Greenland Norse visited North America over 500 year period

[Micael]

A detailed study of wood used in building materials in the Norse settlements on Greenland by Icelandic archeologist Lisabet Guðmundsdóttir was published earlier this year.

8,552 wood samples were studied, and while most of them were either from the very scarce Greenlandic sources of wood (shrubs rather than trees), and most of the rest were of driftwood, a number of samples were from tree species that grew too far away to be driftwood. This is further supported by the fact that all of these latter samples were exclusively found in the seat of power on Greenland, Gardar, where the bishop seat was. There’s also an Icelandic archival source that has been found from 1346 in which it is noted that a Greenlandic ship bound for Markland (see map further down) had been blown off course and wound up on Iceland.

Two types of trees in particular is of interest, Jack Pine and Hemlock, which are native to the North Americas. See current day ranges below.

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The imports of these wood types were made from around the beginning of the Greenlandic settlements at around the year 900 to towards the end of it at around 1450. So for around 500 years the Norse visited North America, a find that is quite interesting and paints a very different picture to earlier beliefs that the Norse visits were during a shorter time period.

This is a map of how the wood imports to Greenland were likely to have been conducted. It also has the tentative identification of the three names of areas the Norse used in North America. Helluland, Markland, and Vinland. Note that the most well known term ”Vinland” seems to be of the New Brunswick/Prince Edwards Island/Nova Scotia area, and the only known Norse settlement on the continent was in Newfoundland in the Markland area. It would be interesting to know if they sailed around Nova Scotia and went into the current day US as well.


The study:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals ... AED57A020E#

[jemhouston]

Impressive voyages.

[Micael]

Impressive voyages.

Indeed, and it’s interesting that they ended fairly shortly before Columbus voyage. Essentially there’s been a regular European prescence in North America for a millenium now.

[rtoldman]

still waiting for the discovery of an indigenous burial in Canada with fair. Had a college friend who claimed his ancestors were responsible for blonde italian women. I suspect the trend went west as well.

[Craiglxviii]

still waiting for the discovery of an indigenous burial in Canada with fair. Had a college friend who claimed his ancestors were responsible for blonde italian women. I suspect the trend went west as well.

Go to northern Italy, there are loads of blonde haired, blue eyed types. Similarly loads of brunette brown eyed types in Austria & Switzerland…! That interaction has been happening since before Rome was a kingdom.

[Micael]

still waiting for the discovery of an indigenous burial in Canada with fair. Had a college friend who claimed his ancestors were responsible for blonde italian women. I suspect the trend went west as well.

Go to northern Italy, there are loads of blonde haired, blue eyed types. Similarly loads of brunette brown eyed types in Austria & Switzerland…! That interaction has been happening since before Rome was a kingdom.

Yeah, there’s been a number of mechanisms in play over time that has brought genetic material from the north into particularly northern Italy. One high profile example that has been confirmed recently is of the Lombards who conquered much of Italy in the 6th century. According to their own tribal lore they originated in Scandinavia, though had been on the continent for an unclear amount of time prior to their Italian conquest. In 2020 a genetic study found strong correlations between identified Lombards and the Viking era population in Norway and Sweden, so their tribal lore was likely correct.

[Zen9]

Yes Langobardi (long beards) were supposedly originally the Winneli (welps) and from Southern Scandinavia.

Which conveniently meshes with the whole Hunding/Wulfing clan enmity.

But blond hair was not just a feature of Northern Europe, Greeks, Italians, even 'Africans' Mauritius, Massesili etc

[Micael]

Yes Langobardi (long beards) were supposedly originally the Winneli (welps) and from Southern Scandinavia.

Which conveniently meshes with the whole Hunding/Wulfing clan enmity.

But blond hair was not just a feature of Northern Europe, Greeks, Italians, even 'Africans' Mauritius, Massesili etc

Yes indeed, I’ll paste in what wiki has to say about the Hundings here for context for those not aware:

The Hundings (Old English: Hundingas, the "hound-clan") are a legendary tribe or clan in early Germanic sources, mostly mentioned due to their feud with the Wulfings (the "wolf-clan").

In the Poetic Edda, Hunding is a king of the Saxons, slain by Helgi Hundingsbane. The Gesta Danorum mentions a Danish king Helgo who slew Hundingus, king of Saxony, in single combat.[1] The historical core of the story is likely a conflict between the Eastern Geats (the wolf-clan) and the Lombards (the hound-clan).[2]

Hunding itself is a patronymic translating to "son of a hound", while the Hundings as a clan (sibb) would be the descendants of Hunding. Being named a "hound" or "dog" was by no means an insult in pre-Christian Germanic culture, but that the animal was rather a symbol of the warrior,[3] while in Christian Germanic culture, it became associated with heathendom, "heathen hounds" being an appellation especially of the pagan Vikings (cf. Ulfhednar).[4]

The name of Lamicho, king of the Lombards, may mean "little barker" (Harris 2004).

In Paulus' Historia Langobardorum, the Lombards terrorize their neighbors by spreading the word that they had dog-headed warriors, possibly a reference to ulfhednar. In Paulus's account, Lamicho is one of seven sons of a "prostitute" (meretrix), who is fostered by king Agelmund. This "prostitute" has been explained by Rudolf Much (followed by Höfler and others) as going back to a word for bitch. The Lombards' original ethnic name, Winnili, has also been connected with "savage dogs" by Much.

In Eddaic account of a feud between the Hundings and the Wulfings surrounding Helgi Hundingsbane may correspond to the Lombard story, and Malone (1926) explains the whole story of Lamicho as the Hunding version of the same feud. Jacob Grimm (1848) compared the story of Lamicho to the German legends of the origins of the Welfen, in German legend tracing their ancestry to fostered babes who were given the surname of "whelps" (Harris 2004). Hundings also appear in Sturlaugs saga starfsama, where they are a tribe of Cynocephali dwelling in Hundingjaland, which is apparently in much the same latitudes as Bjarmaland. These Hundings may relate to those Cynocephali mentioned by Adam of Bremen.

The Hundingas in Old English literature are mentioned in Beowulf, and in Widsith. The Widsith poem mentions the Hundings twice, once in a list of Germanic clans, as ruled by Mearchalf, and a second time among outlandish tribes and peoples, in the sequence mid hæðnum ond mid hæleþum ond mid hundingum "with heathens, heroes and dog-people", implying a re-interpretation of the name as a remote people of "heathen hounds".[5] This re-interpretation is complete in a later Anglo-Saxon manuscript on the Marvels of the East, where the Cynocephali are glossed as healf hundingas.[6]

It’s rather interesting how there’s so many stories, and in the case of the Lombards some scientific evidence, that places various continental Germanic tribes’ origins in Scandinavia.

Jordanes placed the Heruli origin in current day Sweden for instance. Here’s a map attempting to illustrate his placement of various peoples’ origins:


Jordanes, himself a romanized Goth, also put the Goth origin there in his work Getica:

The Getica begins with a discussion of a large island named Scandza, which faces the mouth of the Vistula river and had been described by the writers Claudius Ptolemy and Pomponius Mela. Jordanes reports this island to be the original home of many different peoples including the Goths, who have swarmed like bees from there (16-25). Jordanes commences the history of the Goths with the emigration of a Gothic king named Berig with three ships from Scandza to Gothiscandza (25, 94), in the distant past.