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

[The Grand Nudger]

Tech that allowed us to live in one of the harshest places on earth .

Traditional technology was based on locally available materials, principally bone, horn, antler, ivory, stone and animal skins. In some areas people used grass or baleen (the material used by whales to strain krill and plankton) for basketry and other containers. They also substituted wood or copper for antler or bone, and bird or possibly fish skins for animal skins. Many Inuit inventions are considered technological masterpieces for their resourcefulness and strength of design, like the igloo, the toggling harpoon head and the .

http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en...le-arctic/

Why on earth would the norse want an igloo or a kayak...additionally, are we imagining that they couldn't produce their own snowholes and skinboats if they wanted to slum it?  

Not knocking the inuits, or doubting their resourcefulness...but superior tools required for the main activities the norse were engaged in, in greenland..were all in the possession of the norse.

[Minimalist]

That alleged contact is not undisputed, Tiz.

The first inhabitants of Newfoundland were the Paleo-Eskimo who have no known link to other groups in Newfoundland history. Little is known about them beyond archeological evidence of early settlements. Evidence of successive cultures have been found. The Late Paleo-Eskimo, or Dorset culture, settled there about 4,000 years ago. They were descendants of migrations of ancient prehistoric peoples across the High Arctic thousands of years ago, after crossing from Siberia via the Bering land bridge. The Dorset died off or abandoned the island prior to the arrival of the Norse.

After this period, the Beothuk settled Newfoundland, migrating from Labrador on the mainland. There is no evidence that the Beothuk inhabited the island prior to Norse settlement. Scholars believe that the Beothuk are related closely to the Innu of Labrador.  The tribe later became extinct although people of partial Beothuk descent have been documented. The name Beothuk means "people" in their own language which is a member of the Algonquian language family which itself is common to many Atlantic coastal tribes.

From a Wiki page on Newfoundland.

L'Anse Aux Meadows is like the first spot of land you see sailing from Greenland.  The red dot on the map.



They could have seen anyone on the Labrador or Quebec coasts, too.  Who knows?

[Anomalocaris]

The greenland settlement became a marine hunting colony (in truth, that may have been the initial impetus for a greenland outpost).  I'm not sure what you're referring to when you say that they didn't adapt their food production to the climate.  

There was only so much they could do...and only so much interest in greenland.  What superior inuit technology?

Marine animal harvest was  probably the initial economic underpinning of the Greenland Viking settlement, but pretty sure agriculture and Cattle raising was always how the settlers subsisted.   Later as the weather turned colder, the settlers first lost the ability continuing taking in the annual marine harvest and dropped out of the European trading network.  

During the last century of the settlememt’s existence, it was not really in contact with Europe, but was a self sustaining agricultural settlement until worsening weather made argricukture and animal husbandry increasingly unproductive as well.  Archeology shows eventually animal husbandary became so difficult in winter that in spring the cows had to be carried by hand to their pasture lands.

During this period, the settlement could have benefited tremendously from trading with the Inuit, or from adopting Inuit hunting techniques to provide the protein and calories that traditional Viking agriculture proved increasingly unequal to providing under the climate condition.

[Minimalist]

Norway and Sweden weren't exactly tropical paradises to begin with.  The Norse knew about cold.

[Anomalocaris]

Norway and Sweden weren't exactly tropical paradises to begin with.  The Norse knew about cold.

Norway and Sweden hasn’t seen Greenland caliber of cold since before the end of the ice age.

Nowhere is Viking animal husbandry as challenged as in Greenland. There the low productivity of pastoral land and the extreme length and severity of winter means cows stay indoors on grass collected during previous summer during winter. So finely balanced on knives edge is this that the cows basically subsist on starvation diet through the winter and become so weakened and emaciated that the Viking farmers had to carry each of them by hand to their pastoral land when spring finally arrives.

Any late arrival of spring is diseasterous as the cows will die and the farmer is doomed.

[Minimalist]

The farmers were doomed.  They just didn't know it.

[The Grand Nudger]

The norse on greenland appear to have been hunters first, farmers second.  Not only did they experience a shift in climate, they had to deal with trade in elephant ivory.  It's useful to point out that walrus hunting (as an example) always conflicted with agriculture.  The seasons are concurrent.  The issue is labor, not tech. During the last century of the settlement interest had entirely died out in greenland either as an agricultural settlement -or- a hunting outpost...and they had decreasing access to technologies they'd brought with them centuries beforehand...but the manner in which the inuit subsisted wasn't exactly unknown to them...they'd been doing it the entire time, themselves. In addition, yes, they intensively cultivated and manged pastures. They did that far better than the inuit all the way to the end..and possessed superior tools, knowledge, and cultivars for that task. Honestly....norse agriculture on greenland was remarkable, given the circumstances. In the end, their main employment had been outsourced and there was little reason to work the soil of greenland when they could go elsewhere and produce more for far..far less.

[Anomalocaris]

The norse on greenland appear to have been hunters first, farmers second.  Not only did they experience a shift in climate, they had to deal with trade in elephant ivory.  It's useful to point out that walrus hunting (as an example) always conflicted with agriculture.  The seasons are concurrent.  The issue is labor, not tech.  During the last century of the settlement interest had entirely died out in greenland either as an agricultural settlement -or- a hunting outpost...and they had decreasing access to technologies they'd brought with them centuries beforehand...but the manner in which the inuit subsisted wasn't exactly unknown to them...they'd been doing it the entire time, themselves.  In addition, yes, they intensively cultivated and manged pastures.  They did that far better than the inuit all the way to the end..and possessed superior tools, knowledge, and cultivars for that task.  Honestly....norse agriculture on greenland was remarkable, given the circumstances.  In the end, their main employment had been outsourced and there was little reason to work the soil of greenland when they could go elsewhere and produce more for far..far less.

For much of last Century of the Norse colony, there was no hunting.  Midden piles had no fish bones in it.  It was purely an agriculture settlement.   During that same century, perhaps 2 danish ships visited Greenland.   There was effectively no trade with the outside.

What is the point of pointing out that the Norse conducted agriculture better than Inuit?  Agriculture as the Norse did it was hopeless, Inuit way of life meant survival.  In the context, Inuit technology and way of life was infinitely superior.   Yet the Norse leaned nothing and died out.

[The Grand Nudger]

I think that you and I are working from different foundations Anom.  

Amid that calamity, so the story goes, Greenland’s Vikings—numbering 5,000 at their peak—never gave up their old ways. They failed to learn from the Inuit, who arrived in northern Greenland a century or two after the Vikings landed in the south. They kept their livestock, and when their animals starved, so did they. The more flexible Inuit, with a culture focused on hunting marine mammals, thrived.
That is what archaeologists believed until a few years ago. McGovern’s own PhD dissertation made the same arguments. Jared Diamond, the UCLA geographer, showcased the idea in Collapse, his 2005 best seller about environmental catastrophes. “The Norse were undone by the same social glue that had enabled them to master Greenland’s difficulties,” Diamond wrote. “The values to which people cling most stubbornly under inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the source of their greatest triumphs over adversity.”
But over the last decade a radically different picture of Viking life in Greenland has started to emerge from the remains of the old settlements, and it has received scant coverage outside of academia. “It’s a good thing they can’t make you give your PhD back once you’ve got it,” McGovern jokes. He and the small community of scholars who study the Norse experience in Greenland no longer believe that the Vikings were ever so numerous, or heedlessly despoiled their new home, or failed to adapt when confronted with challenges that threatened them with annihilation.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/w...180962119/

[Minimalist]

What is the point of pointing out that the Norse conducted agriculture better than Inuit?  Agriculture as the Norse did it was hopeless, Inuit way of life meant survival.  In the context, Inuit technology and way of life was infinitely superior.   Yet the Norse leaned nothing and died out.

How many colonizing powers actually adapt to the ways of the indigenous?  European colonizers couldn't wait to exterminate the indians.