1
My TL, at first out one of my favorite Alternate History discussions, Vinland.
Enjoy, and please excuse my poor grammar and lack of knowledge on Norse naming, and please also forgive my lack of the use of Nordic characters as I'm just going to anglicize it both to be easier on me and people who don't know how to pronounce the characters, (if there's a guide for the names Norse used for naming towns and land if someone posted a link that would be great). And if it's bad, say so I'm not going to be offended I know I'm not a good writer but writing it in a timeline style would be different I hope, in short I am open to criticism in the hope that I may in a year or so maybe do a remake with less of these errors hopefully.
That aside enjoy.
1008:
While Visiting Greenland, Thorfinn Karlsefni marries a woman named Gudrid, and it is said that it was her nagging that lead him to settle at vinland, he had Taken 60 men and 5 Women to start a Colony, when they set out due to storms ended up being carried west and ending up in Markland rather than leifs little camp at Leifsbudir. They landed in a Fjord they had tried to name Thorfinnsvik; but at the Notion it is said he laughed and said "T'was my wife who nagged me here, let it be named after her instead", though he was joking and probably intended to name it after himself, his close friends and soon everyone had messed with him by actually referring to the Fjord as Gudridsfjord, and so from then on they built a Temporary settlement at the edge of a small brook in the Fjord (OTL Mary's Harbor). However later due to Native attacks after some unrecorded misunderstandings the Colony was left building defenses and foraging for food, and due to one of the ships crashing against the rocks they couldn't evacuate everyone and if too many men left to look for Leifsbudir there would be a risk of weaker defenses, the only time they ever left was to Fish or to try and find a place close by that was more naturally defended that they could one boatload at a time evacuate people, they were able to hold off four native attacks and now has come to a standstill but there are signs of them hiding in the brush surrounding the camp.
1009-1010:
It was a Long and cold winter for the Camp at Gudridsfjord, however when ignoring the problems the Native Skraelings brought they has no trouble fishing and was easily able to make it through winter, and during early spring Thorfinn sent out a team of four to go out and see if the Skraelings were still stalking their camp, the answer came from two dragging one back that received and Arrow to the thigh. From that point on people knew that unless they left or dealt with the natives it would never end; but good luck came their way and a ship from Leifsbudir that happened to find them while exploring and helps ferry them to a small flat clearing to the east of the settlement that was on a island and was budged against the Crags, (OTL town of Battle Harbor). The Natives had no interest in the island, and probably couldn't even swim there, hostilities stopped for the most part. They had to go back to the Mainland to collect wood, and the small clearing against the crags was small for all 65 of them, their livestock, and their crops. Many left for Leifsbudir but many had stayed, the people used to living in the bleak mountains and Fjords of Greenland and Iceland found the Crags familiar and comforting. The settlement had seen enormous prosperity when someone let the goats out into the mountainous surrounding Islands, due to the small size of the Islands it was near the same as Farming, they near always came back, and they grew very fat on the grasses and became a small but prosperous community, there was Plans for retaking the original Camp but that would wait for another time.
(going to let you guys help me with the name for that town, Interactive TL best TL, also names for PEI, Nova Scotia, and lake Ontario are up for suggestion)
1011-1013:
As attacks on Leifbudir grow people began to grow desperate, even thinking of going back to Greenland; But one young man had the Idea to Burn some of the Forests and brush by swinging an ax a few times at the trunks to dry them out, and then waiting until Autumn to Burn the dying leaves. Though most of the trees did not burn down it did leave most of them dead or near dead, in any case it was said that the brush had been cleared and it was much harder to attack by surprise. Albeit native attacks still happened they were less common and put down much easier.
Meanwhile at the Gudrisfjord colony, bog Iron was being discovered and local smiths had been making new Axes, knives, spears, arrowheads, Kitchen items and the like, contact had been made with Skraelings to the south and through hand movements and basic body language, been able to communicate enough to be able to trade large amounts of Pelts for small knives. While after a month they were able to learn some words in each others language such as: deer, water, rock, rabbit, stream, tree, leaf, seal, mountain, and spear. Thorfinn Karlsefni had frustratingly tried to learn more but the Language was so different from Norse that they had much trouble pronouncing the words, it is assumed the same was true for the Skraelings.
Due to the beginning of overpopulation once again in the Gudridsfjord and the many boats getting wrecked from sea rocks trying to get to the friendly trading natives Thorfinn, now the Chieftain of the settlement decides to create another settlement to the south with men from the overpopulated colony and new arrivals from Greenland and Iceland. At the area to the south there had been a bay with a brook mouthing out on the interior end (OTL bay next to Henley Harbor). Thorfinn had named it after his father Thord, the colony of Thordstad was growing little by little and had grown rich off of the pelts the natives had given them. It was said Thorfinn had one out of every five pelts given to Leif Eriksson to fund the colonies and to finance new colonists travel to the colonies.
1014-1015:
After a few years of trial and error, the wine made from the "Grapes" in vinland (none of the men had seen actual grapes before, so they had assumed, like a normal person mistaking Palm tree fruit for coconuts) had made very fine wine, fine enough that it had been shipped to Greenland and Iceland. He used the Wine both to make profit and to advertise the wealth of the land to try and gain more colonists, specifically women. The shortage of women in the Nyrfold (a term used by later historians but not at the time) was low compared to the amount of men, there were some captured skraeling thralls to take as wives however due to them having knowledge of how to survive in the wilderness often escape at any time they can and rarely stay long enough to bear any children. One wealthy man in Iceland had sent a message to Leif's family to lend him money and in return he would buy Female slaves from Europe.
However instead of buying slaves he had with the help of some men from the Faroes raided villages along the coast of Norway and put the females into slavery, he had killed or let go of all the males. The wealthy man whose name was lost to history sent most of his borrowed fleet back to Iceland to arrange the Women to be sent to Greenland and from there Vinland, but three ships remained. One went to Denmark to buy women, Two went to England to buy even more recently captured slaves from the various wars in the region. When the women had arrived in Vinland everyone was ecstatic, there was now a 12 to 10 ratio of women to men. Albeit this was not too large as the population of the colonies was before around four hundred and seventy and with the immigration it became clear that eventually the lack of women would become a problem once again.
Leif's son Bjarny Leifsson had been exploring the coast of Vinland under his older brother Thorkell, Bjarny was Fourteen at the time but had already grown to be as tall as most men and had manned the oars, the sails however were used much more liberally due to the westerlies helping them more often than not. It was said they came across a tremendous amount of fish of the eastern coast, and three days before found an Island with what one Norwegian smith knew was high quality Iron ore (OTL bell Island). Thorkell was thinking of establishing a colony in the Area to exploit the enormous amount of fish and the Iron ore which could make very high quality Iron goods far superior to bog Iron.
1016:
In the (two) Markland settlements, the Natives stopped trading and nearly all Native attacks ceased. With a mix of curiosity and fear for losing their trading partners Thorfinn led men to the area where they Believed the skraeling village was, the skraelings always came to them to trade and had never really mentioned where their home was. After four days of searching they found a camp, everyone was sick or dying. After some communication with the less sick ones they had put together that many of the people ran away, the sickness was well known to the Icelanders; this form of influenza had killed the great Erik the Red some 13 years Prior, it wasn't just the Natives that the disease was infecting. While due to a mix of luck and avoiding the infected the Marklanders only had got off with 13 dead , mostly being the old and young.
Thorkell and his younger brother Bjarni had set off with thirty four colonists to settle near the "Iron Island" to the east of it had been large swathes of flat land, large amounts of flat land was rare in Vinland and Markland, most had been farming in only a couple square feet worth of land before having another patch on another flat-like area; so in addition to the Iron and vast fish which people were already exploiting, there would be much wheat to sell. Essentially what this meant is that whoever had control over the Area had the most influence over vinland other than the Paramount chief himself. The plan was to first start a settlement on the Island for closer access to the metal, then a second to a Peninsula pointing north where they could start farming and build a port to monopolize on the fish in the area. They had with them three important Frankish blacksmith slaves, it had cost them two ships to trade for them. Once they had landed they had immediately started cutting down trees and creating smith charcoal, a small scouting ship checking to see if the fish populations were still in check came back loaded with fish even though there was only one poorly made fishing line to see if the fish were still there; according to them most of the fish had "jumped' onto the boat and they had to shovel many off to stop the boat from sinking. When contact was trying to be made with Skaelings it was found most of them had died off from the wave of those fleeing their sick tribes eventually working their way down that far south, the few that remained had been starving and had nothing to trade. The Christians in the group had taken pity on them and pleaded with Thorkell to take them in. While Thorkell rejected it coldly and wanted to leave them to their fate (most likely due to the death of his uncle), Bjarni being a well educated Christian had referred to the story of the Parable of the Good Samaritan; this had infuriated Thorkell due to his strong belief in the old faith. Eventually a falling out occurred and Thorkell being the elder had sent Bjarny and all the Christian colonists (who made up around half of the colonists) out of the camp that was founded not 3 days prior, with the ships Bjarni took the remaining skraelings who had no idea what was going on but after a while went on the ship with them and had decided to circumnavigate Vinland as he had heard one sailor say it was an Island. With the Skraelings that survived numbering only seven beginning to understand tidbits of the Norse language, whilst sailing west once they had gone south enough, they had seen land on the Horizon and when they investigated they had found it was a small Island that was in reality not interesting at all (OTL St Paul Island). However in the distance from there was an island that the saw smoke rising above, when they arrived they had found an elongated ring of an Island with a large lagoon in the middle (OTL Magdalene Islands), the Skraelings had appeared to be a on a temporary camp there to hunt the seals and walruses that came there. While during some accident of sorts a fight broke out with three dead on the Norse side but the entire Skraeling community either killed or captured. During some rage Bjarni had their eyes cut out and toes cut off and had made them into rowers, albeit cruel this had become a very effective model that was soon accepted all over Vinland, Markland, even Greenland and Iceland.
On the central landmass of the Island he had founded Bjarnystad, there was plenty of wood, animals, grazing area, flat land for farming, and albeit not as good as the grand banks had decent fishing. He had sent a ship to inform his father (Leif Eriksson) of what Thorkell had done, and also to advertise his new colony, when Leif all the way in Greenland had heard of this had gotten very angry and immediately set sail for "Thorkellsborg" to correct his son and get him to forgive his brother, when he arrived it was said that Thorkell "Had assumed it was Bjarny here to take the title of chieftain from me" and had loosed arrows on the ships hitting Leif in the Shoulder, when the ships came ashore and they realized Bjarny wasn't there Leif was a little more than upset. Eventually Leif had gotten Thorkell to convert to Christianity and not be hostile to his brother anymore, afterwords both of the new colonies had thrived and had made wealth and grew large and prosperous. It was that same year that much land to the south and west had been explored and mapped.
(open to suggestion names for: Prince Edward Island, cape Breton Island, Anticosti, St. Lawrence river, Lake Ontario, Main/New Brunswick/ part of Quebec south of the river, Saguenay River and the lake that it starts from, and even the Magdalene Islands as a whole)
Enjoy, and please excuse my poor grammar and lack of knowledge on Norse naming, and please also forgive my lack of the use of Nordic characters as I'm just going to anglicize it both to be easier on me and people who don't know how to pronounce the characters, (if there's a guide for the names Norse used for naming towns and land if someone posted a link that would be great). And if it's bad, say so I'm not going to be offended I know I'm not a good writer but writing it in a timeline style would be different I hope, in short I am open to criticism in the hope that I may in a year or so maybe do a remake with less of these errors hopefully.
That aside enjoy.
1008:
While Visiting Greenland, Thorfinn Karlsefni marries a woman named Gudrid, and it is said that it was her nagging that lead him to settle at vinland, he had Taken 60 men and 5 Women to start a Colony, when they set out due to storms ended up being carried west and ending up in Markland rather than leifs little camp at Leifsbudir. They landed in a Fjord they had tried to name Thorfinnsvik; but at the Notion it is said he laughed and said "T'was my wife who nagged me here, let it be named after her instead", though he was joking and probably intended to name it after himself, his close friends and soon everyone had messed with him by actually referring to the Fjord as Gudridsfjord, and so from then on they built a Temporary settlement at the edge of a small brook in the Fjord (OTL Mary's Harbor). However later due to Native attacks after some unrecorded misunderstandings the Colony was left building defenses and foraging for food, and due to one of the ships crashing against the rocks they couldn't evacuate everyone and if too many men left to look for Leifsbudir there would be a risk of weaker defenses, the only time they ever left was to Fish or to try and find a place close by that was more naturally defended that they could one boatload at a time evacuate people, they were able to hold off four native attacks and now has come to a standstill but there are signs of them hiding in the brush surrounding the camp.
1009-1010:
It was a Long and cold winter for the Camp at Gudridsfjord, however when ignoring the problems the Native Skraelings brought they has no trouble fishing and was easily able to make it through winter, and during early spring Thorfinn sent out a team of four to go out and see if the Skraelings were still stalking their camp, the answer came from two dragging one back that received and Arrow to the thigh. From that point on people knew that unless they left or dealt with the natives it would never end; but good luck came their way and a ship from Leifsbudir that happened to find them while exploring and helps ferry them to a small flat clearing to the east of the settlement that was on a island and was budged against the Crags, (OTL town of Battle Harbor). The Natives had no interest in the island, and probably couldn't even swim there, hostilities stopped for the most part. They had to go back to the Mainland to collect wood, and the small clearing against the crags was small for all 65 of them, their livestock, and their crops. Many left for Leifsbudir but many had stayed, the people used to living in the bleak mountains and Fjords of Greenland and Iceland found the Crags familiar and comforting. The settlement had seen enormous prosperity when someone let the goats out into the mountainous surrounding Islands, due to the small size of the Islands it was near the same as Farming, they near always came back, and they grew very fat on the grasses and became a small but prosperous community, there was Plans for retaking the original Camp but that would wait for another time.
(going to let you guys help me with the name for that town, Interactive TL best TL, also names for PEI, Nova Scotia, and lake Ontario are up for suggestion)
1011-1013:
As attacks on Leifbudir grow people began to grow desperate, even thinking of going back to Greenland; But one young man had the Idea to Burn some of the Forests and brush by swinging an ax a few times at the trunks to dry them out, and then waiting until Autumn to Burn the dying leaves. Though most of the trees did not burn down it did leave most of them dead or near dead, in any case it was said that the brush had been cleared and it was much harder to attack by surprise. Albeit native attacks still happened they were less common and put down much easier.
Meanwhile at the Gudrisfjord colony, bog Iron was being discovered and local smiths had been making new Axes, knives, spears, arrowheads, Kitchen items and the like, contact had been made with Skraelings to the south and through hand movements and basic body language, been able to communicate enough to be able to trade large amounts of Pelts for small knives. While after a month they were able to learn some words in each others language such as: deer, water, rock, rabbit, stream, tree, leaf, seal, mountain, and spear. Thorfinn Karlsefni had frustratingly tried to learn more but the Language was so different from Norse that they had much trouble pronouncing the words, it is assumed the same was true for the Skraelings.
Due to the beginning of overpopulation once again in the Gudridsfjord and the many boats getting wrecked from sea rocks trying to get to the friendly trading natives Thorfinn, now the Chieftain of the settlement decides to create another settlement to the south with men from the overpopulated colony and new arrivals from Greenland and Iceland. At the area to the south there had been a bay with a brook mouthing out on the interior end (OTL bay next to Henley Harbor). Thorfinn had named it after his father Thord, the colony of Thordstad was growing little by little and had grown rich off of the pelts the natives had given them. It was said Thorfinn had one out of every five pelts given to Leif Eriksson to fund the colonies and to finance new colonists travel to the colonies.
1014-1015:
After a few years of trial and error, the wine made from the "Grapes" in vinland (none of the men had seen actual grapes before, so they had assumed, like a normal person mistaking Palm tree fruit for coconuts) had made very fine wine, fine enough that it had been shipped to Greenland and Iceland. He used the Wine both to make profit and to advertise the wealth of the land to try and gain more colonists, specifically women. The shortage of women in the Nyrfold (a term used by later historians but not at the time) was low compared to the amount of men, there were some captured skraeling thralls to take as wives however due to them having knowledge of how to survive in the wilderness often escape at any time they can and rarely stay long enough to bear any children. One wealthy man in Iceland had sent a message to Leif's family to lend him money and in return he would buy Female slaves from Europe.
However instead of buying slaves he had with the help of some men from the Faroes raided villages along the coast of Norway and put the females into slavery, he had killed or let go of all the males. The wealthy man whose name was lost to history sent most of his borrowed fleet back to Iceland to arrange the Women to be sent to Greenland and from there Vinland, but three ships remained. One went to Denmark to buy women, Two went to England to buy even more recently captured slaves from the various wars in the region. When the women had arrived in Vinland everyone was ecstatic, there was now a 12 to 10 ratio of women to men. Albeit this was not too large as the population of the colonies was before around four hundred and seventy and with the immigration it became clear that eventually the lack of women would become a problem once again.
Leif's son Bjarny Leifsson had been exploring the coast of Vinland under his older brother Thorkell, Bjarny was Fourteen at the time but had already grown to be as tall as most men and had manned the oars, the sails however were used much more liberally due to the westerlies helping them more often than not. It was said they came across a tremendous amount of fish of the eastern coast, and three days before found an Island with what one Norwegian smith knew was high quality Iron ore (OTL bell Island). Thorkell was thinking of establishing a colony in the Area to exploit the enormous amount of fish and the Iron ore which could make very high quality Iron goods far superior to bog Iron.
1016:
In the (two) Markland settlements, the Natives stopped trading and nearly all Native attacks ceased. With a mix of curiosity and fear for losing their trading partners Thorfinn led men to the area where they Believed the skraeling village was, the skraelings always came to them to trade and had never really mentioned where their home was. After four days of searching they found a camp, everyone was sick or dying. After some communication with the less sick ones they had put together that many of the people ran away, the sickness was well known to the Icelanders; this form of influenza had killed the great Erik the Red some 13 years Prior, it wasn't just the Natives that the disease was infecting. While due to a mix of luck and avoiding the infected the Marklanders only had got off with 13 dead , mostly being the old and young.
Thorkell and his younger brother Bjarni had set off with thirty four colonists to settle near the "Iron Island" to the east of it had been large swathes of flat land, large amounts of flat land was rare in Vinland and Markland, most had been farming in only a couple square feet worth of land before having another patch on another flat-like area; so in addition to the Iron and vast fish which people were already exploiting, there would be much wheat to sell. Essentially what this meant is that whoever had control over the Area had the most influence over vinland other than the Paramount chief himself. The plan was to first start a settlement on the Island for closer access to the metal, then a second to a Peninsula pointing north where they could start farming and build a port to monopolize on the fish in the area. They had with them three important Frankish blacksmith slaves, it had cost them two ships to trade for them. Once they had landed they had immediately started cutting down trees and creating smith charcoal, a small scouting ship checking to see if the fish populations were still in check came back loaded with fish even though there was only one poorly made fishing line to see if the fish were still there; according to them most of the fish had "jumped' onto the boat and they had to shovel many off to stop the boat from sinking. When contact was trying to be made with Skaelings it was found most of them had died off from the wave of those fleeing their sick tribes eventually working their way down that far south, the few that remained had been starving and had nothing to trade. The Christians in the group had taken pity on them and pleaded with Thorkell to take them in. While Thorkell rejected it coldly and wanted to leave them to their fate (most likely due to the death of his uncle), Bjarni being a well educated Christian had referred to the story of the Parable of the Good Samaritan; this had infuriated Thorkell due to his strong belief in the old faith. Eventually a falling out occurred and Thorkell being the elder had sent Bjarny and all the Christian colonists (who made up around half of the colonists) out of the camp that was founded not 3 days prior, with the ships Bjarni took the remaining skraelings who had no idea what was going on but after a while went on the ship with them and had decided to circumnavigate Vinland as he had heard one sailor say it was an Island. With the Skraelings that survived numbering only seven beginning to understand tidbits of the Norse language, whilst sailing west once they had gone south enough, they had seen land on the Horizon and when they investigated they had found it was a small Island that was in reality not interesting at all (OTL St Paul Island). However in the distance from there was an island that the saw smoke rising above, when they arrived they had found an elongated ring of an Island with a large lagoon in the middle (OTL Magdalene Islands), the Skraelings had appeared to be a on a temporary camp there to hunt the seals and walruses that came there. While during some accident of sorts a fight broke out with three dead on the Norse side but the entire Skraeling community either killed or captured. During some rage Bjarni had their eyes cut out and toes cut off and had made them into rowers, albeit cruel this had become a very effective model that was soon accepted all over Vinland, Markland, even Greenland and Iceland.
On the central landmass of the Island he had founded Bjarnystad, there was plenty of wood, animals, grazing area, flat land for farming, and albeit not as good as the grand banks had decent fishing. He had sent a ship to inform his father (Leif Eriksson) of what Thorkell had done, and also to advertise his new colony, when Leif all the way in Greenland had heard of this had gotten very angry and immediately set sail for "Thorkellsborg" to correct his son and get him to forgive his brother, when he arrived it was said that Thorkell "Had assumed it was Bjarny here to take the title of chieftain from me" and had loosed arrows on the ships hitting Leif in the Shoulder, when the ships came ashore and they realized Bjarny wasn't there Leif was a little more than upset. Eventually Leif had gotten Thorkell to convert to Christianity and not be hostile to his brother anymore, afterwords both of the new colonies had thrived and had made wealth and grew large and prosperous. It was that same year that much land to the south and west had been explored and mapped.
(open to suggestion names for: Prince Edward Island, cape Breton Island, Anticosti, St. Lawrence river, Lake Ontario, Main/New Brunswick/ part of Quebec south of the river, Saguenay River and the lake that it starts from, and even the Magdalene Islands as a whole)
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