Vinland - Viable immigration opportunities

A long while ago I briefly participated in a post 1000 AD Vinland thread that was more realistic than one might expect. I'm thinking of working one up again by myself.

Unfortunately I'm having trouble identifying ways to increase Vinland population to the point of having any lasting impact when the major European powers start active colonization of the New World.

In short, I want to do a realistic "wank", but in the waning Viking Age with opportunities in Russia, Ireland, and Scotland, how the heck can I get Vikings, or Swedes, or even Irish, Scots, and Slavs to get on a boat and move to a world light years away?

Religious persecution? Economic opportunity? A sudden incursion into Rusland from an eastern enemy?
 
1. Vinland has fish, fishermen will have a wealthgasm once they hear of it

2. Mongols go north into Finland and freak out Swedes and really hurt Russians.

3. Protestant Reformation, Irishmen seek to join the Catholics in Vinland, only to find out that new Scandinavian immigrants converted it to Catholic, Éire Nua founded further south.

I dunno, some cool ideas.
 
Any chance Vikings find something worth long-term trade, say tobacco? I'm not sure how much penetration into NA it had at that time...
 
Colin Taber has a series on this.

Colin Taber has an ebook series on this. The basic premise is that with the spread of Christianity, people who did not want to convert started to flee to Vinland. The result was a small stream of people moving there. This was done in secret so that the Christian kings and priests would not follow them.
 
1. Vinland has fish, fishermen will have a wealthgasm once they hear of it

2. Mongols go north into Finland and freak out Swedes and really hurt Russians.

3. Protestant Reformation, Irishmen seek to join the Catholics in Vinland, only to find out that new Scandinavian immigrants converted it to Catholic, Éire Nua founded further south.

I dunno, some cool ideas.

Cod stocks would be gigantic which would be a great source of protein and calories. Trade in cod to Europe wouldn't be really possible due to spoilage, but you can bet it'd be a great food source and could lead to better sailing and fishing tech.

I think the Mongols are a great idea, but I'll need to research to see if them or another group could be prodded.

Same sort of idea for the religious aspect. There will need to be a major antagonist.

Any chance Vikings find something worth long-term trade, say tobacco? I'm not sure how much penetration into NA it had at that time...

That is a really good idea. In real life Vinland wasn't anything more than a brief excursion/settlement, but with a permanent presence I could see trade being set up as far south as Virginia.
 

Faeelin

Banned
Colin Taber has an ebook series on this. The basic premise is that with the spread of Christianity, people who did not want to convert started to flee to Vinland. The result was a small stream of people moving there. This was done in secret so that the Christian kings and priests would not follow them.

Unfortunate that Christians were among the first people to reach Vinland, eh?
 

Driftless

Donor
Cod stocks would be gigantic which would be a great source of protein and calories. Trade in cod to Europe wouldn't be really possible due to spoilage, but you can bet it'd be a great food source and could lead to better sailing and fishing tech.

Dried Salted Cod has the shelf life of uranium - as long as it's kept dry.....

The techinque has existed for a long time, but really took off when the Europeans hit the Grand Banks. It's an historic dietary staple of several European cultures
 
I know it's dreary, but what if one of the ~ 100 inhabitants of L'Anse aux Meadows brought smallpox with them? As I understand it, the native population of Newfoundland was quite rather small as it was. If they were effectively wiped out in the first years of the colony by epidemic, the Norse settlers would be expanding into a vacuum and you wouldn't need further immigration to have a meaningful population by 1500. This is good, because it otherwise seems to be very difficult to find an economic reason to leave Europe for Vinland (at least based on all the other Vinland threads I've read, I'm no medieval money expert).

Cool things about this scenario:

1.)If the smallpox could get to an urbanized native society that manages not to collapse in the face of it, you might be able to build up a disease reservoir in the Americas that, while initially devastating, should have allowed population recovery AND actually meaningful disease resistance to develop by the time the Europeans show up en masse.

2.)Vinland could be very interesting as the Norse agricultural package should be well suited to it and with it's plentiful fishing and timber, it could be a second Norway. If very successful it might even help keep the Greenland settlements from dying out in the little Ice age.

Less cool things:

1.) Smallpox might never find a proper reservoir population and just ruin a bunch of cool native societies earlier than before :(

2.) if Vinland isn't successful enough to maintain regular contact with Europe, between it's small founder population and ~500 years of isolation, when Europeans come back to North America, the Vinlanders are likely just as susceptible as the natives to being wiped out by epidemic diseases.
 
This comes up every so often. The incubation period of diseases limits the ability to spread to NA on the slower Norse ships compared to later multi-masted galleons. You'll also need a sustained epidemic presence of disease so that continued waves lead to the OTL level depopulation, otherwise the pox burns itself out quickly. Multiple waves are necessary to sustain the population pressure for massive migration, though a quick pandemic of pox or plague or something could at least open up a window for a founder colony.

Basically for a continued Norse presence in NA you need first a reason to stay there, which OTL lacked. I proposed some sort of profitable trade resource, such as tobacco, that'd justify sustained presence. Once you got a long-term colony and sustained travel rather than the occasional trip of OTL you increase the chance of disease spreading, particularly once you have livestock in place. Even so there'll never be the population levels to achieve the wank-level population change of OTL, but perhaps a Norse state in the NE and some Creolized neighbor states.

Oddly, this may allow a core of disease-resistant, partially mixed race Amerinds to survive to the present day. Balkanized multi-ethnic, multi-lingual NA.
 
This comes up every so often. The incubation period of diseases limits the ability to spread to NA on the slower Norse ships compared to later multi-masted galleons. You'll also need a sustained epidemic presence of disease so that continued waves lead to the OTL level depopulation, otherwise the pox burns itself out quickly. Multiple waves are necessary to sustain the population pressure for massive migration, though a quick pandemic of pox or plague or something could at least open up a window for a founder colony.

Basically for a continued Norse presence in NA you need first a reason to stay there, which OTL lacked. I proposed some sort of profitable trade resource, such as tobacco, that'd justify sustained presence. Once you got a long-term colony and sustained travel rather than the occasional trip of OTL you increase the chance of disease spreading, particularly once you have livestock in place. Even so there'll never be the population levels to achieve the wank-level population change of OTL, but perhaps a Norse state in the NE and some Creolized neighbor states.

Oddly, this may allow a core of disease-resistant, partially mixed race Amerinds to survive to the present day. Balkanized multi-ethnic, multi-lingual NA.

For the sake of the norse, I meant only to depopulate the already underpopulated Newfoundland, I then combined that thought with hopefully allowing the natives an endemic disease pool... Poor idea management on my part causing confusion.

And yeah, you've got me on the slow ships part... Any chance it could come over with a cow and remain viable?

Finally, you're absolutely right about the trade goods, I was hoping to make them unnecessary b/c they're relatively hard to find in the area, but it didn't occur to me that the inhabitants could just up and leave L'Anse aux Meadows, even though it seems that's exactly what they did :eek:.
 
For the sake of the norse, I meant only to depopulate the already underpopulated Newfoundland, I then combined that thought with hopefully allowing the natives an endemic disease pool... Poor idea management on my part causing confusion.

And yeah, you've got me on the slow ships part... Any chance it could come over with a cow and remain viable?

Finally, you're absolutely right about the trade goods, I was hoping to make them unnecessary b/c they're relatively hard to find in the area, but it didn't occur to me that the inhabitants could just up and leave L'Anse aux Meadows, even though it seems that's exactly what they did :eek:.

Cows will have the same incubation period limitations as people, and with fewer cows to share the love. Not many likely to fit in a Knarr except as calves. TDisease *could* potentially make the jump. The Plague eventually made it to Greenland. Some sort of disease *could* potentially bridge Greenland-to-Vinland if it spread among the crew slowly. Pox could be spread via blanket...could make the jump that way. Still, low probability for any given voyage. That's why I think some sort of sustained travel/trade needs to already be in place.
 
@judman & geekhis: I definitely see an opportunity for disease to ransack the native population. It doesn't have to be just smallpox either. It could be something innocuous like intestinal diarrhea.
 
And one really only needs to ransack Newfoundland to allow for a half decent founder colony. As for trade goods, Walrus ivory could have some value if you can disrupt the African Ivory trade (some PoD in North Africa?).
 
Leptospirosis is rat-transmittable and can linger in the local fauna to kick off repeated outbreaks. It's thought this was the plague that took out the Wampanoag and other *Massachusetts Amerind nations OTL.
 

Faeelin

Banned
And one really only needs to ransack Newfoundland to allow for a half decent founder colony. As for trade goods, Walrus ivory could have some value if you can disrupt the African Ivory trade (some PoD in North Africa?).

Narwhal horns were a trade good for Greenland in OTL, but these are exotic, rare products. Icelanders in OTL exported wool for wont of any better opportunities, and Newfoundland offers lumber, bog iron, and cod. Not exactly high demand resources in medieval Europe...
 
Yeah, your nearest high value and relatively high volume trade good looks to be tobacco... and while that does grow as far north as Connecticut and southern Ontario, I'd bet those are more modern varieties and still a fair distance from Newfoundland.
 
Some native varieties of tobacco exist in NA and tobacco was a major trade good OTL. It's the most likely option I can think of seeing as how addictive products make their own markets. I can easily see Vikings getting into "breathing fire" as a pastime.
 

Faeelin

Banned
Yeah, your nearest high value and relatively high volume trade good looks to be tobacco... and while that does grow as far north as Connecticut and southern Ontario, I'd bet those are more modern varieties and still a fair distance from Newfoundland.

Native Americans in Connecticut did grow tobacco; not sure about Ontario.
 
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