VIKINGS!

[Queen]

...  I'm really surprised that I've never heard objections from women's groups.

It is objected to, loudly, but as with many things related to women, we are not considered worthy of being heard.

 

[IanC]

And just for fun, here's an interesting read.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...n-vikings-iceland-genetic-dna-science-europe/

Man, this is an interesting topic - I know how I'll be pissing the day away.  Sure am glad I got the unlimited data plan from Verizon.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

There is a large exhibition of Viking artifacts currently on display at a museum in Denver.

http://www.dmns.org/vikings-beyond-the-legend/exhibition-features/


A different but similar exhibition will open in late May at a museum in Utah.

https://nhmu.utah.edu/vikings

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

For the adventurous:  Bake your own Viking bread!

http://www.dmns.org/media/2969853/make-your-own-viking-bread.pdf

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

Some pictures from:

http://www.drakenexpeditionamerica.com/

 

[IanC]

I'm, watching the BBC doc 'The Viking Sagas' based around the 1,000 years old book 'The Laxdæla Saga' - stories of their day to day lives in their own words. Really amazing stuff. . One of the interesting things (as someone else mentioned) is that most of the original settlers of Iceland were men and almost all the women, according to the skeletal remains found were Irish Celts plus some Scots women too. The Vikings were great story tellers and even today, one in ten Icelanders is a published author.

There is so much incredible stuff out there and thanks to the Internet it can come to us in the most remote places. This is going to keep me busy for a long time, I can tell. Thanks for bringing this topic up.

 

[lenny flank]

Global cooling that would affect Vinland would have also affected Greenland and Iceland as much, or more so, as well as Scandinavia itself.

It did. That's why the Vikings left Greenland.

 

[tesaje]

And just for fun, here's an interesting read.
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/...n-vikings-iceland-genetic-dna-science-europe/

Interesting. I can easily see sailors fing native women from time immemorial no matter how ugly they might have seemed. It is possible a woman was taken back and lived long enuf to give birth or if they were there long enuf, a child could have been taken back. She could have thought she was married and wanted to go. Not being in the sagas gives no evidence at all. If it happened, it could well be not considered important enuf to write a story. Little was written in those times.

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[lenny flank]

I believe DNA studies have found no European blood in the native Americans thus disproving this theory.

That's right. Native Americans are of Asian ancestry.

The species Homo sapiens appeared in Africa, about 200,000 years ago. Which makes all of us, deep down inside, Africans.

 

[DuneElliot]

In regards to the women and slaves. Women natives (female Vikings in crude terms) were more equal to men in their culture and society then almost any other culture other than the Celts at the time. Women could own property, marry, divorce, be the head of house hold etc...the only thing the could not do, it seems, is hold political office. Women were seen as equal citizens.

Of course this did not apply to captured slaves and servants of another culture where women, and men, were not considered even really human.

 

[tesaje]

Thanks but, I'm afraid I have to disagree with that statement. See link below.
http://sciencenordic.com/dna-links-native-americans-europeans

There's a lot of problems With that article and its conclusions. Yes, the NA DNA comes partly from central Asia. The haplotype is stated as unique and not found in Europeans yet they assume it is. 24k years ago does not indicate the source was Europe. Peoples could easily have branched in different directions. There is very little Paleolithic DNA left in Europeans today. Most have DNA sourced from people in the middle east who farmed (Neolithic) some 10-8000 years ago and displaced the Paleolithic peoples in Europe. These are not the same as the current middle eastern populations. The Basque are thought to be from the original Paleolithic population.

Given all that, it reads like a justification for insisting that NA were white but that is a fringe idea not supported by evidence or archeology. At best, some of the original Paleolithic population from central Asia might have also gone to Europe but that does not translate that europeans came to NA as a founding population.

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[lenny flank]

Given all that, it reads like a justification for insisting that NA were white but that is a fringe idea not supported by evidence or archeology. At best, some of the original Paleolithic population from central Asia might have also gone to Europe but that does not translate that europeans came to NA as a founding population.

There is actually a serious proposal, based mostly on comparison of stone tools, that North America was populated by Solutrean people from Europe. But there is not a shred of genetic evidence for that. And the stone-technology evidence isn't very good either--early American stone points also match those in Siberia.

Sadly, some of the fringe white supremacist goobers have seized on the "Solutrean hypothesis" as some sort of justification for their idiocy. That's because they don't have a third-grader's understanding of "science".

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

It was the climate that beat the Vikings in North America. They happened to get here right around the time that there was a short period of global cooling, which made it impossible for them to farm, so they left.

It did. That's why the Vikings left Greenland.

Sorry, but the chronology does not match.

The Norse settlements in Greenland thrived for centuries, but died out in the 1400s, probably mostly due to the Little Ice Age that occurred at that time.  The Black Death, which hit Scandinavia and Iceland hard, in 1349 (1 in 3 died) possibly also contributed, at least to the extent that it probably disrupted what little trade there was with Greenland.

Carbon Dating has established that L'Anse aux Meadows dates from 950 to 1050.  Which matches perfectly with the sagas, which suggest it was founded around 1000, and was not occupied for more than a decade or so.

So the L'Anse aux Meadows site did not fail because of the Little Ice Age and the failure of agriculture.  It was done long before that happened.

 

[LeeRevell]

There is actually a serious proposal, based mostly on comparison of stone tools, that North America was populated by Solutrean people from Europe. But there is not a shred of genetic evidence for that. And the stone-technology evidence isn't very good either--early American stone points also match those in Siberia.

Sadly, some of the fringe white supremacist goobers have seized on the "Solutrean hypothesis" as some sort of justification for their idiocy. That's because they don't have a third-grader's understanding of "science".

On the other hand, comingvatvthe evidence from the opposite way round.....
There has been NO evidence found of Clovis style lithic development in Asia predating those of North America, while the Clovis lithic style is very similar to prior Solutrean lithic styles.
So...... obviously, the American Indians came over from Asia and developed a totally new lithic style full-blown.......?
Just putting this out for discussion.

 

[lenny flank]

Well, no, there are Asian precursors for Clovis technology. And in any case, forming a new technology in response to new conditions on a new continent would not at all be unexpected.

Anyway, the genetic data is massive and overwhelming. Native Americans are Asian. And humans, as a whole, are all African.

 

[lenny flank]

Sorry, but the chronology does not match.

Indeed, I should have been more clear. Newfoundland even at the time it was founded did not have as good a climate as Greenland did. It was incapable of supporting the Norse agrarian lifestyle. That colony was doomed from the start from purely ecological factors. There's no need to invoke (and no evidence to support) the idea that Native Americans drove them out. 

There still remains open the possibility that the Vikings actually did go further south and find "grapes" (there were no grapes in Newfoundland). That would have given them a climate better suited for their lifestyles, but it would also have been doomed from the start because of the unworkable link back to the other colonies, necessary for trade items. It would not have lasted long either.

They could perhaps have survived in both places had they given up their own technologies and methods and adopted those of the natives--i.e., if they had become "Americans" instead of "Europeans". Apparently they chose not to do so.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

Indeed, I should have been more clear. Newfoundland even at the time it was founded did not have as good a climate as Greenland did. It was incapable of supporting the Norse agrarian lifestyle. That colony was doomed from the start from purely ecological factors. There's no need to invoke (and no evidence to support) the idea that Native Americans drove them out.

And yet, if Samuel Elliot Morrison is to be believed, their own sagas claim it was the Skrellings who drove them out.

Moreover, around the year 1000 ad, it was a particularly warm time called the Medieval Warm Period.  And unlike Iceland and Greenland, in Newfoundland it was possible for the livestock to graze all winter, thanks to a lack of snow at that time.

North Atlantic Climate circa AD 1000

 

[Every Road Leads Home]

Here's the link to the article I read, took some digging in google to find it. It's more about Native Americans, but # 3 on the list goes into the Viking aspect of it.

http://anonhq.com/5-lies-schooltaught-native-americans/

 

[lenny flank]

And yet, if Samuel Elliot Morrison is to be believed, their own sagas claim it was the Skrellings who drove them out.

Moreover, around the year 1000 ad, it was a particularly warm time called the Medieval Warm Period.  And unlike Iceland and Greenland, in Newfoundland it was possible for the livestock to graze all winter, thanks to a lack of snow at that time.

North Atlantic Climate circa AD 1000

The sagas are stories, not history. "History" as such did not even exist then. There is no evidence that the Native Americans drove them away, and no need to presume that they did.

As noted, it is indeed possible that the Vikings were able to live through their usual agrarian lifestyle in places in North America. But any such colony would have failed due to the lack of a reliable trade route with the rest of the Dane world. It would be doomed to fail from the start.

 

[Optimistic Paranoid]

Here's another good article on the subject:

http://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/exploration/norse-north-atlantic.php