The Alternative History of Iceland: What If Vikings Had Colonized North America?

There is little arguing with the maxim attributed to Oscar Wilde that Icelanders are the smartest people in the world, they found America but had the good sense to lose it again. Wisely or not, how exactly did Icelanders manage to misplace a whole continent? Did they do it on purpose? Why didn’t Icelanders settle in North America as later Europeans were to do? What if a religious war in Iceland in the year 1000 had induced them to do just that? 

Hosted by historians and The Reykjavík Grapevine founders Valur Gunnarsson and Jón Trausti Sigurðarson

Transcript

2.         What If Icelanders Had Colonized North America? 

Everyone knows that Iceland discovered North America roughly 500 years before Columbus. Well, not really Icelanders but Greenlanders, as the explorers came from the Norse colony there. Nor did they really discover America, as the continent had already been occupied by other peoples for thousands of years. But the basic premise holds. Sort of. At least there is little arguing with the maxim attributed to Oscar Wilde that Icelanders are the smartest people in the world in that they found America but had the good sense to lose it again. 

            Wisely or not, how exactly did Icelanders manage to misplace a whole continent? Did they do it on purpose? They and their cousins had already settled in distant lands with names as inhospitable as Iceland itself, and the more attractively named but more inhospitable in every other sense Greenland. Why stop here? Did they find nothing worthwhile in North America? 

Of course, disagreements with the Natives led to bloodshed, but the Vikings were used to that. Perhaps the simple answer is that the distances involved were too vast and there simply wasn’t enough motive to travel so far in search of land. Sticking it out in Iceland or invading England may have seemed easier. But what if something were to push people away from Iceland at the same time the new world was calling? This very nearly was the case, as Iceland was at the time in the process of changing religions. Could this have led to an influx of persecuted refugees heading to North America in the 11th century? 

            The Christianisation of Norway was a messy business. One Olaf Tryggvason, also known as Crowbone (and predecessor to Olaf the Stout), had busied himself with raiding England as was the Viking way. The Saxons found that the best way to deal with this menace was to baptise him and turn him in the general direction of Norway. Ironically enough, his nickname probably came from Danes who accused him of using crow’s bones in sacrificing to the old gods. In any case, Crowbone took the bait and sailed home, proclaimed himself king and that the new faith of the land would be Christianity. Those who disagreed had a choice of being burned alive, drowned or force-fed snakes until they perished. 

            Many instead chose to convert. Even in distant Iceland some began to wonder if it might not be best to get ahead of the problem and adopt Christianity before King Crowbone started looking in their direction. Iceland may have been an independent state with all major decisions being taken when parliament, or Alþingi, was in session every June. Nevertheless, what happened in Norway could have repercussions here. Scandinavian kings were in an expansive mood in general and one folk tale tells of an emissary of Harald Bluetooth of Denmark turning himself into a whale to reach the shores of Iceland but being in each quarter rebuffed by one of the four guardian spirits: giant, bull, eagle and dragon. It was by no means certain the spirits would find the same success against a Norwegian fleet as they did against a Danish whale. 

            Ironically enough, by the time Alþingi got around to debating the issue in the summer of 1000 (or perhaps 999, as the new year began on September 1st), Crowbone was not long for this world. This was due to complications resulting from his marriage. King Olaf Crowbone had married the sister of Svein Forkbeard, king of Denmark, but the poor girl was already engaged to a Polish king. Svein refused Crowbone the dowry that was to go with his sister, armies were assembled and longships departed harbour. 

However, it seems that Crowbone’s converting skills had won him few friends. As he sailed off, many of the ships that were supposed to follow him simply stayed put. In Svolder, somewhere north of Poland, he was ambushed not just by the Danes but also by Swedes under king Olaf Skötkonung and even the northern Norwegian earl Erik Håkonson. Heavily outnumbered, Crowbone’s forces were beaten and he was last seen jumping into the sea in full armour. His body was never found, nor has it ever been decisively concluded where Svolder was located, leading some to surmise that neither it nor he existed at all.  

            In Iceland, however, many had already converted by less murderous means while the majority remained resolutely pagan. Gone were the days when the two religions could easily co-exist. Some had simply added “The White Christ” to the pantheon of Norse gods and the same jeweller could make both Thor’s hammer and Cross pendants to appease both markets. But times were changing. Now it was to be one or the other, and civil war and wholesale massacres would no doubt follow. 

            What happened next is perhaps unique in the whole bloody history of Christianisation. The new religion had usually been imposed from above by state-building kings, as was the case in most of northern and eastern Europe. In Iceland there was no king — it was unclear who would decide what the people should believe. Novel solutions were called for. They even tried debating the issue. Various arguments were brought forth. A convenient volcanic eruption convinced the pagans that the old gods were angry at this attempt to adopt new ways. A clever Christian responded by pointing out that the ground they stood on consisted of cooled lava from long ago and asked whom the gods had been angry with when it had flowed. 

            With neither side willing to give in and swords and axes no doubt being sharpened it fell to the lawspeaker, one Þorgeir Þorkelsson, to find a compromise. As it happened, Þorgeir was a pagan but deemed very wise and trusted by both sides. It was his job to remember and recite the law at Alþingi every year but which side would he favour in the present dispute? 

            Þorgeir did the most sensible thing one does when faced with a momentous decision and went straight to bed. There he stayed for three days, snuggly nestled underneath his cow hides. Some say he may even have left his body, shaman-like, in search of wisdom. Perhaps he just slept on it. Either way, he emerged at last and announced that a decision had been made as Þorgeir proclaimed that all the nation should have one law and one faith, as division would only lead to strife. Anticipation must have reached fever-pitch as the lawspeaker proclaimed which god or gods to follow.   

            The pagans undoubtedly let out a collective sigh of disappointment as their man decreed that the new law of the land would be the Christian one. But their expressions may have lifted a little when he allowed for three exceptions to be made. Firstly, people were still allowed to eat horseflesh, the consumption of which had long been a bone of contention and something of a pagan rite in Norway. Secondly, they were also allowed to continue to practise retroactive abortion by way of leaving unwanted babies to die of exposure, something Christians tended to frown upon. Finally, if this was not enough to sedate the most eager pagans, they were promised that they could still worship their old gods in secret as long as no one found out about it. 

            This compromise was something everyone could live with. Nothing remained but the mass-conversion of the recalcitrants. Being dipped in the glacial waters of the Þingvellir lake in the name of Christ may have seemed unappealing to some, so as a final sweetening of the pill they were brought to the geothermally heated Laugarvatn, now home to a high-end spa, for their rebirth into the new religion. 

Thus the conversion of Iceland was completed, although the old ways continued to exist at least until 1056 when Iceland finally got its own bishop who went about stamping out remnants of the old faith, even abrogating the previous exceptions. Still, vestiges of paganism may have survived into the 17th century when witches were burnt on suspicion of utilizing rune magic. In Iceland these supposed spell-casters were mostly men and even though their traditions might have reinventions, the idea of pagan magic persisted.  

Asatru was resurrected as an official religion in Iceland in 1974 and now counts over 2000 members. It is in the process of building the first pagan temple in Europe for almost a thousand years. But what if the Icelandic pagans had stood more firmly for their beliefs way back in 1000? 

Pagan Iceland Survives

Without compromise there is little doubt a civil war would have broken out, and this could have lasted generations. People tend to have long memories in a small country and revenge killings could have continued unabated. This is what happened in 13th century Iceland, known as the Sturlung Era, when leading families fought each other over political power and each new murder led to another. 

Fuelled by religious frenzy, even greater massacres on the Norwegian model could have taken place around the year 1000. The Christians would eventually have won, as was the case everywhere else, and they had allies to call on. A drawn-out war might have invited foreign intervention, as occurred in 1262 when the Norwegian king was forced to intervene to stop the ongoing political strife. Once they had their own house in order, Norwegian monarchs of the 11th century would have been more than happy to aid their co-religionists in Iceland, expanding their own power in the process. 

So what could the pagans have done when presented with the Ragnarök of their beliefs? A possibility presented itself. In the far west, a new land had been discovered that had been given the appealing name of Vinland, or Wineland, where it was said one could get drunk merely by eating ripe grapes. That allure, as well as the likelihood of being massacred by religious zealots at home, might have been incentive enough for the remaining pagans to board their ships and set sail for the horizon. It wouldn’t have been entirely out of character — their own ancestors had set off for Iceland over 100 years earlier to preserve their ways after losing a Norwegian civil war against Harald Fairhair, or so the story goes.  

            Iceland still had its own ships at the time of conversion. Fifteen years earlier, twenty-five ships set sail for Greenland which had then just been discovered. Even though only about half made it, and it turned out that the name of the place was blatant false advertising, a colony came into being that numbered some 5000 souls at its peak. 

It is impossible to guess how many would have left a religiously torn Iceland. The population of Iceland in the year 1000 was roughly 60,000. If we go by a 50-50 split, this gives us around 30.000 pagans. Some would have been killed, others would have accepted conversion at swordpoint. Perhaps others would have gone to Norway or Sweden, parts of which did not convert until later in the century, although there was not much land to be had. On the British Isles this could still be acquired by violence, although here too most Viking descendants were in the process of converting. Even for those fleeing westwards, many might have drowned or otherwise disappeared, as seems to be the case with the earlier Greenland voyage. But this still potentially gives us thousands or even tens of thousands of Icelandic pagans who might have made it to North America with no home to return to. 

            How would all this have affected those who remained? Even the loss of up to half of its population would have been overcome fairly quickly. Iceland would go on to lose numbers of almost that magnitude on a fairly regular basis throughout the next centuries due to plague, famine and volcanic eruptions. Still, the population would always bounce back to between 50,000 and 60,000 inhabitants, which seems to be the number the country could nourish up until the 19th century, when new technology was introduced which allowed the population to begin to grow manyfold. 

            Perhaps more serious for the future of the country would be the brain drain resulting from the exodus. Those adhering to the old ways were often among the most learned, as a working knowledge of the ways of the Æsir was fundamental to any well-rounded education. It has even been surmised that one of the reasons the Sagas were written in poor Iceland rather than in the relatively richer Norway was that any Norwegian who knew much about the old gods was killed off by Crowbone whereas Iceland’s pagan scholars survived and passed on their knowledge until it was eventually transcribed generations later. Had Christians in Iceland proceeded in the same manner as in Norway the country have been culturally impoverished and much of our knowledge about Ásatrú today would be non-existent. The writing culture that was to arise here in the 13th century might not have come about, leaving much of the early medieval history of Scandinavia as much of a black hole as it is for Finland and parts of Eastern Europe up until the arrival of Christianity. 

            The political implications might also have been considerable. Norway finally became Christian after the death of Saint Olaf at Stiklestad in 1030 which also started Norway on its road to serious state building. An Iceland impoverished by emigration and war but fervently Christian might very well have been subsumed into the Norwegian nation building process instead of developing its own identity.  

When Iceland started pining for independence from Denmark in the 19th century, the claim to a separate statehood rested to a large extent on the literature produced here in the 13th and 14th centuries, written in the vernacular but also relevant to all the Nordic Countries given the subject matter. Even if poorer and smaller, Iceland could claim cultural parity with the larger Nordic states— even superiority, according to some. 

Most nations claim a Golden Age set sometime in the distant past, which was seen to legitimize nationhood in the 19th century and even in the present day. For Iceland, this was located in the Commonwealth Era, seen as lasting from the founding of the Alþingi in 930 to the union with Norway in 1262. A shorter-lived commonwealth, lasting for less than a century and ending in a bloody civil war with the country subsequently producing at best marginal literature, probably in Latin, might not have been considered as having a claim to being a separate nation by its neighbours nor even itself. It might remain a part of Norway still, fabulously wealthy and with wonderful social services but, well, Norwegian. 

But what about North America? How would our cousins who went there fare?

Going Out West

Monuments to Leifur Eiríksson can be found all over the American Midwest, not least in Minnesota, standing proudly fully bearded and displaying his helmet-horns. He also takes pride of place in Reykjavík, standing on his pedestal in front of Hallgrímskirkja Church, clean-shaven but happily hornless. Even this Leifur comes courtesy of the United States, a gift to the people of Iceland marking the 1000-year anniversary of Alþingi in 1930. Just two years earlier, in 1928, Leifur was portrayed in the last film of the silent era in Hollywood, sporting an impressive moustache and Gallic wings on his helmet. 

            The Americans love Leif, as they call him, but there is no account of him either shaving or making it to the Midwest. Scandinavian settlers in the late 19th century were prone to finding Viking runes in their adopted home, which would usually turn out to be of more recent manufacture. Even a Rhode Island stone tower long thought to be of Viking make turned out to be a mill built by one Benedict Arnold in the 17th century, grandfather of the famous non-patriot. The real traces of Vikings in North America were eventually found in Newfoundland in the 1960s, proving that Leifur was the first European to go to America — almost. 

            The two main accounts of his travels are to be found in The Saga of the Greenlanders and The Saga of Erik the Red, the latter named for Leifur’s father. According to the former and probably older story, a merchant by the name of Bjarni Herjólfsson is blown off course sailing from Iceland to Greenland and discovers the new land. He sails along the coast for a while before finally making it to Greenland. There, Leifur buys his ship and sets off. He explores the area more thoroughly and sets up camp in what is now Newfoundland. This new world seems to be a land of milk and honey, full of the timber so lacking in both Greenland and Iceland and warm enough that farm animals can be kept outside in winter. Plus the boozy grapes, of course. Nevertheless, Leifur goes home to Greenland, never to return. On his way back, he finds a marooned crew on a skerry and saves them, thus acquiring the nickname “Leif the Lucky.” 

            As a child, it surprised me that the epithet came not from randomly discovering America as one might assume but rather from saving shipwrecked sailors. After all, wasn’t the rescue luckier for the stranded sailors? The nickname may in fact be referring to his fylgja, a guardian spirit of sorts similar to what is known as a “fetch” in Ireland. Even today we say that that luck “follows” some people. Leifur’s luck hadn’t deserted him, as can be seen when he rescues the sailors.

            The man who really was to get lucky from all of this, however, was Leifur’s brother Þorsteinn. One of the rescued castaways was Guðríður Þorbjarnardóttir, a woman known for her beauty and intelligence. When her husband Þórir, who was also among the rescued, subsequently died of the plague, she wed Þorsteinn. But Þorsteinn was not to prove lucky for long. As the newlyweds set off on their own exploration tour of the west, they caught bad weather and spent all summer marooned at sea. When they finally returned to Greenland, Þorsteinn too succumbed to the plague. Meanwhile, Leifur’s other brother Þorvaldur did make it to America but was killed by Native arrows. His luck ran out too. 

            Guðríður remained undaunted and seems to have decided that the third time was the charm. Her next husband was to be Þorfinnur Karlsefni (she seems to have had a thing for the letter Þ), a rich Icelander and a man so appealing it became his nickname — “karlsefni” could translate as “worthy man,” definitely a keeper. They set out with a crew of sixty men and five women as well as livestock, seemingly intending to settle. Leifur allowed them use of his camp in Vinland but did not want to give it to them for good, presumably still harbouring westward desires of his own despite having succeeded his father in Greenland as chieftain. 

            The Norsemen set up camp and encountered Natives in due course. The settlers acquire valuable pelts from them in exchange for a mere bellyful of milk, already creating a tradition of shortchanging the Indigenous peoples. The Natives feel threatened by the family cow and, sensing trouble, Þorfinnur has a palisade constructed. The locals return to trade again, but mutual suspicion prevails, goods are now thrown over the wall for exchange to avoid direct contact and Þorfinnur forbids the sale of weapons. When one of the Natives gets curious about an axe, an unfamiliar iron tool and wants to take it, he is killed by a Viking. 

A fight breaks out and the Norse are about to flee when Freydis, Leifur’s younger sister, scares off the Natives by brandishing a sword and baring her breast. Nevertheless, Þorfinnur, perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, decides to abandon the camp. He and Guðríður eventually move to Iceland and build a home in Glaumbær in Skagafjörður. This no longer exists but a later 19th century farm built on the remains is now a folk museum. In front of it is a statue in honour of her and her son Snorri, the first European born in America. 

A second statue erected on the Snæfellsnes peninsula, called “The First White Mother in America,” was stolen in 2022 and put inside a tin rocket ship outside the Modern Art Museum. The thieves turned out to be a couple of young female artists who found the original work to be racist. They called their installation “Baggage Allowance: The First White Mother in Space.” Guðríður has since been separated from the spaceship and put back in her original place. Meanwhile, Þorfinnur has his own monument, crafted by Icelandic artist Einar Jónsson, in Fairview Park, Philadelphia. A twin statue stands outside the Laugarásbíó cinema in Reykjavík.

            Aside from monuments, Leifur Eiríksson is widely commemorated in popular culture. In the TV show Vikings: Valhalla, he is portrayed as a martial artist who can disarm entire bands of attacking Vikings, a skill he apparently learnt fighting polar bears in Greenland. He is given the credit for tearing down London Bridge and makes it all the way to Constantinople via Rus, learning to navigate by the stars on the way. No doubt a later episode will finally bring him to North America. In Japan, Leifur can be seen in The Vinland Sagas manga comics and anime cartoon as an old braggart, but the main character is the young Þorfinnur who massacres English soldiers while in his teens with twin knives, an episode left out of the Grænlendinga Saga for some reason. 

The final chapter in the story of Vinland as presented in the Sagas belongs to Freydis, who is shown having an equally adventurous career as her brother in Vikings: Valhalla. In the original sources, she is no less fierce even though her travels only take her from Greenland to Vinland. She arrives in the new country with two ships, her own crew taking up residence in Leifur’s old camp, Leifsbúðir, but the other is not permitted there. Eventually, she has the crew of the other ship killed so that she can keep all the goods collected for herself. She even murders the womenfolk personally when the men are reluctant to do so. Further attempts to settle the new world by Vikings are not recorded, although the inhabitants of Greenland are known to have ventured to north-western Canada as late as 1347 for lumber. 

            But what if the Norse settlers would have been more persistent? Leifur is sometimes credited with bringing Christianity to Greenland on behalf of Ólafur Tryggvason Crowbone of Norway, although this may have been a later account to make the Christian king into even more of a missionary. It is also far from certain that these two momentous events — the Christianisation of Iceland and the discovery of Vinland — both took place in the year 1000, although both are attributed to that very round number. 

But let us assume that they did. Our Icelandic pagans would probably have found all doors shut in newly Christian Greenland had they gone there. True, Erik himself held firm to the old ways but his wife and eldest son were devout Christians, and Leifur seems to have converted the rest without much ado. Perhaps the pagans would simply have been told to move along when they arrived, taking some of the more obscurantist Greenlanders with them. Or maybe a civil war in Iceland would have inspired one in Greenland too? 

Here, the pagans would have been at an advantage with a newly arrived fleet of their co-believers from Iceland. Greenland might have held out as a last bastion of heathendom with the losing Christians conversely moving from there to Iceland where land would have become available after the departure of the pagans. 

But the chances of Greenland accommodating all eloping pagans are slight. It was already close to the population limit it could reasonably accommodate. The Icelandic refugees would instead hear of the newly discovered lands to the west, and this would have proven an irresistible prospect. What then? Three scenarios come to mind.

The Lost Battle

Perhaps the most obvious scenario for a Norse American settlement is one that most closely mirrors what did happen. The first encounter between inhabitants from the two continents was not to prove a  peaceful one. When Þorvaldur Eiríksson, Leifur’s brother, first came upon the Natives of North America, he captured eight of them while one escaped. He put the captives to death, but the ninth man soon returned with reinforcements. This led to history’s only recorded canoe vs. longship battle, wherein Þorvaldur was killed by a native arrow but the rest of his crew escaped.  

We are not given any particular motive for why Þorvaldur decided to have the locals murdered. Certainly, he would have done better to befriend them but this does not seem to have crossed his mind. When Vikings came across weaker parties, they would usually kill or enslave them, but when faced with stronger forces they would offer trade. This is exactly what happens later on, when Þorfinnur and Guðríður encounter a whole tribe. Still, even though the business seems mutually beneficial, it soon descends into acrimony with the result that the Norse are forced to abandon the continent. Even with everything to gain, they were unable to come to terms with a people that they probably saw as barbaric. 

            And perhaps the same thing would have happened in this hypothetical scenario with the Icelandic pagans setting up camp. But with many more settlers, the fighting would be more vicious and drag on for longer. In the Sagas, the natives are able to call on reinforcements — something they would undoubtedly do here. 

            Had the Norse pagans all been killed in a major battle soon after arriving, they would have disappeared from Nordic history, last seen sailing away into the sunset. But they might have made more of an impression on the Indigenous Americans. Coming across hordes of iron weapons, they might have learnt to use iron themselves as they were later to use European horses and firearms. 

Perhaps more importantly, stories of vicious invaders from the west might have spread far and wide. Could this have reached all the way south to what was to become the Aztec Empire? There are theories about Vikings travelling that far, even inspiring the myth of the white god Quetzalcoatl leading the Aztecs later to welcome the Spaniards as gods. The chronology of that doesn’t quite hold up as it seems Quetzalcoatl was worshipped long  before any Viking came to America Nevertheless, stories of battles with the intruders might have better prepared the natives of North America for the apocalypse that was later to come. This might have led to something somewhat akin to Independence Day II, when a unified Earth awaits a second invasion from better armed aliens.  

The Long Siege

A second, related scenario sees the Vikings withstanding the initial Native onslaught. More numerous than in the actual history and with nowhere really to run, they might not have abandoned the palisades as easily but held out. With plenty of timber and good knowledge of ship-building, they might even have constructed a small navy and gone on the offensive. All of Newfoundland could have been conquered and easily defended from canoe-sailing Natives. Perhaps this would have led to a new Viking age beginning in North America at the same time it was winding down in Europe, with longships sailing up and down what is now the east coast of the United States and along the great rivers of Canada in search of plunder. But they would have found no cities to sack and not much worth stealing in the manner that Vikings were accustomed to. Even slaves would have been of little use with no market to bring them too. 

And would they have maintained a unified society? There is little reason to believe feuding here would be less common than it was in sparsely populated Iceland and Greenland — this was the reason Erik the Red left Iceland to found the Greenland colony to begin with. As the story of his daughter Freydis shows, they were likely to fight amongst themselves even in small settlements. Some might have broken off to found smaller colonies on the mainland, which may or may not have survived. 

            It was not just European hardware that facilitated the conquest of the  Americas but also divisions among the Natives, some of whom collaborated with the Europeans until their turn came to be vanquished. Unlike later Europeans, the Vikings showed little inclination or ability to attempt to play the various tribes off against each other.  Perhaps the Natives would have unified instead? In the 18th century, Hiawatha managed to create an alliance of five Iroquis nations that held off the British and the French for a while.  An 11th century Hiawatha might have emerged against the common Norse enemy, leading to something like the first scenario. 

            Even if more numerous than in our timeline, the Norse would have their work cut out for them in order to eke out an existence. The first English and French colonies in North America in the 17th centuries floundered, even with better technology. During a famine in the winter of 1609-10, bodies were exhumed in Jamestown and eaten, and in one case a wife was murdered by her husband and everything consumed but the head. Only 60 out of 500 survived the winter, and what saved the colony was the introduction of a tobacco plantation in 1617.  Sometimes the natives came to the rescue as is remembered every Thanksgiving, but this was unlikely to happen to the Vikings if they stuck to their habits. 

            Could the North American colonies have survived? In Greenland, they did not, despite clinging on for over 400 years. The Norse were isolated due to geography in Greenland but in America they would have been politically isolated too. There would have been little trade with the Christians who had driven them away from Iceland. Probably the hard-pressed Greenlanders would have welcomed lumber and furs, but they had little to give in return. Greenlandic walrus ivory was prized among the courts of Europe but it would have been of little use to the American Vikings. 

            It is possible that the last Norse Greenlandic settlement was destroyed by a new group of Inuit who were colonising Greenland in the 15th century. Something similar could have happened here, colonies weakened due to harsh conditions and perhaps strife giving way to attacks from Natives who had suffered from them. But North America is not Greenland, and once established the chances of survival would have been infinitely greater. And a colony of any size might not have been completely lost to Europe, despite religious differences. North American Viking ships might have drifted to, in some cases traded with, or even raided Greenland and Iceland. The distance the Vikings went from Newfoundland to the Greenland settlement was around 300 nautical miles along the coast and took six weeks, but crossing directly is half that and this route could have been discovered. 

Even if they had kept to their side of the pond, the American Vikings could have been discovered by later explorers looking for them. The Danes did send an expedition to Greenland in the 18th century to find the remaining Norse Greenlanders in order to re-Christianize them if needed. Something like this might have happened, and sooner, with a Vinland Colony. Could a fleet from the Kalmar Union of the Nordic countries in the 15th century have set out to find the missing Icelanders? Could this have led to a Scandinavian-American colony, long before the short-lived New Sweden was founded in Delaware in the 17th century.

Or perhaps enterprising English sailors, already active around Iceland and even as far away as Newfoundland in the 15th century, might have heard stories and accidentally or intentionally run into the remains of a Norse settlement or even ships from a still existing one. Perhaps the colonisation of North America would have begun here. Or would the Viking descendants and the natives would have made common cause against the new interlopers? This brings us to the final scenario.  

Co-Operation

The last potentiality is the one that most obviously would have worked in the Vikings favour. If  they would have learned to get along with the far more numerous Natives, this would have been beneficial to both sides. Þorfinnur and Guðríður’s example shows that trade was possible, had they kept it up. It was, in fact, not uncommon for the Vikings to adapt to their surroundings among larger populations. In Slav countries, they became Slavicized. In Normandy, they became French. Could they adopt Native habits and traditions in North America? 

            On the European mainland where they settled, the Norse first became a ruling class before adapting the customs of their subjects. This was unlikely to happen in North America as they were far too few in number for conquest. Any exchange would have had to be on a more equal basis. For Christians, sure of the superiority of their religion, this was unthinkable. In Greenland, relations with the Inuit seem to have been uniformly hostile, and one of the reasons the Norse died out was their persistence in clinging to European customs rather than adapting to the changing climate as the Inuit did. 

            But in this scenario, we have pagans who might have had no particular qualms adhering to different ways of life. They might even have found similarities between their own pantheon and those of the Natives, adding the new gods to their old ones. Had the Norse managed more friendly relations, they could have prospered in the New World and probably slowly been submerged in the local cultures. Some believe this is what happened to the Norse in Greenland, that they joined up with local tribes and became one with them, eventually moving over to Canada, although research in both Greenland and Canada has so far turned up little to substantiate this. Even Norse graves in Greenland show no evidence of Inuit DNA.

            Perhaps palefaces would have been found among Native Americans as the European powers started conquering the continent in the 17th century, telling stories of ancestors coming from across the sea. This would no doubt have been the source of much puzzlement, until someone would finally have connected them with the pagans who left Iceland over 600 years earlier. Would it have led to less disregard for the lives of the locals if it were shown that some were originally of European descent? Perhaps not but intermingling with the natives certainly would have allowed the Vikings to survive longer in North America than they in fact did.  

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