Norse colonization of North America
[8] The earliest mention of Greenland in the sagas refers to a group of rocky islands in the Atlantic reported by Gunnbjörn Ulfsson when his ship was blown off course from Iceland in the early 900s.
[12][13] Ívar Bárðarson, a Catholic priest sent to Greenland in 1341, wrote that the skerries were about "two days and two nights sailing due West" from Iceland and the halfway point on trips to the later more successful colonies on the western coast.
[14] According to the sagas, Erik the Red (Old Norse: Eiríkr rauði) was banished from Iceland for manslaughter, and sailed westward to the lands reported by Gunnbjorn.
[18] Norse Greenlanders were limited to living along scattered fjords on the island that provided habitable land for their animals (such as cattle, sheep, goats, dogs, and cats) to be kept and farms to be established.
[22][23] In these fjords, the farms depended upon stables (byres) to host their livestock in the winter, and routinely culled their herds so that they could survive the season.
[22][23][24] A cooling climate and increasing humidity brought more storms, longer winters and shorter springs, and affected the migratory patterns of the harp seal.
A significant number of bones of marine animals can be found at the settlements, suggesting increased hunting with the absence of farmed food.
Norse farmers also attempted to adapt; with the increased need for winter fodder and smaller pastures, they would self-fertilize their lands to try to keep up with the new demands caused by the changing climate.
[39] A 2022 study indicates that gravitational effects from a readvance of the Southern Greenland Ice Sheet caused a relative sea level rise of "up to ~3.3 m outside the glaciation zone during Viking settlement, producing shoreline retreat of hundreds of meters.
[44] There is generally believed to be a historical basis for Norse voyages to these places, despite some fantastical elements in the sagas such as Great Ireland and the uniped who kills Thorvald Asvaldsson in Vinland.
[45] In Adam of Bremen's 11th-century chronicle Gesta Hammaburgensis ecclesiae pontificum, he briefly mentions Greenland and islands beyond Norway including one "called Vinland".
[48] A 13th-century Icelandic description of the world gives the rough order of the lands described in the sagas as Greenland, Helluland, Markland, and Vinland, which the author suspected was part of Africa.
[c][51] In Europe, several medieval works reproduced this general description in cities as far away as Milan, where Dominican chronicler Galvano Fiamma mentioned terra que dicitur Marckalada 'the land called Markland' west of Greenland circa 1345.
[42][43] Microscopic analysis of the materials used at 5 Norse sites on Greenland, shows that many families relied on driftwood and the sparse local trees, while the larger farms sourced lumber from Europe and North America.
[67] The presence of wood and nuts from the Juglans cinerea walnut tree, which grows wild on the continental mainland but not Newfoundland itself, indicates that the site was used as a staging area for further voyages.
[68] L'Anse aux Meadows itself may have drawn 10 to 20 percent of the total Greenland colonists;[69] the communal living halls could hold from 30 to 160 people.
[78] On Willows Island, archaeological sites contained strands of Dorset yarn spun between 15 BC and 725 AD possibly from Arctic hare or muskox.
[79] A team led by archaeologist Patricia Sutherland excavated a ruined stone and sod building in Tanfield Valley and found a range of artifacts that indicate a possible Viking presence on the island.
[54] Spun cordage found on Baffin Island in the 1980s and stored at the Canadian Museum of Civilization led to a more comprehensive exploration of the Tanfield Valley archaeological site for points of contact between Norse Greenlanders and the indigenous Dorset people.
[82] The Native Americans who inhabited the southern portion were the ancestors of the Innu; they would have spoken one of the Algonquian languages and were possibly related to the indigenous Beothuk of Newfoundland.
[84] At the Sandnæs farmstead in Greenland, arrowheads were found that resembled nothing in Norse culture but matched the arrows used by the Point Revenge peoples.
[81] On the Avayalik Islands, off the very northern tip of Labrador, Patricia Sutherland found yarn being excavated that was distinct from the sinew-based cordage typically used by indigenous arctic hunters.
Although the idea of Norse voyages to, and a colony in, North America was discussed by Swiss scholar Paul Henri Mallet in his book Northern Antiquities (English translation 1770),[90] the sagas first gained widespread attention in 1837 when the Danish antiquarian Carl Christian Rafn revived the idea of a Viking presence in North America.
These were fictional characters treated as historical figures, but "depicted variously as heroic warriors and empire builders, barbarous berserker invaders, fighters for freedom, courageous explorers, would-be colonists, seamen and merchants, poets and saga men, glorious ancestors, bloodthirsty pagan pirates, and civilized Christian converts" depending on the speaker or author.
[112][113] Monuments claimed to be Norse include:[114] In late 1898, Swedish immigrant Olof Öhman stated that he found this runestone in Kensington, Minnesota, while clearing land he had recently acquired.
[116] Breda also forwarded copies of the inscription to various contemporary Scandinavian linguists and historians, such as Oluf Rygh, Sophus Bugge, Gustav Storm, Magnus Olsen and Adolf Noreen.
[117] The nineteenth-century Harvard chemist Eben Norton Horsford connected the Charles River Basin to places described in the Norse sagas and elsewhere, notably Norumbega.
[120][121] Other nineteenth-century writers, such as Horsford's friend Thomas Gold Appleton, in his A Sheaf of Papers (1875), and George Perkins Marsh, in his The Goths in New England, seized upon such false notions of Viking expansion history also to promote the superiority of white people (as well as to oppose the Catholic Church).
[124] Archeological findings in 2015 at Point Rosee,[125][126] on the southwest coast of Newfoundland, were originally thought to reveal evidence of a turf wall and the roasting of bog iron ore, and therefore a possible 10th century Norse settlement in Canada.
In 1492 the Vatican noted that no news of that country "at the end of the world" had been received for 80 years, and the bishopric of the colony was offered to a certain ecclesiastic if he would go and "restore Christianity" there.
