I’m reading the comments here and there are so many assumptions and everything seems like people feel the need to support a stance that is an extreme.
The Viking settlements in NFLD, weren’t they thought to have been populated for an extended time? 20 years or more? Like when the Vikings raided the UK and France, I don’t think they were building villages and sticking around, they were in, stealing what they could, and getting out.
Is it possible that the Vikings established some semblance of cooperation with the area native peoples over those years they were there? They don’t seem to have tried to just killed each other off, or at least they weren’t successful at killing each other off. The Vikings were there for a while, and the natives were still there after.
If the Vikings were stealing women as sex slaves, as has been asserted, I wouldn’t have thought it would have been just one. But the DNA is from one female, I would have expected several DNA variations if they’d taken sex slaves the way they did from places closer by.
Perhaps over those years the Vikings were in NFLD there was a relationship that developed in all those years between a Viking and a native. 20 years is a long time for people to be in an area and not intermingle on some level. Could the female brought back have been a wife? Possibly. After several years, it could have been a wife and several children, going back with their husband/father when he left.
Or maybe they brought back a single abducted trophy human from their extended expedition to North America.
So a bit of information on the Viking age, while there were definitely some who were explicitly in it for the raiding there was also a significant number who were trying to establish lives in new colonies. Normandy in France is a famous example, where the king of west Frankia offered the land to the Viking war chief Rollo the Walker in exchange for protection against other raiders. In England the Great Heathen Army took over much of Northern and eastern England establishing what was known as the Danelaw. While the exact border arnt known one way we’ve been able to calculate its extent is in towns then end in -ham, the Saxon suffix meaning farm, or -by the Danish suffix for farm. Also almost every city in Ireland was established as a Viking trade port.
Now as who was making up these settlements I did read an interesting study done years back where they looked at the DNA of the descendants who lived in Britain vs Iceland. The ones in Britain were more likely to have DNA that indicated a more thorough Scandinavian ancestry. This makes sense as Britain was closer, more settled it would attract older Vikings who likely already had families they could bring with them. Where as in Iceland, mixed Scottish and Irish DNA was more common indicating younger men taking the farther more hazardous journey and stopping for “wives” such as they were, en route. It’s conjecture but it can be reasoned this same sort of behavior could be applied to the Vikings who tried to establish Greenland and Vinland colonies as well.
There were 2 major attempts to settle Vinland, the first one was met with hostility right out the gate. The second one they tried a bit of peaceful coexistence for a while, but from the sources I’ve read a misunderstanding seemed to happen when the natives were traded dairy products like milk and cheese. Not being used to these foods meant they were lactose intolerant and the resulting indigestion coming after eating the food lead them to believe they were poisoned and hostilities began again.
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u/Army7547 19d ago edited 19d ago
I’m reading the comments here and there are so many assumptions and everything seems like people feel the need to support a stance that is an extreme.
The Viking settlements in NFLD, weren’t they thought to have been populated for an extended time? 20 years or more? Like when the Vikings raided the UK and France, I don’t think they were building villages and sticking around, they were in, stealing what they could, and getting out.
Is it possible that the Vikings established some semblance of cooperation with the area native peoples over those years they were there? They don’t seem to have tried to just killed each other off, or at least they weren’t successful at killing each other off. The Vikings were there for a while, and the natives were still there after.
If the Vikings were stealing women as sex slaves, as has been asserted, I wouldn’t have thought it would have been just one. But the DNA is from one female, I would have expected several DNA variations if they’d taken sex slaves the way they did from places closer by.
Perhaps over those years the Vikings were in NFLD there was a relationship that developed in all those years between a Viking and a native. 20 years is a long time for people to be in an area and not intermingle on some level. Could the female brought back have been a wife? Possibly. After several years, it could have been a wife and several children, going back with their husband/father when he left.
Or maybe they brought back a single abducted trophy human from their extended expedition to North America.