Alt. Hist. request, Vikings make a go of the "New World"?

[Minimalist]

Greatly exaggerated.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Greatly exaggerated.

If you mean the influence of Vikings in North America, I agree. That's why I asked about an alt-hist, save myself a few steps if a perceptive author has noted some things I've heard of but haven't chased down. Breadcrumbs are where you find them. 

[Amarok]

Greatly exaggerated.

If you mean the influence of Vikings in North America, I agree. That's why I asked about an alt-hist, save myself a few steps if a perceptive author has noted some things I've heard of but haven't chased down. Breadcrumbs are where you find them. 

I think he was talking about lead poisoning

[Minimalist]

No.  I meant the "lead poisoning" remark.

Did you ever really think about the unlikelihood of 180 Spaniards conquering the Inca Empire of supposedly upwards of 16 million inhabitants?

Consider this demonstration.






The Spanish invented the Arquebus which the guy in the baggy pants is using in the 15th century.  Of those 180 Spaniards most would not have been arquebusiers.  Many would have carried pikes...which on European battlefields were necessary to keep the cavalry from overrunning the gunners between shots. 
Worse, and what is not apparent from this video, is the fact that black powder weapons could get horribly fouled after 8-10 shots to the point where they were unusable until cleaned.  So to suggest that it was the volume of fire put out by firearms which defeated hordes of Inca is fairly silly.

However, in 1491 by Charles Mann he makes the case that contact with European diseases wiped out up to 90% of the population of the Americas and most Indians were killed long before they ever saw a white man.  The diseases spread along internal trading routes from the coasts.  Bullshit Spanish propaganda aside their campaign would have been a cakewalk through a landscape devastated by the effects of the plague which preceded them.

That makes a great deal more sense than a handful of Spaniards armed with those weapons conquering a large and vibrant nation at the peak of its power.  But, such a story doesn't give proper credit to "god" does it.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

The Aztecs also happened to be total assholes, capturing people for the purpose of ripping their hearts out. Somehow that made them enemies among their neighbors.

[Brian37]

Looking for an alternative history where the Vikings decide that North America is just what they want. Anybody read anything like this? Opinions solicited.

Um, the natives were in the Americas long before any Europeans.

[Minimalist]

The Aztecs also happened to be total assholes, capturing people for the purpose of ripping their hearts out. Somehow that made them enemies among their neighbors.

I'm sure the Inca would not have been too popular among subject peoples, either.  Nonetheless, those subject people would have been devastated by disease as well.

[Gawdzilla Sama]

Looking for an alternative history where the Vikings decide that North America is just what they want. Anybody read anything like this? Opinions solicited.

Um, the natives were in the Americas long before any Europeans.

Despite having just said that I get the impression you think I didn't know that.

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The Aztecs also happened to be total assholes, capturing people for the purpose of ripping their hearts out. Somehow that made them enemies among their neighbors.

I'm sure the Inca would not have been too popular among subject peoples, either.  Nonetheless, those subject people would have been devastated by disease as well.

I didn't say they wouldn't have been. But the Aztec terror would have been solved at least.

[Minimalist]

Human sacrifice was not uncommon in Meso-America even before the Aztecs got there.  Then again, you are also relying on the truthiness of Spanish chroniclers which sometimes leaves much to be desired.

[Anomalocaris]

Vikings were in America?
How did they get on with the indigenous folk?

There is a popular perception that the Vikings are adventurous, wily and adaptable.  But I think in the one case where they got out of the comfort zone of familiar European and near east civilization and had prolonged contact with indigenous people, they proved anything but. This is seem in the 300 year coexistence between the Viking and the Inuit in Greenland.  

The Vikings called the first Inuits they encountered  “skrealing”, meaning wretch, and stabbed them with swords just to see if these wretch’s would bleed.  Over the next 300 years, the Vikings on Greenland rigidly followed the pastoral way of life familiar from Ireland and Scandinavia, despite its unsuitability to conditions in Greenland as the little ice age set in.  They imported luxury goods from Europe to keep up apparences, and despite struggling just to survive, build large cathedrals.  They totally ignored the fact that they could see the Inuits were well adopted to the cooling condition and were doing just fine, even though archeological evidence shows the Vikings were having harder and harder times raising cattle in grenland’s Unsuitable climate.   In the adopted nothing from Inuit technology or way of life for 300 years.  As a result the Greenland Vikings eventually died out completely in Greenland.

Based on this, one may suspect Viking’s outlook in America is clouded by their own bad cultural attitudes.