:10):
an extent cadaver with tattoos on it has not happened
at this point and all of the other sagas and
chronicles of the time, you would assume that if tattooing
was the norm, that those who were getting raided by
the Vikings would have added. Not only were they, you know,
devils twelve feet tall, breathing fire and breaking down the

(19:32):
door of every abbey, but you know they have strange
darcaane symbols that clearly show their spawn of the devil,
or something to that effect. So the jury is still
out of it at this point. It's a conjecture. It's like,
you know, they might have, but yeah, there's a very
little evidence to actually support it.

Speaker 1 (19:49):
We know that like it that there was tattooing practiced
at that time. We just don't know if it was.
It's difficult to know if the Vikings themselves were.

Speaker 5 (19:59):
Another myth we're doing that is interesting, I think, is
that they've actually gone through and studied grave sites and
the Vikings were not particularly tall people. Contemporarily contemporaneously they
were described usually as very tall, but they actually are
more or less in line with the rest of Europe.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
See, and that is interesting And is that just I mean,
I guess you can explain explain it at least partially
as they're just afraid, you're afraid of the vicious people
coming through her, and you just even you imagine them
as large. But maybe it's you know that also they
were so terrifying to say too, how much they came
as raiders, how much they came as traders.

Speaker 2 (20:37):
I mean, there's at the Meadows, there's there's every suggestion
that they abandoned when they ran into armed conflict with
the natives, which suggests that they maybe weren't as fierce
or warriors as they say that they are, or that
they didn't didn't want to choose conflicts. But I mean, yeah,
if if this is someone who's rating, who's taking your land,
who's you know, showing up by the boat load like

(20:58):
they did in England, you can see how they might
get a reputation for being particularly large individuals.

Speaker 6 (21:04):
Even if it wasn't necessarily the case.

Speaker 1 (21:06):
It is interesting because you would think based on what
we know, and we know remarkably little about you know,
what these the Native Americans around one thousand eighty would
have looked like and who they we you know, we
only know a little bit about who they would have been.
But you would think that the Vikings would have had
a significant technological advantage in terms of their weaponry because

(21:28):
probably they're using.

Speaker 4 (21:29):
They did, they did have a forged area.

Speaker 1 (21:31):
And that the that the the Natives would not have
been using metal. But on the other hand, you know,
an arrow can be just as deadly.

Speaker 2 (21:39):
Well, it was not a large encampment now they you know,
they never apparently had a great deal of people there.
But if it was primarily built there in order to
collect timber. I mean then they you know, they might
not have been you know, a military force. They might
have had been more of a domestic force. You know,
it might not have taken them of course too. I
mean I mean imagine living trying to see it's not warm.

(22:03):
So I mean it might not take a lot to say, well, fine, yeah,
like this neighborhood all that much.

Speaker 1 (22:08):
Anyway, Well, and they were we are a ways after
the kind of the the legendary Viking age of the
Vikings had settled more or the people we understand, you
know that we call Vikings had somewhat settled to be
less raiders, more traders by you know, by a thousand
day deep. And that's also I mean essentially why all

(22:28):
the Greenland settlements existed was that they were they were
trading stuff to Europe. And it seems like when that
trade started to dry up, so did the so did
the settlements.

Speaker 2 (22:37):
Because I was talking about how this is all alternative
history to start with, it is interesting because we know
they had two settlements in Greenland, and we know that
they chips disappeared both the Western and Eastern settlement, and
there's lots of reasons to think why one of those
being that now there was an ivory supply coming from
Africa that was much larger, and so their trade in
walrus tusks was no longer profitable. But the thing is,

(23:00):
the sagas tell us about them going. They occasionally talk
about someone who came back, but the sagas don't explain
what happened to the Greenland colonies, which would have been
a few thousand individuals. And that's again, so you don't know,
you don't know what's left out of the saga. You know,
what saga was forgotten, or what saga wasn't written, or
maybe they all hopped in you know, ten boats and
they all got blown out to sea. I mean, that

(23:22):
could have happened. But I mean there's there's a lot
we don't know there, so we can guess. I mean,
there's lots of guessing about why they abandoned Greenland. But
one of the interesting things is we don't we don't
know where they went, and so that really does tell
us what the gap is, but it gives lots of
room for counterfactuals. I mean, the assumption is that they
came back to Iceland or something like that, but I mean,

(23:44):
what if they did go west, what if they did
go farther than we realized and we just haven't discovered
the archaeology yet.

Speaker 4 (23:50):
And you know what if there was.

Speaker 2 (23:51):
More than the medals, what if they you know what
if it went much farther down.

Speaker 4 (23:55):
And so it does give you a lot of it.

Speaker 2 (23:56):
And of course then that leads, you know, to this
big question because because people will tell you, especially in
this kind, we're at an anti Columbus age, I think
everybody safely say, and so you will hear very much, Oh,
Vikings were in America before Columbus. But of course it's
you can't compare the two. I mean, the Vikings apparently
forgot that they went there, and apparently only very lightly
touched North America. But what if, like Columbus, what if

(24:16):
they had stayed or if they had truly connected Europe
to the New World. And you know, how different would
the contact between the Old World and how different would
the colonization be? How different would North America be if
when Columbus showed up, if there were Viking colonies, you know,
Norse colonies all the way.

Speaker 4 (24:34):
Down to Florida.

Speaker 2 (24:35):
And that's that's that's an interesting question, especially since there's
a possibility that a couple of thousand Vikings it had
reason to abandon Greenland, might have chosen to go west,
and we just.

Speaker 4 (24:47):
Don't know what happened to them.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
But I mean it shows a potential that there could
have been instead of what might have been something that
was occupied for maybe ten years out of thirty on
a seasonal basis, which is kind of what we got. Now,
what if there had been a Virginia Line colony or
a Plymouth like colony of Vikings first, and they.

Speaker 4 (25:04):
Had had a much higher contact with North America.

Speaker 2 (25:08):
And that's that's one of the really fun questions when
you ask about counterfactuals with the Vikings, is if you
really could make the case, you know, not just that
the Vikings had touched North America first, but where if
they touched in the way that Columbus did. I mean, yes,
you know, the language might differ, might be different, maybe uh, Scandinavia,
maybe Norway, and the Norse would have been much more
important in Europe in the you know, the next five centuries,

(25:30):
and Spain would be much less important in Europe in
the next five centuries. But I mean it's more than
you know, we'd have the United States today, We just
all you know, talk like the Swedish chef on you know,
on on the Muppets, it's it's it's more than as
they say, how how different might that have done things?
And that leads us to interesting questions like how did
they interact with the natives? And which is hard because

(25:50):
we don't even really know who the natives were at
the time.

Speaker 1 (25:52):
They talk about it as being I guess like Thule
culture is what is what they call it archaeologically, but
we just we know very we know very little about
about who those people were, and we have no idea
if they moved further south. Certainly the Vikings would have
been capable of following the coastline. In fact, in some
ways it actually makes a lot of sense the way

(26:14):
that Europe would have found in North America would have
been by island hopping from Iceland to Greenland. And it
seems like ultimately the you know, the Vikings talk about
it in the Sagas as if it was very fertile,
awesome land, but it must not have sold all that
well in Europe because they don't There wasn't this this

(26:34):
idea of oh, we've discovered some beautiful new land that's
full of resources, and you wonder why Europe didn't. I mean,
was it just not widely known? It was known at
least a little bit because Adam of Adam of Bremen,
I think, is one who mentioned it, so you know,
somebody had heard at least the rumors of where the
Vikings were going at it seems like it could have been.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
Tried to at least sell it as a colony.

Speaker 4 (26:58):
But yeah, it was a long way to travel.

Speaker 2 (27:01):
But you know the other I mean, when you really
talk about it as counter fashions, say, was that realistic?
Because you know, the entire population of Viking Greenland was
a couple thousand and while they were overpopular for what
you can do in Viking Greenland, which, by the way,
it sounds more and more like a game of sieve,
But how big can that city get when there's white

(27:21):
tundra all around it?

Speaker 4 (27:23):
Right?

Speaker 2 (27:23):
But so, I mean, did they have the population to
do what the Spanish did or what the English finally did.
Did they have this large, you know, demanding population, especially
since we're talking here really at the Viking period when
they're being hit by the European diseases, right, smallpox and
I mean plague, and so you know, their population just

(27:44):
wasn't that large, and they weren't unified people at this
time either, and so it's not really realistic to argue
that they would. Matter of fact, you know, I think
it's believable that the Meadows was the only place that
they ever stayed with any period of time. They used
that as a base camp, and they went out and
did some trading and caught some salmon, and maybe there
weren't any other something that might have been the biggest
city that the Vikings ever had on.

Speaker 6 (28:05):
The North American content.

Speaker 2 (28:06):
And there's reason to believe that could have been much
more because Nully was that there. But I mean, it
would it would be very difficult to.

Speaker 6 (28:12):
Find it archaeologically.

Speaker 4 (28:14):
Did they Did they have even.

Speaker 2 (28:15):
The population to have done that, even if they had
the will and the interest, you know, probably not. But
you know, the evidence seems to indicate when when Europeans
first showed up, they had relatively friendly relationships in you know,
at the start, that quickly turned into hostile relationships. And
it seems like that's the same thing that was happening
to the to the to the Nors. You know, maybe

(28:36):
it would have been the same conquest. You know, we
just you know, we'd have different colored beards or or
you know, or maybe being a trading people, maybe they,
you know, would have had a more friendly interaction that
would not have resulted in the in the conquest of
North America. That might have resulted in you know, a
European living side by side with Native Americans in a

(28:58):
much friendlier way.

Speaker 6 (28:59):
That we ended up.

Speaker 1 (29:01):
One of the reasons that might be possible is because
because they have smaller numbers of people, you know, so
they're not necessarily these these colonies that are growing and
growing and expanding. And so maybe if you know, the
Vikings were more willing to have limited people essentially in
these places and use them primarily as trading posts. I mean,
maybe something even along the lines of like the French

(29:23):
fur trading posts that you maybe there's just you have,
you know, this connection, but you don't have the you know,
the burning of Jamestown kind of thing, just because they
don't feel as threatened. On the other hand, these were
very different cultures, and I mean that's part of why
we fought in the you know, in the sixteen seventeen hundreds,
and maybe it would have been exactly the same in

(29:45):
a thousand and eight, and they just would have fought.
It does like if we were talking conquest of North
America happens five hundred, six hundred years before before it did.
I don't know. I don't know what that changes, because
it doesn't seem I mean, it ultimately seems like whether
smallpox and stuff arrives in one thousand eighty or in

(30:07):
fourteen ninety two, it's going to have a dramatic impact
on the population. And of course, I mean, if it
happens in a thousand eight, you're talking about, you know,
killing earlier generations. Of course, that has some kind of
huge impact that is almost impossible to measure since we
don't we know very little about the individuals who would
have been here between a thousand and fifteen.

Speaker 2 (30:28):
It wouldn't guess they would have better resistance to smallpox.
I mean, so the reason that the Vikings touching North
America did not lead to the massive impacts of the
Columbian exchange and the disease and all that sort of thing,
it was that their touch was so light that so
there were so few of them. They didn't encounter enough
Native Americans, though it was you know, this was the

(30:48):
smallpox period, so it does seem strange if they were
meeting the I guess in Canada they prefer the term
First Nations, But if you were meeting indigenous people, you know,
you would have been exposing them to those European illnesses.

Speaker 4 (31:01):
But maybe you know, those.

Speaker 2 (31:02):
Were even such isolated pockets that it just didn't it
didn't go anywhere. So it's it's a fair point to
say that much of you know, for good are bad,
because you can talk all you want about the Columbian
Exchange because it also brought you know, medicine and metalworking
and you know, I mean, there's reasons why it wasn't
necessarily entirely negative. And we've had that conversation on other
channels before that much of the negative part of the

(31:24):
Columbian Exchange, which was the trading of disease, would have
occurred if it had been you know, Vikings in greater number,
Norsemen in greater number.

Speaker 4 (31:32):
Than Yeah, I think the same as Ians.

Speaker 5 (31:34):
I do think that you know, to put this in
cont to put it into context, at least, the description
that we have with the initial colonization of Greenland is
that twenty five ships set out and only ten made it.
So the Viking ships at the time were the height
of technology. But for them to make such large over
ocean voyages, especially in seas that are full of ice

(31:57):
and prone to storms, certainly it's not surprising that, you know,
the initial colonization and very infrequent travel would eventually have
led to people saying this is not much. This kind
of leads into another counterfactual. What if the Vikings land
on shore and they discover gold or some other extraordinarily

(32:18):
valuable natural resource. True, even with as we saw in
the eighteen hundreds in America, you know, people would load
up into wagons and cross you know, thousands of miles,
or they would get on a steamer ship and brave
and overland route over Central America that was certainly not
easy and quite lethal.

Speaker 2 (32:37):
Quite often a handful of Spaniards did an awful lot
because they saw gold and silver. And so I guess
that's a fair point. You know, if they had found
more than timber and salmon, you know, would they have
would they have perhaps been a.

Speaker 4 (32:50):
Lot more aggressive?

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Yeah, because that's that's that's essentially that equation of how
valuable is it?

Speaker 6 (32:55):
Right?

Speaker 1 (32:55):
And then if it's if it's timber and salmon, that
only that only weighs the scales so much.

Speaker 2 (33:01):
But well, I mean it's interesting because if they had
to abandon Viking Greenland, then arable land would have said
to have.

Speaker 4 (33:09):
Been very, very valuable to them.

Speaker 2 (33:11):
Yeah, but also potentially that point they were simply easier
places to get that than going all.

Speaker 1 (33:17):
The way to this known there is some question about
how the climate changed. They'll talk about that being during
the medieval warm period. What I was reading about it
kind of suggests we're not really sure just how profound
an impact that had on like you know, the arable
land in Greenland, or how or how much ice that

(33:38):
meant that you know, there wasn't in the water. It's
possible that they were essentially in a very short period
where it was simply easier to get to Greenland than
it would have been, you know, one hundred years before
or after.

Speaker 2 (33:48):
Is I know there was some because part of the
ideas that the little ice Age had had made the
land not arable anymore. But they did some excavation, I believe,
and what they really found is that their food supply shifted.

Speaker 4 (34:00):
They weighed a lot more seafood.

Speaker 2 (34:02):
But they seem to have stayed well well fed throughout
even though they were not as able to raise livestock.
So I think the idea that they simply economically, you know,
they weren't. If all that you're getting up there is
walrus tusks and suddenly the demand for walrus tusks has
collapsed because of Africa, then I think that's probably a
better exploration. But yeah, it might be. It simply might be.

(34:24):
If it's too cold to get to Greenland, then it's
too cold to get all the way over to Finland. Yeah,
they clearly didn't find any lands that they thought was
I mean, they didn't find the gold. They didn't find
this land that they were like, this is worth living here.
Just to live here there was clearly you have to
be able to well. I mean maybe that's you have
to be able to make a living wherever you are, right,

(34:45):
and that's if you can't do that. I mean, the
Greenland group didn't seem to go there for anything other
than they wanted land.

Speaker 6 (34:51):
They could the.

Speaker 2 (34:52):
People that he was able to that Eric the Red
was able to recruit or people who had marginal.

Speaker 6 (34:57):
Land in Iceland.

Speaker 2 (34:58):
Yeah, and they were coming there for better land, so
you would think that there was so much land. But
of course, you know, they get here and they find
other people already living on that land. Maybe that was
that was why it is we know that their relations
with indigenous people that they ran into were usually ended
up hostile. And one of the other explanations for what
happened to the Greenland colonies was that the Inuit were

(35:22):
migrating south. They called them skraylings, and that might have
been conflict. I mean, I would imagine that they had
the same when they're calling them scraylings and they kind
of portray them as being some sort of demon or
something like that. I'd imagine that that's the same reason
that people thought vikings were particularly tall when you're in
conflict with someone. So it might have simply been why
do you want to go, you know, where there's orcs,

(35:45):
when there's these terrifying native people that you can't quite understand,
who can be, you know, quite violent. Why would you
do that when there was when there was other places
where you could find your terrible land.

Speaker 1 (35:55):
There's very little evidence they ever went further south, which
I think is interesting because they would have found better
land maybe.

Speaker 2 (36:01):
But I mean, there's people that will tell you. In fact,
we'll get some comments here. I think they were in
Wisconsin or whatever. But the archaeologists tend to say there
is nothing that can be archaeologically verified really south of
the meadows. Those I mean, the you know, the ruined
stones and the coins or stuff like that, are at
least doubtful. Of course, we all know they were burying

(36:22):
gold or something on Oak Island, but that's that's different.

Speaker 6 (36:24):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 1 (36:25):
You know, when I was in when I was at
Cheets and Itza, there is a panel somewhere that appears
to show men with beards, and the idea is that
the Mayans did not grow facial hair, and therefore these
these must be bearded Europeans, and so they've used that
as possible evidence of these are you know, these were
vikings that reached the Maya. I don't find that particularly

(36:49):
convincing myself.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
There's a lot of ruins that are interpreted different ways.
I think they found helicopters and spaceships too, So it's
kind of.

Speaker 6 (36:56):
Hard to say.

Speaker 2 (36:56):
But you know, if a do can come from Sweden
and be trading with Bazar team or a down at
Volga I mean, yeah, they were. They were hardy people
who went very long distances.

Speaker 4 (37:06):
So so I mean who was there? Someone?

Speaker 2 (37:09):
Was there a norseman who just kept rolling his boat
as long as he could see.

Speaker 4 (37:12):
Sure, it's kind of hard.

Speaker 2 (37:14):
To imagine that they made it all the way down
to you know, Central America and got carved into a
stone wall.

Speaker 1 (37:19):
Yeah, right, but maybe not impossible.

Speaker 2 (37:22):
Maybe not impossible. I mean they were They would lots
of crazy people with lots of crazy places before, you know,
earlier than we thought that they could.

Speaker 4 (37:29):
And so that is an interesting question.

Speaker 6 (37:31):
Now.

Speaker 2 (37:31):
Of course that Labrador, Newfoundland area, that is one of
the areas it's always been a hospital. We always know
where sasquatch live, and so it's possible, of course that
that those were the Scralings. It's possible that really what
happened to the Vikings was they didn't want to fight
those nine foot tall beasts and that's what terrified them away.

Speaker 4 (37:49):
I think I don't think we can discount that.

Speaker 5 (37:52):
We can certain these facts cannot be more.

Speaker 2 (37:54):
It cannot be because there was this was as squatchy
a place as you might be. You know, who knows
what this squatch population wasn't a thousand ze you know
in Newfoundland might have been quite high.

Speaker 1 (38:05):
Yeah, maybe that was their golden era and they were
that that's when they were most numerous.

Speaker 4 (38:10):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 5 (38:11):
Yeah. Back to Greenland, it, I do want to I
want to throw in a few things. First of all,
we have some really interesting parallels between this week's episode
and last week's episode, and that is a group of
adventurous men travel to a wild frontier in search of
X y Z and in this case in Greenland. I

(38:34):
think that initially what happened. I think that Eric the
Red sold Greenland as Okay, hey, all of you guys
who are down here with me on the northern end
of Iceland, on the land, that just the only reason
we got it was because no one else had taken
it already, because it was, you know, pretty marginal. You know,
let's go find some new farmland. And then they rapidly

(38:56):
discovered that oh hey wait a second, said a beaver pelt.
They found walrus tusk. And what I have read is
that the Walsh walrus tusk ivory tray from Greenland back
through Morway was substantial.

Speaker 2 (39:14):
How many many must have been there? Yeah, because yeah,
you find them throughout Europe. I mean, and again that
goes away when they when they start getting ivory from Africa.

Speaker 4 (39:22):
But that's a fair point.

Speaker 2 (39:24):
Of course, Greenland not squatchy, no trees, so it would
have been I don't know what the maybe had where
nasty walruses, but.

Speaker 5 (39:31):
Yeah where wid squatch have hidden squatch russ you know.

Speaker 1 (39:35):
Now I'm imagining sasquatch riding on the walruses.

Speaker 5 (39:39):
This becomes a far more intimidating and potentially violent outcome.

Speaker 1 (39:46):
If I were a Viking in Greenland and I see
some kind of giant ape riding on a walrus, I'd
leave too, Yeah, galumping down the we gotta go, we
gotta beach.

Speaker 5 (40:04):
Yeah. So and then yeah, I can see, by the way,
a very reasonable explanation for white Greenland, especially after the
wall recite trade dried out. And it is also extraordinarily possible,
as you've said, you know, twenty five ships sailed to Greenland,
only ten made it. If only ten or fifteen sailed

(40:24):
away from Greenland with those final hardy families who said, yeah,
we're toughing out, but not anymore, okay, everyone, because farm
comes the colonies. The colonies are stripped of anything valuable. Yeah,
there's you know, you do not find the sorts of
things that you would associate finding if someone had been
overrun by native population. You don't find clearly abandoned points,

(40:49):
you don't find houses still full of the belongings. It
appears as if they basically had packed up and were
ready to move.

Speaker 2 (40:58):
Yeah, it seems like they have. And it's just so
it's so strange that all the sagas talk about where
they went and don't talk about them coming back. Because
there's a saga even talks about just a couple that
got married and they went back to Iceland, and you
have the whole record of their marriage. So, I mean,
two people come back to Iceland makes a saga in
two thousand come back from from Greenland and no one
says anything. So but it is it's it's totally believable

(41:20):
that the entire population of Viking Greenland, when they decided
to leave, died in a storm.

Speaker 6 (41:25):
I mean, that's that's that's quite possible.

Speaker 2 (41:27):
Yeah, I sincerely God had anything to do with Sasquatches
writing walruses, because you think they wouldn't have lasted two
hundred years and that was that was going on, right.

Speaker 1 (41:36):
Well, unless they all would have died out much quicker.

Speaker 5 (41:38):
Yeah, unless they were unless they were very extraordinarily tough
Vikings and were able to face such fear.

Speaker 1 (41:46):
Well, you know, if we're if we're thinking like Beowulf,
uh Sasquatch writing a walrus can't be scarier than Gregor,
that's true.

Speaker 5 (41:54):
I don't think so.

Speaker 2 (41:55):
Grendel could have been a Sasquatch. That's that's a fair point.

Speaker 1 (41:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (42:00):
Now, this, I think is the most interesting counterfactual that
we've come up with on all of the episodes we've
discussed so far, was Grendle in fact Sasquatch.

Speaker 1 (42:11):
We don't know who wrote Beowolf, maybe maybe as opposed
to an Anglo Saxon epic poem, it actually is a Sasquatch,
maybe an epic poem.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
And from the Sasquatch. Yeah, so there's their epic story.
And then if I can stole.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
That, you know, there is one of the interesting things
I think if you imagined that after the Little Ice Age,
that some separated group of Greenlandic Vikings or even you know,
they go to Newfoundland or somewhere in Canada there and
managed to continue surviving, it's possible that if they were

(42:48):
able to, you know, survive in any sense. I mean
they would have had they had Christianity, but they would
have had a separated, possibly strange version of Christianity compared
to Rome Catholicism. I wonder, you know, if if you
have something like that, what that might have looked like,
Because it certainly seems possible that, you know, if they

(43:09):
were hardy enough, they could have survived in some small pocket,
but it would have been difficult. I mean, it would
have been a hearty existence.

Speaker 2 (43:18):
Well, and if it was, if it was a small
group over five hundred years, they might have simply bred
with the native population of the point where they were
in distinguishedable right.

Speaker 4 (43:26):
Yeah, another very possible.

Speaker 5 (43:28):
Another consideration would be just how large a group isiness
and what skills and learning do they have they can
pass on. I mean, if a boatload of primarily farmers
and timber cutters land and somehow becomes stranded and this
group does not have anything better than what the indigenous

(43:52):
people have. For instance, you know, the ability to work iron,
working iron in the in this day and age is
certainly not a it's not an easy task, it's a
very it is a very specialized skill, and your best
weapon makers and best blacksmiths are probably not coming along

(44:15):
for a voyage, or perhaps you do convince one to
come along for the voyage, because you do need someone
who can periodically, you know, pound out a nail or
you know, create some small piece of iron that's necessary
to keep the ship aflop. However, especially if they land
in an area where there is not an iron supply,
what else did the Vikings breen? Because once their initial

(44:35):
stash of iron weapons to teriorate over time, then you know,
suddenly your year back to the more or less the
same technological level as the indigenous peoples, and then you
end up going native, and interestingly, you know, become become
perhaps the progenitor of the odd red haired Native American
from the east coast of Canada. And everyone's trying to

(44:58):
figure out, Wait a second, where did the red hair
come from?

Speaker 1 (45:02):
Where did that come from? And it's certainly, you know,
there's no records in the sagas of anything like interbreeding,
but it's certainly not impossible.

Speaker 5 (45:13):
Well, and as we all know, a ship full of
sailors who haven't seen a woman in a while, they
have some rather interesting motivations and you would assume that
if there were women available, that there would probably be
an attempt to you know, either capture them or to
make more friendly relations or more diplomatic relations, if you will.

Speaker 1 (45:34):
It's interesting, I don't I've not heard of any studies
that have shown that there there's any kind of like
you know, Norse DNA. But I mean also might have
just been this might have been small enough that you
wouldn't pick it up in populations very easily. And of course,
after smallpox hit hundreds of years later, I mean, maybe
that just wipes out enough people that you it's totally

(45:55):
absent in the population. Anyway, in terms of like the
best case scenario I could see if the Vikings coming
were to benefit the Native Americans, the only thing I
could really see is that smallpox travels around enough during
you know, those five hundred years that the population that
is left has enough immunity that when the Spanish show up,

(46:17):
it doesn't wipe out in the same way. And if
they're able to bring I mean, if they were able
to bring something like iron working, I mean, maybe the
the suddenly the Europeans showing up later would be would
be seeing something very different possibly, but You're right, that
would have been a difficult thing to carry with you.

Speaker 4 (46:34):
There wasn't there was a forge at.

Speaker 2 (46:36):
The meadows, though, I mean there's evidence of a forge
at the metals, now that's true. It seems almost peculiar
that iron working didn't work its way more into the
into the population.

Speaker 1 (46:44):
Because even if even if the Native Americans had you know,
even if they hadn't picked up smallpox, if they had
picked up you know, iron forging, and that spread across, uh,
the whole continent. We found we found that the trading
was remarkably complex, and that they the trade networks were
moving stuff very far across the civilization.

Speaker 2 (47:05):
Come steals your tech, Yeah, it work and work for And.

Speaker 1 (47:10):
Suddenly they were throwing sticks and stones. And now suddenly
they've got tanks, still iron working.

Speaker 2 (47:16):
Still, they still armor, they're still armor.

Speaker 4 (47:18):
They had palanxes.

Speaker 2 (47:19):
But no, I don't know, people play the game, but
h yeah, I mean, it would seem that would have
been extraordinary enough. That's one of the things that natives
would have been interested in. I mean, they have every
reason to think that they were trading. They're just not
quite sure what they were trading and with whom. So
I mean, it's it's interesting because if that was I mean,
if they were spreading that technology, you think it would.

Speaker 6 (47:41):
Have spread further.

Speaker 2 (47:42):
But once again, i mean, what we know about the
Meadows is that it was occupied for maybe twenty years,
maybe ten, over a period of thirty.

Speaker 4 (47:48):
Years, that it was occupied seasonally.

Speaker 2 (47:50):
It's not a very large site, so maybe the touch
was just very very light, only a few people meeting,
only a few people, and so we didn't get anything
like the Columbian Exchange.

Speaker 1 (48:01):
It's tantalizing as far as the counterfactuals go to imagine
what those changes could have brought from, from something like
a Viking kingdom that you know exists there for centuries
to something like, you know, some kind of Native Americans
that have their culture changed from that that interaction. And

(48:25):
it's clear, i mean, it's very clear that whatever that
connection was, it wasn't it wasn't long was not so significant.
We don't find any trace of you know, like Norse
words in any of those languages, or any kind of
place names. And that just never never truly felt like
there was enough opportunity in Greenland. Since he had to,

(48:46):
and he admits he had to kind of Greenwash if
you will the idea of living in Greenland. You think
that Eric knew from the beginning that it was not
it was not necessary the best land. It maybe wasn't
much more much less marginal than what they were already
living in an Iceland. You know, they were used to

(49:08):
cold land, or you had short growing seasons and stuff
like that. But I think Greenland was probably a step
beyond from Iceland and Norway.

Speaker 6 (49:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (49:18):
Maybe he already had a reputation, you know, selling swamp
plant in Florida there and so that they couldn't it
couldn't sell them on on Vinland.

Speaker 1 (49:25):
Yeah, yeah, that's the I mean, it's you wouldn't.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
Say that Labrador and Newfoundland or they are the places
that you would first choose to to settle in North America.

Speaker 6 (49:34):
If that was your choice.

Speaker 5 (49:35):
There are very few retirement communities used.

Speaker 2 (49:42):
It was clearly pretty darn darn cold where they were
would have been easy if you were if you were
just doing that.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
The Sagas talk about it, talk about it like like
when they found Viinland, They're like it was paradise, Like well,
if it was, if it was truly paradise, maybe a
maybe it would have spent more time there, but.

Speaker 6 (49:57):
Maybe maybe maybe would have gotten more people.

Speaker 2 (49:59):
Yeah, but I mean there's a reason, you know, they
say they found bonstones and coins and stuff that people
have argued met that Vikings made it all the way
down to the Great Lakes and stuff like that. No
archaeologists is archaeology is very much unconvinced by that. Yeah,
but you can see why people are willing to believe it,
because if you understand what hardy people the Vikings were,
it's kind of hard to imagine that they found the

(50:19):
coast and that not one of them said, you know,
I want to go see where this coast stands. I mean,
because I mean, this whole story is someone's boat blue
South and they saw some land, and you know, two
generations later someone's like, I want to go see what
that is. So I mean, they're very curious people, they
are mighty seamen. They are very of course hardy if
they're living in Greenland. So you know, how far down

(50:41):
the coast did some boat go and how much evidence
would they left behind if they did, and apparently not
enough to convince anybody for sure that they had. But
I mean it's you know, it's I guess not inconceivable
that they wound up in cheats and eza right.

Speaker 1 (50:56):
Well, and if they were extremely small numbers of people,
which ultimately that's what we're talking about. If Greenland was
the was the big city of what the Vikings left
here that you could be talking you know, just one
guy who's interested, but so many of them could have
gone off and I mean touched some really incredible places
that we would be surprised if we knew for sure

(51:17):
they went there. And then just you know, their boat
sank and they died in the North Atlantic somewhere before
they told anybody.

Speaker 2 (51:24):
Yeah, they never made yeah, or I mean the saga
is written and lost or I mean no, I mean
even if if they traded, even say some metal objects,
I mean, if you if you got about twenty guys,
forty guys, how much could they have carried with them,
and how much could that have impacted all of the
continent in the population.

Speaker 5 (51:41):
Yeah, if you think about it. The Viking boats, now,
you know, obviously they've got to they've got at least
two different type of craft. And of course these craft
are handmade, so there's variants and probably hybrids as well,
but these are not huge ocean going vessels with deep
could in fact their part of the reason that they're

(52:03):
so fearsome in battle is because these relatively low keeled
are high heeled ships actually that don't go very far
into the water, you know, suddenly become able to grow
up the same to wonderful places that have amenities and riches,
which is where you know, a lot of Europeans discovered that, yeah,

(52:24):
these ships are very very very very good, not only
at the open ocean. Well, they're okay on the open ocean,
but they are very.

Speaker 1 (52:34):
Well and the Vikings proofs that, you know, over and
over again. One one of the things that might have
impacted them coming back to Europe, honestly is stuff like
the plague, which reduced some of the population pressure that
sent people to Greenland in the first place. There's, of course,
exactly it's hard to know exactly why they left Greenland.
We've offered a lot of possible reasons for why those

(52:56):
why those settlements didn't last. But if you're feeling like
Greenland is so marginal, and suddenly you know, the plague
is wiped out some of the people back in Iceland,
you think, oh, well, maybe I can get some of
that land.

Speaker 6 (53:07):
So if you're talking.

Speaker 2 (53:10):
In Greenland, it's not going to be a big population,
you know, push even if you're overpopulated in Greenland, how
many you know, how many people that are going to
be in a small settlement. So it's true it might
have been easier to look back towards Iceland and saying,
you know a lot of those people had the better
land are now you know, dead and people.

Speaker 6 (53:26):
It's just it's just easier for us to go there.

Speaker 5 (53:29):
Yeah, and with a lot of the family connections, because
you know, essentially everyone who went to the initial Greenland
colony seems to have come from right.

Speaker 6 (53:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (53:39):
But I mean this is these I mean, these guys
would show you know, a thousand boats would show up
on the shore of England, and these guys would have
huge numbers. So I mean, we know that they had
the capacity to send very large fleets when they really
felt like it, and you know, England certainly felt that.

Speaker 6 (53:55):
So I mean, was this just too far? No?

Speaker 5 (53:58):
I think that it's the motivation, you know, the reason
that you have these incredible raids that are coordinated into England, Ireland,
Brittany or Normandy as well as points further further away
is because the Vikings found something there to raide. So

(54:20):
in Ireland, you know, it was easily conquered monasteries that
were full of gold, silver and other portable wealth. Uh,
same thing with England to an extent. And England had
an added benefit that its climate was quite a bit
better than Greenland, Iceland, Norway.

Speaker 6 (54:42):
Where you're from. If you think the climate in Scotland,
that's right.

Speaker 1 (54:51):
If Greenland looks looks okay to you, then then Ice
and then Scotland is.

Speaker 5 (55:01):
Now Now I have to wonder what did the first
Viking you ever tried, Hagis think.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
Yeah, there was there was some cultural some cultural differences
there too.

Speaker 6 (55:12):
To you.

Speaker 1 (55:12):
Wonder if they went to Newfoundland and found like true,
like really civilization that had gold and stuff like that
that they could raid, that's that's a lot easier than
having to cut down all the trees first.

Speaker 2 (55:25):
Yeah, and it might have been I mean, it might
have been a very fierce people that they ran into
who are used to living, you know, like they lived
in Greenland. I mean you used to have to fight
bears for your food, and so you have to imagine
that it was sparse. Yeah, I mean that that was
not easy land to live in, and obviously people did,
I mean, you.

Speaker 6 (55:44):
Know they did.

Speaker 2 (55:45):
Yeah, there were always so and I mean there's time
that there were what people living there one thousand and
four thousand years before that they showed up, but I
mean how much it was Probably a transient population, probably
one hundred gatherer sort of population.

Speaker 6 (55:58):
Probably a low population.

Speaker 2 (55:59):
Did population there at some point though, if they were trading,
someone understood each other's languages enough to do that. I mean,
there might have been a Viking that spoke you know,
was Mick mack up there or whatever. I'm not sure
what even language we'd be talking about. I'll probably get
in trouble for saying that, but I.

Speaker 1 (56:16):
Mean, I'm not sure. I'm not sure if we know.

Speaker 2 (56:18):
That there was a Viking who spoke the native tongue
and that there were natives who spoke enough of the
Norse tongue to be able to go and you know trade.

Speaker 6 (56:26):
You know, beaver pelts for iron or whatever they were
trading for. So, I mean it's an.

Speaker 2 (56:30):
Interesting time that, you know, I would love to go visit.
I don't know if it's necessarily my bucket list, but
some of the list of the things i'd love to
do is to go and visit the meadows. Yeah, and
I think it's an interesting archaeological site. But I mean
there's so much you know, you don't know about what
was going on there and how they were interacting and
who they were interacting with.

Speaker 6 (56:47):
So it does again leave a lot of room for counterfactual.

Speaker 2 (56:52):
But I mean for there could be a significant counterfactually,
you had to have a whole lot more Vikings, a
whole lot more Norsemen it ever seems to have ever
been available for this adventure.

Speaker 5 (57:04):
I would actually argue that you needed is something that
they would go after. Again, if there's gold, if the natives,
if the Scraalings that they meet are wearing gold jewelry,
the King of Norway I can pretty much guarantee will Hey,
you know those six hundred ships that we have going
to conquer Wessex, we haven't found gold at Wessex. I

(57:26):
would think that there would be definitely a change. They
would do a pivot to try to That's the.

Speaker 1 (57:32):
I mean, that's the interesting countisfectuals. If they find something
there and the Vikings, you know, move in force, I mean,
they might do what they did in England in you
know Newfoundland, but it seems like what we're talking about
there is we're starting to change some things that you're
just not sure will change. They would they have found gold?

(57:54):
Was there any way? Did those peoples have significant amounts
of gold? Did they value that the way that Europeans did?
And I mean also Vikings had seen the Aztec Empire
or the Mayans, maybe they would have they would have
done exactly what the Spanish did.

Speaker 2 (58:09):
But yeah, that was they didn't have the mindset Potosi here.

Speaker 6 (58:12):
Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 2 (58:13):
Yeah, I think there's I think there's maybe iron ore there,
though I don't know how easy that would have.

Speaker 6 (58:17):
Been too exciting.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
I don't know how much gold is in the day
in Newfoundland and Labrador. I think it's like like you know,
seafood and I mean, which you know would have been valuable.
I mean, that's that's another possible counterfactual. But they might
have been Portuguese fishermen that were off of the you know,
Atlantic coast, you know, centuries ahead of Columbus fishing off
the Grand Banks. I mean, there's some indication of that.
They just didn't you know, have any good reason to

(58:39):
go to shore out there. I don't know, that seafood
is going to be a good enough reason to get
you to your right to go on some big invasion force.

Speaker 5 (58:45):
I do think we also have, you know, to answer
o account the factual, at least to an extent. We
do have an example where the Vikings did land where
there was something worth going after. That's a little island
called Ireland. And it was interesting seeing how you know,
initially the Vikings came in, they really they set up
cities for the first time in Ireland, which is a

(59:07):
contribution that cannot be misstated. And they discovered that there
was a rather energetic and not particularly willing to be
conquered people there, in addition to very rich abbeys. So
you know, the the Vikings certainly were adept at establishing

(59:27):
colonies there, and they in fact become some of the
major urban areas of you know, modern day Ireland. So
can we see that perhaps there's a hypothetically leave Erickson
goes and convinces the King of Norway to send two
hundred ships and several thousand colonists. Is there this enclave
of the Vikings who last into the into the fifteenth,

(59:52):
sixteenth century or maybe even up to modern times, and
you know, someone gets a rude awakening when they're like, oh, yes,
well we're going to go be more native people, and
like suddenly.

Speaker 2 (01:00:01):
They what change could have changed things significantly if the
Vikings had changed culture enough to make a different level
of resistance to Columbus as well as, like you said,
what if they had resistance to some of these diseases?

Speaker 1 (01:00:14):
Yeah, what if they you know, what if they're living
in Canada And of course they don't know necessarily anything
about the stuff far far south that the Spanish eventually discover.
But when the era of colonization starts, suddenly you know,
the Danes or or the combined thrones of Norway, Denmark

(01:00:36):
and stuff like that. I mean maybe then suddenly they've
got a pretty good claim to North American lands. And
if you have a say, a Danish Canada instead of
a French or an English one, it would be a
very different world if instead of when you know, the
the British arright, well, English colonists arrive in Boston or
at Plymouth, if there's already some European settlements that are

(01:01:00):
you know, there's.

Speaker 2 (01:01:00):
All the Spaniards there already, or I mean that there
were blonde kids and stuff like that. We've heard that,
but I mean, I mean, but the question is how much.
I mean what what we find is that the Viking
the Norse interaction with the native people looks a lot
like the English interaction with the native people, in the
Spanish interaction with the native people. So again it might

(01:01:21):
be it looks very much like it does today. We
just all have you know, North sounding names. But yeah,
I'm certainly Spain became incredibly important because the gold that
they found in the New World, or that they were
also taking from you know, the Philippines too, but Spain
became very very important because of that money. So what
if the Norse had discovered the true great resources of

(01:01:42):
North America, then the difference might be those thrones in
Denmark and Sweden were I mean, we're as dominant as
Europe in a period it's dominant in the world in
a period, as the Spanish were in the in the
sixteenth century, and that is you know that that certainly
might make a very different Europe as well.

Speaker 1 (01:02:02):
Yeah, and it's hard to determine exactly how.

Speaker 5 (01:02:05):
It's especially hard to determine because of Northern Europe and
you know, as we've seen from a couple of episode
of Ago Russia. These are places where the lands do
not create a huge surplus of food. Supporting large populations
is pretty much not in the cards. It's it's a
geographic and environmental reality. So, you know, does a relatively

(01:02:30):
small population northern Bloc come to come to power and
do they dominate Spain or perhaps they have deeper inroads
into Germany, into Central Europe, central and Western Europe, which
would considered be Germany and parts of France. You know,
do we get a super state at one point where

(01:02:52):
the Norse language is Lingua franca if you will, as
opposed to well, France dominating Central Europe at that time,
but it became leg.

Speaker 1 (01:03:01):
I mean, that's that's the kind of stuff that could change,
uh with with you know, with with maybe relatively little nudging.
But if if it is true that I think of
as we as we've had this conversation, a big part
of what we've seen is that maybe there just wasn't
a reason for that connection to grow yet. And that's

(01:03:22):
why what even though it seems like maybe that would
be the easier route to North America, why it ultimately well.

Speaker 2 (01:03:28):
So it's interesting given you know, maybe if they had,
if there had been a lot of gold up in
Newfoundland before Europeans arrived, you know, then the natives might
not have cared, right, I mean, h so you know
that could be interesting because you could have still a
sparse population, uh, you know, and and have the European
showp and say oh, this stuff is really really valuable,

(01:03:49):
and that that could have changed everything. It might not
even just a been Norseman coming there. But I mean
if that word had spread to other you know, other
parts of Europe, then you know, maybe there's a lot coming.

Speaker 6 (01:03:59):
So maybe it's a coincidence that I mean.

Speaker 2 (01:04:01):
But it's not to say that, you know, Newfoundland's without resources,
but I mean maybe the demand for you know, timber
and and and cod isn't it just isn't enough to
you know, send fleets after. It's kind of funny then
what we value when you think about that, because you
need timber and cod to live, and we'd pack up
the fleets off for you know this this relatively soft metal.

Speaker 5 (01:04:23):
Yeah, however, you cannot fill your wallet with timber and
cod or a very small boat with sufficient quantities to
really make it that valuable as opposed to walrus tusk
where you know you can bring you know, you can
put thousands into into a long boat.

Speaker 6 (01:04:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:04:43):
Yeah, but still make to wonder how many walruses are
there and how many of them that they killed.

Speaker 6 (01:04:47):
But that's a fair point.

Speaker 2 (01:04:49):
I mean, if they were going to Vinland for timber,
I don't know how much timber they're carrying back, you're right,
I mean how big the boat?

Speaker 5 (01:04:55):
Yeah, and you can assume that they probably created a
raft with the timber U get behind the boats and
then you know, there's another good reason that they didn't
want to go back was because dragging a large draft
of timber or loading or loading your boat with a
limited amount of timber, uh and sailing to and from
you know what's the payoff?

Speaker 1 (01:05:15):
That's going to be more dangerous to the You know,
you're you're risking your life more by trying to drag
the wood behind you, and then if you end up
having to ditch it, then you have nothing, nothing to
show for your for your dangerous journey. But you don't
you don't want to go down wood, right, I mean
that might be part it might have partially been that
the technology wasn't there for them to make that valuable

(01:05:39):
because we were just talking ships, not even close to
what we'd be talking about by the time that, you know,
Columbus came across, so that those were very different ships
and it was still a very dangerous journey in the
Columbus ships.

Speaker 6 (01:05:53):
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:05:54):
Yeah, and even as we see in shipwrecks worldwide, what
the ships are usually crammed at the gills with is
something valuable. So some of the recks off of South
East Asia, they're full of fine chinawar, which at the
time was a very high demand item. Many of the
Spanish the galleants, of course, were full of gold and

(01:06:15):
silver and probably some additional stuff. But they, yeah, they weren't.
They weren't shipping large quantities of mangoes, uh or or
or timber back to Spain. It was it was the
portable wealth, so silver, gold, gems, spices obviously because those
are relatively low density, high value.

Speaker 1 (01:06:37):
It's actually the the British colonies ended up had changing
a little bit, you know. The the British idea was
that they would get the raw materials like timber from
the from the American colonies and and bring that to
the UK where they would then build it. But that
that had a lot to do with you know that
this idea of mercantilism, uh and the kind of these

(01:06:57):
ideas that they built on what they're they're pires should
be like. But those were new ideas and they also
were kind of necessitated from the fact that some people
were finding some kingdoms were finding you know, to notch
te Lan and England found Massachusetts which just didn't have
the the They were trying to get whatever value they could.

(01:07:19):
And you could say to some extent that the the
British ever really did get what they wanted out of
out of the the American colonies.

Speaker 6 (01:07:29):
It was a wow for Alward found gold.

Speaker 5 (01:07:31):
I would say that one exception to that would probably
be tobacco. That's fair that that all tobacco was a
very high was a very highly sought after crop and
again fairly portable, fairly dense, so a you know, a
hole to full of tobacco certainly had quite a bit
of a value.

Speaker 1 (01:07:49):
Early in the early in the you know, that colonial
period that was essentially what was sustaining I mean, many
of the colonies were purely on tobact Yeah, and you know,
the tobacco trade you know, went all the way through
you know easily through the nineteenth into the twentieth century.
So yeah, yeah, tobacco has always been a big cash crap.

(01:08:10):
So the final question I think we should address is
was Eric the bread aided by aliens in his trip?
Did they perhaps drop a compass to it? See if
he had a compass, it would have made it a
lot easier. Now, the question is what were the aliens
trying to do by getting him to Greenland and did
they accomplish it or did it all fall apart?

Speaker 2 (01:08:33):
Might think when they put them back they put them
on the wrong side of the water there. I mean,
the Vikings had the sunstones, which were like amazing technology
for the time. Their navigational skills seemed to exceed what
most people were able to do at the time, and
there's some you know, question, how how did they come
by that technology that was that so changed everything?

Speaker 5 (01:08:52):
Yeah, and actually, to be fair, compass is not a
good example, because there is some there is some evidence
that they had magnetized needles that they would put in
a bowl of water and that actually worked as a compass.
But yes, the I think the the highly believable story
is is that the aliens gave Eric that read the
technology so that the Vikings would go to Greenland so

(01:09:13):
that they could four hundred years later be kidnapped. That's
what happened to the.

Speaker 2 (01:09:19):
That is one of the many stories, one of the
many things that people will argue about what happened to
THEO whenever anybody goes missing then and of course aliens
is I had thught about that if they were kidnapped
by Sasquatch. Maybe the Greenland Vikings were kidnapped by aliens
and maybe they'll come back, you know, something like that.

Speaker 1 (01:09:36):
That could make a great story the fourteenth century bike
history that are suddenly returned.

Speaker 2 (01:09:45):
Yeah, and some sort of space version of a longboat. Yeah,
that's a.

Speaker 4 (01:09:50):
That's that.

Speaker 6 (01:09:51):
That's there's a book in the writing there.

Speaker 2 (01:09:52):
Someone's gonna someone's going to steal that idea and turn
that into a a million dollar idea. I don't know
that aliens is necessarily the answer, but we we you
know that the aliens working in hand with the Sasquat,
So it's possible that it was all.

Speaker 1 (01:10:04):
As as is known as historical fact, the alien the
alien Sasquatch alliance.

Speaker 5 (01:10:14):
I you know, just kind of it as an aside,
you know, kind of the kind of the elephant there
in the maybe we haven't discussed, is you know, why
is it that the Vikings are really the only wide
ranging seafaring people in the Atlantic at this point. Yeah,
it's definitely long before the British Navy rules the waves.

Speaker 2 (01:10:34):
Yeah, I mean there might have been people fishing off
of the Grand Banks at this point or whatever. But
you're right, I mean, in a much more ancient times
there's there. They're they're tricking boats around the Horn of
Africa and they're taking boats and i mean there's explorers
that are going all over the place. You know, why
at this period is there you know, no one else
trying to catch you across the ocean?

Speaker 6 (01:10:52):
Why is it only the Vikings? And that's you know,
it's a fair question.

Speaker 2 (01:10:57):
Again, it might be a matter of you know, Europe
distracted by plague disease, you know, and population has declined
and there's less reason to do that, but it is
it is strange how that kind of explorer mentality goes
in waves and there seems to be you know, one
hundreds thousand year periods where you know, no one's really

(01:11:18):
going off to see anything new.

Speaker 5 (01:11:21):
Yeah, it comes back to the Great man in history?
Was Eric?

Speaker 6 (01:11:24):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:11:25):
Was Eric the Red inevitable.

Speaker 1 (01:11:26):
Or was he a unique figure? Without Eric the Red,
is there a Greenland or a Viking Greenland? And I
don't know they had clearly seen it before. No one
says that. The Sagas don't seem to say that. You know,
Eric was the first one to see it, but he
was the first one to have that idea to let's
go to it. And maybe that's the Maybe there wasn't

(01:11:51):
someone else that would have done that. Thank you for
listening to this episode of The History Guy podcast. We
hope you enjoyed this episode of counter factual history, and
if you did, you can find lots more history if
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If you want to hear more counterfactuals, stay tuned. We

(01:12:13):
release podcasts every two weeks.