Who has the best chance of beating the Vikings to Iceland?
- Thread starter CELTICEMPIRE
- Start date
I could see a skraeling population on iceland, but no fucking way celts get there, if your talking ancient celts.
This was discussed in this thread.
General consensus appears to be expansionist Gaels.
General consensus appears to be expansionist Gaels.
Brunaburh
Banned
The Irish Celts were there during the post-Roman period, mostly anchorites it seems, as the Norse referred to them as Papar. This suggests they didn't have any self-replicating settlements, but I suspect that various monasteries in Ireland were sending people there consistently for quite a long time. The evidence from Shetland and the Hebrides is that the relations between Gaelic anchorites and Vikings were quite good. Given they had no gold or women and little food they seem to have left them alone, or perhaps they were doing something useful for them, hard to know what.
Anyway, if the Irish had tried to put actual colonies there, the Norse would have killed the men and stolen the women as they did on the other North Atlantic islands.
Anyway, if the Irish had tried to put actual colonies there, the Norse would have killed the men and stolen the women as they did on the other North Atlantic islands.
Saint Kilda and the rest of Hebrides remained Celtic speaking.
Orkney and Shetland had been settled since Neolithic, and somehow became Norse speaking. Precisely what became of the last Celtic speaking men in Orkney and Shetland? Killed? Or stayed home as free citizens, and adopted the language of their new neighbours?
Brunaburh
Banned
I don't think it's that simple. The Hebrides may have actually been largely Norse-speaking in 1000, I would wager some islands were certainly entirely Norse. If you look at place names, most of the outer Hebrides are Norse and Island names are quite resistant to change, not as much as rivers, but still quite a bit. It may also be that some islands went directly from Pictish to Norse, we don't actually have much evidence of what languages were spoken in the Hebrides in 780. It's quite possible that the situation was the same as in the Orkneys and Shetlands.
My personal view is that the Outer Hebrides were Norse-speaking but became Gaelicised through the Gall-Ghaeil culture further south and their contacts with Gaelic speaking areas of the mainland.
The Norse sagas basically say they massacred the men, I don't see any evidence of any kind of friendly interaction tbh. I suspect the islands were completely depopulated by slaving raids in the early ninth century, and resettled by entirely new people.
Yeah, as others have said, the Gaels. I actually dug a bit into it, and that agricultural package that the Gaels had at the time would have survived just fine in Iceland (and, if they could get cows up there, all the better - the long summers actually make for very good grazing.) I think the main problem is to make it advantageous for the Gaels to settle the territory, which means you either need an excess population or someone losing big in a war and fleeing with all of his/her family and dependents up there.
Celtic Iceland sounds pretty cool.
Any chance of Canada/Greenland natives getting there?
Any chance of Canada/Greenland natives getting there?
Probably the Celts given your timetable. The Bretons probably.
A bit of a cheat, but since you didn't time restrict this request, if the Romans sort out their 51st decade problems, a trip to Iceland isn' out of the question.
A bit of a cheat, but since you didn't time restrict this request, if the Romans sort out their 51st decade problems, a trip to Iceland isn' out of the question.
Were the 9th century Norse settlers of Iceland sufficiently familiar with stylistic differences between the various regions of British Celts to determine whether the Papar had been Irish, Dalriadan/Hebridean Scotch, or Pictish?
Brunaburh
Banned
They had different names for Britons and Irish, and they probably used the word "diamon", or something similar for picts. But the papar's ethnicity is never mentioned. The Irish monastic culture of the Inner Hebrides is well recorded though, and texts show it involved people sailing for ages and living on rocks. They were almost certainly part of this Gaelic culture which spanned the Irish sea.