Amerika

Sometimes it comes up, so it makes sense to explore Nordic exploration of the New World before Christopher Columbus. Since the Nords did not establish colonies, for the most part, we have no idea what they saw and where they stopped for the night. They may have sailed the whole of the Americas. But they set up one settlement for certain:

Here we provide evidence that the Vikings were present in Newfoundland in ad 1021. We overcome the imprecision of previous age estimates by making use of the cosmic-ray-induced upsurge in atmospheric radiocarbon concentrations in ad 993 (ref. 6). Our new date lays down a marker for European cognisance of the Americas, and represents the first known point at which humans encircled the globe.

Despite this being the only permanent settlement, evidence as well as common sense suggest that exploration went much further, including to the present-day USA which for some reason did not appeal to Nordic tastes. However the wide-ranging exploration may have been a data-gathering trip more than anything else:

The only North American site with indisputable evidence of a visit by Norsemen is L’Anse aux Meadows, at the northern tip of Newfoundland. It’s possible that the L’Anse aux Meadows site is Leifsbúðir, where Leifur built his booths, and later, large houses, according to the sagas (Grænlendinga saga chapter 3).

However, both literary and archaeological evidence implies that Norse visitors traveled further south, to warmer climates. Scholars have suggested sites for Leif’s Vínland and for Þorfinn’s Hóp in the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and along the St. Lawrence River as far inland as Quebec, as well as along the eastern seaboard of Canada and the United States as far south as New York City.

There is evidence that the Norse voyages to Vínland were known elsewhere in Europe. European authors wrote about Vínland, including Adam of Bremen. Some scholars suggest that knowledge of Vínland existed in European seaports in the 15th century. Christopher Columbus visited Ingjaldshöll (left) in Iceland in 1477, fifteen years before his historic journey to the New World. Whether he learned about Vínland from the Icelanders during his visit is pure conjecture.

From the written traces left by the explorers, the Nords encountered a rich land of timber and grape, causing many to think they ventured to warmer climates:

Whoever their author was, the stories have challenged scholars to match the place names mentioned in them to real topography. For example, Thorfinn called two crucial places where he and his group camped in the New World Straumfjord (stream fiord) and Hop (lagoon) and described the first as having strong currents. Scholars have variously located Straumfjord, where Snorri was born, in Buzzards Bay, Massachusetts; Long Island Sound; the Bay of Fundy; and L’Anse auxMeadows (the Norse site discovered by Helge and Anne Ingstad on the northern tip of Newfoundland). Different advocates have placed Hop near New York City, Boston and points north.

If in fact Thorfinn and company traveled as far south as Gowanus Bay in New York Harbor, as asserted by the British scholar Geoffrey Gathorne-Hardy in 1921, they would have sailed past some of the greatest stands of primeval hardwoods on the planet, not to mention grapes—treasured by Norse chiefs who cemented their status with feasts accompanied by copious amounts of wine—and unlimited fish and game.

This does not preclude the fact that Amerind genetics reveal trace influences from earlier explorers who may have been pre-Nordic Europeans:

Yet the genetic record contains hints of early unsampled populations (6) (Fig. 5), and the material culture associated with that rapid spread (Clovis and later) is distinct from and postdates the earliest secure archaeological presence in the Americas at 14.6 ka ago (53).

Most likely, Europeans were aware of the Americas long before Vespucci and Columbus, but realized that with the size of the land, it probably contained far more enemies than the few Nordic explorers could fend off, and so they left the New World as it was, sort of like a zoo or nature park.

Tags: nordic exploration, nordic-germanic