WI: An Universal Norse Religion on the Americas

[Aluma]

I've seen a couple threads on "Viking Islam" - or to describe it more accurately - scandinavian paganism being reworked into a evangelical religion like Christianity, Buddhism & co

Though the focus tend to be, as its often the case, Europe and wheter this religion - should it exist - be able to survive the encounter with european catholicism and even thrive

Likewise I've seen threads on a functional, long-lasting Vinland due to ASB levels of luck blessing the settlers in order for a nordic colony in North America to be a thing

So!
Lets assume for instance that such a evangelical norse religion comes to be, it doesnt have to have many followers even if its just one guy thats enough
Likewise lets assume Vinland is still a thing
Now, unlike with these threads, lets assume that things go like OTL for the most part - Vinland doesnt go anywhere, Scandinavia is christianized and any sign of "preachy" vikings are forgotten in Europe

Now, what the divergence is?

Quite simple, like the legendary account of Saint Brendan coming to America to preach irish Christianity there, one(maybe the only follower of it) or a few believers of this hypothetical nordic religion make their way to Vinland and from there preach their way about the glory of Thor & Odin across North America and through their sheer effort and a high degree of luck their religion manages to survive among the native americans and their assimilated descendants while - as mentioned above - Vinland fails, Scandinavia goes christians and they are forgotten in the Old World

What could be the impact of that?
What butterflies could we expect from the american tribes converting to this lost scandinavian cult?

 

[danteheadman]

Why would native American peoples adopt this religion if Vinland fails?

 

[Aluma]

Same reason people adopt any other religion without the enforcement of an Empire

 

[Booster Gold]

Same reason people adopt any other religion without the enforcement of an Empire

That rarely happened in the medieval period. When it did it was facilitated by trade and along trade routes. There would need to be something worth going all the way to Vinland to trade regularly.

Also, writing would help a lot and what little Norse writing there is didn't happen until the 13th century

 

[Aluma]

Sorry, Im not meaning to be rude
More so my point is - the likes of the nestorians and muslims were able to convert and forge kingdoms far away from their heartlands(Europe, Arabia and Persia)

Truly the former fell without support of powerful empires like those of the later, but it wasnt a rare thing at all, and when you say medieval I have to remind you that we arent talking about Medieval Europe where atempting to convert people would truly not end well, but Mesoamerica

Also llke I said while Vinland is falling as per OTL, but that doesnt mean before it falls it wont have an effect either, and while I agree with you that the lack of a writen script is hard it doesnt necessarily mean there wont be conversions through oral transmission - like Im not asking for the religion to stay the same nor to be "exclusivist", as the nordics were notoriously polytheist - and even then it is possible for a script to develope upon contact & need for theological recordings, much like the runes for example

Ultimately Im looking for something like this timeline, isnt it possible at all?

 

[Arkenfolm]

Also, writing would help a lot and what little Norse writing there is didn't happen until the 13th century

Runes are attested to the 2nd century in Scandinavia and encode what is essentially a local dialect of Proto-Germanic. There are also runic inscriptions known from as far away as medieval Greenland.

Also llke I said while Vinland is falling as per OTL, but that doesnt mean before it falls it wont have an effect either, and while I agree with you that the lack of a writen script is hard it doesnt necessarily mean there wont be conversions through oral transmission - like Im not asking for the religion to stay the same nor to be "exclusivist", as the nordics were notoriously polytheist - and even then it is possible for a script to develope upon contact & need for theological recordings, much like the runes for example

A script might not be a problem. The Mikmaq and Ojibwe have a sort of proto-writing in the form of birch bark pictoglyphs that was/is exclusively used for religious purposes, apparently as an aid to memorising beliefs and stories. Apparently at least a few other Algonquian-speaking peoples in the northern US/Canada had similar traditions that are now lost because of how they were Christianised. These texts were sacred possessions and kept secure by the community's medicine men and their society and supposedly the earliest date back to the 15th century even if the bulk of them/their evolution may be a very early product of European contact.

It's also worth noting that OTL Aboriginal syllabics, invented by a missionary, spread faster than Christianity among the various Cree tribes. Most Algonquian and Iroquoian languages don't have complex phonology, so runic could plausibly do the same.

So adding the two together, either runic itself/a daughter script is used to write sacred texts for instruction, the pictoglyphs evolve earlier to a more complex form and are used for that, or a mixture of both depending on the context. Either way, it wouldn't be widely known and would be known and used exclusively by whatever religious society emerges. Granted, I don't think it's plausible for such a religion to be transmitted intact since there's not much reason to convert, but a Metis people arisen from the children of Norse missionaries, traders, and adventurers with local women might spread a garbled form of the religion, and spread it widely. In my TL I did something similar with Vinlandic Christianity and associated it with particular clan groups among Algonquian and Iroquoian speaking peoples (some of whom are descended from Norse) who practice a mix of indigenous and Christian beliefs.

 

[Evil Crusader]

My honest answer would be, "at best it becomes a curiosity for pseudohistorians and romantics to latch on". A depressing take alright, so let me explain in depth.

Sorry, Im not meaning to be rude
More so my point is - the likes of the nestorians and muslims were able to convert and forge kingdoms far away from their heartlands(Europe, Arabia and Persia)

Truly the former fell without support of powerful empires like those of the later, but it wasnt a rare thing at all, and when you say medieval I have to remind you that we arent talking about Medieval Europe where atempting to convert people would truly not end well, but Mesoamerica

Also llke I said while Vinland is falling as per OTL, but that doesnt mean before it falls it wont have an effect either, and while I agree with you that the lack of a writen script is hard it doesnt necessarily mean there wont be conversions through oral transmission - like Im not asking for the religion to stay the same nor to be "exclusivist", as the nordics were notoriously polytheist - and even then it is possible for a script to develope upon contact & need for theological recordings, much like the runes for example

Ultimately Im looking for something like this timeline, isnt it possible at all?

The author of the timeline themselves admit that it's "a work of alternate history that may belong more to the fringes of the History channel".

Now religions, especially in Antiquity but down to the modern world, have always needed legitimization; nobody is spending time and resources on worship that they have no reason to believe will help them. And how do you "prove" it? The easier way is through state success; if a nation is strong, then their rites must be doing something right and/or their deities are better. Islam certainly had some of this going early on; it's hard to conquer whole realms that have existed for centuries and not take it, understandably, as a sign of divine favor and might. Nestorians also had some of that state support in; they were after all the Sasanid state's favorite branch of Christianity, propped and nourished in opposition to East Rome's Chalcedonian preference. But they also had something that gave them a lease of life when state support shifted to Islam; tight organisation and clerical literacy, which allowed them to resist Islamisation to a degree and to keep proselytizing eastwards. It's way easier to prove and retain your religion when there's a literate tradition backing it up, and thus the Nestorians survived for a while, only to fade as they stopped having the numbers to back up those advantages (their institutional language, Aramaic, being displaced both in terms of religious adherence and secular usage).

So, back to the Vinland survivors; everything suggests they would be the ones to assimilate, culturally but also religiously, because they don't start with any of those advantages (state/military power, literacy & organisation, demographics). Do keep in mind that North America is a very large and sparsely populated place; even if they manage to survive left alone in a tiny corner, they'll hardly have the need to start proselytizing anyways.

 

[Kerney]

Also llke I said while Vinland is falling as per OTL, but that doesnt mean before it falls it wont have an effect either, and while I agree with you that the lack of a writen script is hard it doesnt necessarily mean there wont be conversions through oral transmission - like Im not asking for the religion to stay the same nor to be "exclusivist", as the nordics were notoriously polytheist - and even then it is possible for a script to develope upon contact & need for theological recordings, much like the runes for example

Uhhh, Runic is a fully written script. In fact, it was more common use among the Norse than the Roman Alphabet was among Christians, from elaborate stones marking "Private Property of" to "the story of my son's death" to "I (a comb) belong to Skadi".

The straight lines were in fact superior for carving in wood and stonework, with all those straight lines as opposed to curvy bits of the 'Roman' alphabet. It might just work well in a native American context.

So the idea of the Norse being illiterate is just plain wrong.

Also, Christianity was very much a top down imperial religion since the 4th century. The best way for the Norse to spread is for Norse faith to become top down by necessity and then tradition. Perhaps some successful conquests, some reason why say, the Norse King of Wessex to become anti Christian and to start removing Christian clergy, foster the son's and daughters of Saxons among them, and having sacrifices on market days and in generation or two the peasants just take Freya and Thor for granted.

That needs to take place long before 'Vinland' is discovered.

 

[Hearkener]

Truly the former fell without support of powerful empires like those of the later, but it wasnt a rare thing at all, and when you say medieval I have to remind you that we arent talking about Medieval Europe where atempting to convert people would truly not end well, but Mesoamerica

Mesoamerica had a fairly entrenched set of religious beliefs and a developed theological canon tbh. It wasn't evangelical or monotheist, but like the Abrahamic religion, it had methods of rejecting invase religious practices. The point is, they likely wouldn't roll over and die the instance they were exposed to an evangelical faith, like the Norse pantheon did.