Sven, A beautiful land across the ocean has been discovered, they call it Vinland! We should all move there. Oh no, remember Greenland? I'm not falling for that again.
LOL..! I read an article recently that Greenland actually was green during Viking times. IIRC this was figured out by archeology based on what they were eating. Early on they were eating sheep and goats, but as time progress the domestic animals were replaced by a mostly fish diet. This would fit perfectly with a cooling climate more like we see today. Wish I could find the article, I usually forget to bookmark sites that I need later. Any rate, the green part makes a lot of sense which helps explain why the Norse were able to last so long.
Dewey Dezimal Those germs would have decimated the Vikings even worse at that point. Had they not later intermarried with other Europeans, the pox would've wiped them out too when it reached Europe.
I like how you present first hand sources instead of just processing it like a wikipedia page like most history channels. It is a lot more authentic and gives the viewer judgement on the value/limitations of the source.
@@g-rexsaurus794 The Spaniards has better weapons and they didn't used man vs man combat techniques, those are different things, European were more advanced that the Aztecs, you cannot compare a tribe with an a massive Empire.
Tyler Solvestri Being the invading side with fewer people not knowing the land is the definition of a Viking, they won some and lost some. With the right circumstanses they could have won and with the wrong they would have been fucked. Thats the Viking Age in a nutshell.
North America has plenty of farmable land, air, liquid water, and other resources and you don't need a spacesuit to go out. It's nothing like the moon.
@@user-uy1rg8td1v Yeah, I'm just saying that back then, colonizing north america would have been like colonizing the moon. Settling is more difficult than exploring.
The colony in Greenland lasted for 400 years after the Hop colony in North America was abandoned. The Greenland Vikings knew about North America all that time but couldn't spare the resources to exploit inhabited territory. There is evidence that there were expeditions however. In about 1200 ad (If I remember correctly) records mention a fleet of warships led by a king heading west past Greenland. The thing is, what little we know of this period was handed down by word of mouth and finally recorded in Iceland decades later. This left huge gaps in the chronicle.
From the Icelandic Sagas: * The natives through way into a river the iron they did get from Vikings. * A lady who was with the Vikings in Vinland ended up going to Rome and becoming a Nun. What are the odds she told her story and it is in the Catholic archives? * Gravitas Extra Points: Two of the Sagas tell the story of a one legged Native killing a Viking Chieftain...and then outrunning the other Vikings and getting away. lol A look at an abandoned building and lot and how quickly it is overran by plants and essentially reclaimed by nature. No wonder very little remains of the Viking settlements after 1,000 years.
Who knows, since the Vikings supposed switched the names of Iceland and Greenland on their maps...maybe it was fake news. So I would completely dismiss this information if I were you.
@@JaEDLanc Have you read the thick 1000 pages Icelandic Sagas? Might do you some go to offset the narrative of Columbus "discovering" the Americas in 1492.
My mother is M'ikmaq, and while my maternal haplogroup traces from the Ice Age era land bridge, my paternal haplogroup is, well, Viking, haha. So, of course I enjoyed this video immensely!
@moptop guap I'm not about to get into an argument concerning my heritage with a dipshit on the Internet, so all I'll say is that my mother was born on Burnt Church reserve in N.B., Canada, and go on on my way.
@Thumpty Dumpty sounds like Sean's mom is who she says she is, and I would *love* to hear what conspiracy nonsense has you saying that the land bridge theory is racist and outdated lol
@Thumpty Dumpty Not only are you a belligerent dick, you are terrible at explaining yourself lol. Does anyone have any idea what this troll is talking about?
When you're talking about a maybe 60-100 Norsemen, if none of them happened to be sick then you don't get any transmission of the disease. There many just not have been enough of them there for long enough for smallpox to spread to the Americas, or syphillis to spread back to Europe (syphillis likely originated in the Americas and caused a lot of deaths in Europe when it first arrived in the 15-16th centuries). After smallpox wiped out much of the population in South and Central America, Europeans brought African slaves to the Americas. The slaves brought malaria with them, introducing yet another deadly disease to the Americas. It was basically a three-way exchange of nasty killer diseases.
Smallpox wasnt widespread thoughout Europe until after the Crusades and the travel distance would have killed smallpox victims by the time they got there
Smallpox not only was not as far spread, but you also have to remember topography. Northern countries don't suffer most diseases due to manageable populations as well as the temperature and land topography. Most Diseases require warmer and humid locations to thrive.
The Vikings should've tried to settle the Islands off the Coast on new Foundland like St.Pierre and Miquelon first. That way they would've had a tradeposte, a "homebase" off the coast. The Climate there is quiet similar to northern Britain so they would've had no problem building fishing towns there
As someone that grew up on a Miramichi river I'll give you points for effort. It is pronounced "Meer-Ma-She" or "mare-ma-she". Also the locals say L'anse aux Meadows as "Lance ah Meadows"
Haha I honestly just love the fact that my mother is Icelandic, and my father was born and raised in Newfoundland. I just got that PURE Viking blood flowing through my veins haha 😂
If those pirate rapists invaded your home today you have the right to shoot them Brian boru high king of Ireland destroyed the vikings in Ireland in the battle of clontarf 1014 ad
@@declannewton2556 not really lost. More like it was temporally occupied by the Brits during the 2nd anglo-dutch war and after the Dutch kicked the English arses it was 'traded' for Suriname and guess what , it was the better deal. The brits 'lost' new york in 1783, the dutch kept Suriname and it's wealth of resources till 1975.
Great video as usual - it was sill hard hundreds of years later when the English abandoned Roanoake in 1585 showing how hard this transatlantic colony thing is.
Guys if the idea of Vikings meeting native americans fancy you make sure to see the movie Valhalla Rising, a wonderful (yet quite special) movie. VALHALLA RISING
I'm still upset that they didn't expand on the idea, especially one eyes death made no sense. I got completely lost after the one dude started mounting his mentally broken mate.
Imagine if the Ottomans got involved in Colonisation abroad!
4 года назад
They did. Did you never hear of the Balkans, nor of the lands to the South? Lands now called Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Palestine, Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, Egypt? Until the Turks allied with the wrong side in WWI, they had a goodly empire. The case of Egypt is more complicated.
Eric the Red might have made a difference had a storm driven him to Viland instead of landing in Greenland the colony would have to be 1000 to 2000 people to succeed from the first.
In 1920 the Second largest Swedish city was Chicago (it had more Swedes living there than Gothenburg in sweden ), today the state of Wisconsin, Minnesota,North Dakota(2nd largest group after germans are the Norwegians) and Utah(lots of Mormons are Danish in ancestry) are dominated or are heavily influenced by Scandinavian culture. Also New Jersey was a Swedish Colony for a while . The Vikings hadn't colonised the Americas but there descendents surely did.
Just as everybody in the west wasn't a cowboy/gunfighter, all of the Norse weren't Viking warriors". Odds are the Norse who found Vinland weren't Vikings but just Norse farmers and fishermen.
Another thing to consider is that the vikings of Iceland and Greenland at the time were probably not the fearsome behemoths most people believe them to be. Malnutrition and harsh living conditions literally shrunk and weakened them as is supported by archeological findings from Greenland. Given that and the natives home turf advantage and greater numbers it probably wasn't too hard for them to defeat the Vinland vikings.
"native Americans" came from Asia. They're not native.. Furthermore, they are not one people. They were hundreds (if not thousands) of individual tribes (nations) that were continually waging war on each other over land, hunting and grazing "rights", as well as cultural differences..
People from the Avalon, south coast, central and the west coast have different flavours to the accent and that’s why I believe it’s so hard for locals to agree on the pronunciations
You should have mentioned Thorfinnr Karlsefni from the Saga of Erik The Red. It is claimed that he tried to settle in Vinland and did stay for some time but was forced to leave because of the natives (Skraelings) repetitive attacks. Great video anyways, keep up the good content 👍🏻
One of history's great "what if" scenarios, you could argue that the scandinavians had done the hard part, building ocean going ships and navigating to the Americas, if only they realised what a place they had stumbled upon.
the Vikings that arrived with Leif had poor relations with the native. Europeans had been coming to the gulf of Maine to fish for cod for some time. They would come ashore, and the natives, who were numerous, would be happy to trade, but after a reasonable period, would make clear when it was time for them to leave. The Pilgrims were originally headed elsewhere than Plymouth. Perhaps they would have been told to leave, had not disease killed off most of the locals. So it was not superior technology that allowed Europeans to settle in North America. The Spanish were successful in central and south America more because the leveraged regional conflicts between natives, rather than technology.
What if one or both accounts were talking about a pseudo cereal like amaranth or quinoa and not actually wild wheat? Is wild wheat indigenous anywhere outside the fertile crescent?
Carb filled wheat like plants were cultivated all over earth. Wheat is genetically modified grasses. There are lots of grasses and lots of things you could emphasize to get the results you need in the environment.
Loved the video... but the Vinland flag? The part of North America the Vikings discovered didn't lie in the area of the 13 British Colonies that would later revolt. Newfoundland (Vinland), Labrador (Wunderstrand), and Baffin Island (Helluland) are all in present day Canada. Show me a Viking Bird of Prey in a blue background with the North Star in the upper left corner and you will have the flag right. The flag will then represent the period it refers to. Thanks Hilbert!
But you do realize that if the Vikings would have colonized that part of NA (now Canada) - and spread throughout - it would have completely changed the later dynamics of what became the US and what became Canada.
You failed to mention that the climate was much warmer at that time. Greenland was named that because it was a green land. As the climate changed Greenland was abandoned.
So it’s kind of a stretch by I’m thinking about an alternate history series where Vinland was colonized and here’s my rationale. It’s around the year 100 AD, by in large Scandinavia has been almost completely christianized but there are still small groups of pagans (here called Ásatrúar) holding out. We know this because Olaf Tryggvason has several figured killed for refusing to convert and he died around this time, so it’s reasonable to assume there were still some but they basically had to hide their beliefs because they were terrified of persecution. So Leif goes on his first expedition and he brings back tales of this new world to the west. The word is that Leif wants to return but he’s looking for more people to join him. This word spreads to these small and terrified communities living in hiding and they decide it would be a great idea to leave Norway and join him on his next expedition. They manage to hide their beliefs from the other settlers but finally it’s decided that they’re going to leave because of drama involving Leif’s sister Freydis. One of these secret pagans stands up and basically says “Look, we would rather die than go back to Norway. So if you’re going to make us go, you might as well kill us here.” Leif thinks for a moment before decided he doesn’t want to deal with any more problems because this whole Vinland thing and so he agrees to let them stay so long as they swear before Odin and Christ that they will never sail east again. Of course, they agree to Leif’s terms. So now you have a group of 400 virtual outlaws who have to survive on their own. Somehow they manage to survive and form a foothold in the northern part of Newfoundland. They’re able to trade livestock for land and eventually expand into the rest of the island. They live in relative isolation after that for awhile until they believe their numbers are strong enough to take on the Mi’kmaq on the mainland.
*wood age. Not stone age. The natives left the stone age approximately the same time europeans did. However the north American Natives did not develop the furnaces required to smelt Steel or iron, nor did they need to, with exceptionally hard almost iron like woods, and freely available elemental copper, and Iron ores where of low quality where they existed close to fuels (remember, no horses), it would have been pretty stupid to use a primitive forge or bloomery, an absolute waste of energy for the gains, so iron developed in central america, where the resources required to make iron made sense, and breeding, forest managment and and plant husbandry, made much much more sense, and they did so exceptionally well, to the point of literally turning entire forests into gardens!
the Canadian flag is glorious, original and beautiful the way it is. Unlike most other countries who have boring flags with similar or repeating patterns and colour schemes. Maple Leaf for Life
The Isle of Bacus is now called l’île d'Orlean, it is in front of Quebec city, near a large Huron village at the time an anual meating place where 10,000 native gather to trade. They could grow weat in Greenland, twin harvest per year, due to the temperature at the time preceiding the little ice age. While they relied on trade from the old country, they didn't had any military support from any of them since Eric the Red, their leader, was a murdering criminal!
Cool video. However Portugal discovered America in 1492 , they just didn’t tell anyone because they wanted it for themselves. They discovered it by mistake trying to go around Africa to India. So it went like this : Vikings, Portuguese , Columbus
It is my understanding they were processing bog iron at the site in Newfoundland which would explain why it wasn't a farming settlement. When Cartier arrived in the Bay de Chaleur he was met by speakers of an Iroquoian language not the Mi'maq (mee maug). The Miramici (meer a mishee) suffered a very severe wildfire during the 19th century so if there were a Norse settlement we are unlikely to find it. One of the factors nobody seems to mention is the heavy dependence on slavery in Norse culture. The inability to obtain slaves (neither the Beothuk nor the Mi'maq lived in permanent villages) was a real problem.
Some people say some of the east coast tribes like the Narragansett still bear genetic markers for Scandinavian DNA. I don't if it's true or not, but I always wondered if the Vikings brought any native americans back to Europe with them, because on my Irish side we have some traits that are somewhat native american, but no recent ancestry and no recorded ancestors. So I always wondered if the Norse brought some native blood with them back to Iceland and Ireland.
@@slipstreamxr3763 They have found Inuit DNA in Iceland. They are not sure whether this is from a pre-existing population or from Greenland. As for atypical traits amongst the Irish it's more likely from the pre-Indo-European Neolithic population that has left the highest DNA admixture in Ireland.
natives werent living in the stone age. that is such a huge myth & actually there was over 5000 norsemen living in greenland before they were wiped out by the thule who later on become the inuit, one of the most peaceful native tribe in north america.
The most probable reason The Scandinavians left America after 300 years there is the little ice age. The Mississippi culture and Greenland colony also disappered at that time.
I don't discredit what you're saying but it only takes common sense to tell that the people that built the tallest pyramid in the world weren't as primitive as you make out, in fact they may have been behind in some ways but most definitely further ahead spiritually
@@endo_kun_da As a Finn I often mistekenly hear that as New Finland. I was actually kinda disappointed when I realized that it was actually written Newfoundland.
@@jokuvaan5175 Newfoundlander here, I just assumed we were always saying Newfoundland but the fast speaking local dialect makes it sound as though we are saying New Finland. Ie in my head I'm saying new found land bit it comes out sounding like newfin land.
Because even in 2019 some parts of Newfoundland (Vinland) are harsh af to live in. And Canadian First Nations are badass people And for future reference Newfoundland is pronounced like understand
What about communication of lack of communication? Shortly after Columbus voyage(s) several European countries were actively sending expeditions to the Americas, whereas after the Vikings voyages no other Europeans seemed to be aware of the discovery, did the Vikings keep it to themselves or is this an incorrect assumption? Perhaps it was due to the less developed state of European nation states at the time? Great channel, I always look forward to your videos!
Information spread very slowly back then most viking where illiterate and did not interact much with the christian people in the south because they would fight each other for religious reasons.
Yes, the expedition has been mentioned in later German sources. It is also possible Columbus himself may have been aware of it, as he used to be a navigator on a trading ship between Portugal and Norway.
i saw pre 1400 maps that showed north america very accurately. showed forts and villages. latin spelling of chicago florida and california. cali was an island tho. either they didnt sail all the way up baja or it rose from sea afterwards. if real its very interesting.🍻
yeah. and unicorns. or the Jedi. seriously, no1 should worship any god. but yeah, if worship were a must, anything would be more interesting than monotheism. it is f boring. I remember my history lessons from the good old days. first, we learnt about the gods of the pre-christian millenia. then we learnt about the new god who christians nowadays call god. at least, come up with a name! I found it a huge step back in creativity. the whole buhbl, on the other hand, would be 1st class script for a Hollywood movie
As someone with English, Native American, and Scandinavian blood, I am genuinely curious as to whether my Scandinavian heritage comes from their interbreeding with the English or the sailors that explored North America. Most likely the English ones, but you can never be truly sure.
I do love a good history lesson. Although in my school my teacher told us that Mr Columbia didn't discover America. He said u can't discover something that already had people living here.
We should colonize the USA and make it Vinland. Great stuff Hilbert. By the way are you gonna make a video about the Swedish vikings? I remember asking you this like a year ago but nothing happend.
@@creakychair9387 Iceland was settled by Norwegians. Leiv's father was a Norwegian, and their capitol Reykjavik was founded by Norwegians. By 1262 Iceland was offcially a part of Norway.
@Johan Strydom Thanks Johan, I think it is a quite funny meme at 00:27, but I have noticed the same meme on a number of other RU-vid sites... it is good to see people remembering the Dutch...
We have a state named after Abel Tasman. Although I cannot understand why the Dutch did not further investigate "new Holland", Melbourne, my home city would be named after a Dutch person rather than the 2nd Viscount Melbourne...
Hilbert is Dutch/Frisian apparently. The founders of New Amsterdam were mostly Frisians btw. I wonder if there was any continuity between the Viking world, kinda including the Frisians, and later Dutch settlement in North America.
@Hannah Guichard Oral traditions tend to die out as populations are displaced. This is why we don't have a great deal of native american history in general because once disease spread and wiped out great swaths of the local populations.... so does the history with it.
That's historically inacurate. There was no concept of a Norwegian nation at that time. There was no one unified Norwegian people, only a bunch of tribes. At most, they'd be Nordmenn, but to the exlusion of Eastern Norwegians.
@@virding232 As a Norwegian I can tell you we had a unified nation by 872 AD called Norvergr. We started calling ourselves Norwegians around the 800's, so yes, 200+ years latr we'd established a national identity.
i loved this video it was really cool! and it might be cool to cover more failed colonies like for example New sweeden (which hardly ever gets talked about) or the scots attempt at panama?
Emsnews Supkis Or Ivory became availible from other sources than walrus and the plague decreased number of people and economy so it was just not viable to stay.
I assume because the colony on Greenland was given up. Up until the 14th century the Norse went to Vinland to cut trees but as it was never written down that Vinland existed and Greenland was abandoned it was forgotten.
Yep. US education system at play however US citizens (as well as most people in the Anglosphere) likely consider the Antilles to be being exclusively part of North America so I don't know ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Thanks for your contribution! Your dislike and comment are generating both higher visibility and recommendations on RU-vid and revenue for me! Feel free to do so on more of my videos! Thanks again!
At 4:29 Glad you pointed out that "arrowhead" was not the arrowhead found in a viking grave. That is a Folsom spear point which would push Indian -Viking contact to about 8.000 to 10.000 BCE.
they did establish a colony in greenland though...it just didnt last that long due to what seemed like a severe outbreak of some illness that killed everybody living there off in a few days
