500 Years Before Columbus: The Vikings' North American Experiment

For the past week, I have been in Iceland getting my son set up in an exchange program here on the island. I have always been fascinated with Viking history since I have a lot of Scandinavian/Scottish background (a recent DNA test showed that half my DNA comes from Sweden and Norway). And since my Scottish clan, Davidson, comes from Inverness (a Viking town on the coast of Northern Scotland), this is not surprising. I also grew up sailing and thus, have found it amazing how the Vikings traversed the world with their ships. 

For the past week, I have been in Iceland getting my son set up in an exchange program here on the island. I have always been fascinated with Viking history since I have a lot of Scandinavian/Scottish background (a recent DNA test showed that almost half my DNA comes from the areas of Sweden and Norway). And since my Scottish clan, Davidson, comes from Inverness (a Viking town on the coast of Northern Scotland), this is not surprising. I also grew up sailing and thus, have found it amazing how the Vikings traversed the world with their ships. 

bAs an undergraduate at Yale University, I was able to conduct an independent study under Professor Claussen about Icelandic sagas (from the Old Norse verb segja (to speak). Iceland has one of the richest traditions in the world of storytelling and writing books. It publishes more books per capita than any other country in the world and has the most educated population (100% literacy). When studying the Icelanders and their thousand-year recorded history, I was taken with the Vineland Saga, Erik the Red Saga and the Greenlanders Saga describing Leif Erickson’s and the Icelanders’ experiences in North America. In the 1960s, archeologists Helge and Anne Ingstad actually documented that the Vikings had set up a coastal village at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada. While there, they used this town as a home base to repair their ships, trade with the natives, explore northern North America and harvest timber, fruit and nuts for their people. While I was at Yale, I was also taken with the fact that the Beinecke Library of Rare Documents had what was proposed to be the first map of North America, the Vineland Map, made by the Viking explorers of this region hundreds of years before Columbus’ journey in 1492. 

  In order to get to Newfoundland, Lief Erickson had to sail 1,500 miles across the North Atlantic from Iceland, one of the most treacherous parts of the ocean to navigate. In this region of the world, the waves can rise to over 60 feet in height and winds can blow up to 50-70 knots---and one would often face these obstacles while also battling temperatures below freezing. But Erickson had one of the best ships in the world for this journey and some of the most experienced and physically fit men to be produced by our species. Due to genetics and diet, some of the largest and strongest people in antiquity were Vikings. Even today, Iceland produces some of the strongest men in the world, winning Olympic gold medals in weightlifting (including many of the current world records) and Strong Man global competitions, even though the population is only 360,000 people. For 13 years running, Icelanders have won medallions from World’s Strongest Man competitions, eight of which were gold. In total, Iceland has won 19 medals at this competition and are only second in total medals behind to the United States.  

But an even greater tradition in Iceland’s past than producing strong men, and somewhat today, is the tradition of producing strong sailors/seamen and ships. One must realize that in ancient days, one could not be a good seaman if one was not also a good ship maker and the Vikings were master engineers when it came to building ocen-going vessels.  The Viking ship was truly a remarkable piece of technology. It was 75-feet long and 20-feet wide. Its draft was only three feet, allowing it to travel in shallow waters and throughout rivers. Its ribbed hull (clinker built) could trap bubbles under it, thereby lifting the ship somewhat out of the water on the thousands of ocean suds giving it a special type of lift. It was double-ended, allowing it to reverse out of difficult harbors and geographical areas. The sail trim and tacking capabilities of the ship made it one of the most superior sailing vessels of antiquity. When wind wasn’t available or they needed to sail near the wind and/or navigate rivers, they would use their oars and row. Under full sail, a Viking ship could often reach a top speed of 17 knots—faster than many sailing vessels today. The average Viking ship could carry around 40 men as amphibious warriors, sailors and oarsmen with one man as the coxswain or driver of the boat. The ship could carry enough supplies inside the hull to last the crew for weeks. All the men were excellent fishermen as well, so they could supplement their food supplies from the ocean. 

The Vikings traveled as far south as Africa, as far west as North America, as far east as central Russia (using the rivers like they did all throughout Europe) and as far north as the Arctic circle, which the Norsemen found to be the worse place on earth for humankind. It resembled Neflheim, the Norse underworld, which was cold, misty and dark and was ruled by the goddess Hel. Due to the geographic area their trading covered, their strong willed and powerful leaders, and conquests, many of the Vikings’ words and concepts are still with us today, including Hell as just mentioned. Furthermore, Thursday comes from Thor’s Day for the Nordic god of thunder. In German, Thursday is actually called Thunder Day: Donnerstag. Friday comes from Freya’s Day for the goddess of love and war. In looking at the etymology of Nordic words in English, one will not find it surprising that our words ransack, old Norse rannsaka, and slaughter, from the old Norse slatra, comes from these people who did these activities and did them well and became some of the best raiders from the sea in history. 

Every Scandinavian warrior from the Viking Age (roughly 8th to 11th century) would have been well trained in handling axes, swords, spears, bows and arrows. Every man in Iceland would have been trained from birth on how to become a warrior, sailor and fisherman. And many of them would have also learned to be farmers and ranchers growing potatoes, turnips, carrots and breeding cows, sheep and horses. Their wool garments back then, and even today, are world famous and keep the wearer warm even in wet, rainy weather. 

Often, these men would raid towns and villages throughout Europe, stealing supplies, animals and women. The National Museum of Iceland has done extensive studies on the DNA of Icelandic women and men and found that the women have on average 62 percent Celtic/Anglo-Saxon DNA, but that Icelandic men have 80 percent Scandinavian DNA. Because female DNA is traced through the mother’s line, and male through the Y chromosome, this means the Icelandic Vikings stole women from the British Isles and Ireland and bred with them. Slavery and human trafficking has been part of human society since the beginning of recorded history—no people or ethnicity has a monopoly on being victims of slavery. 

Since the Vikings were excellent amphibious warriors, they could hit a village, raid it, and be back in their ships with their loot within a few hours. Later, as they built larger fleets, they would actually hit a town or city, raid it, conquer it and then settle it. In the 9th and 10th centuries, the Vikings would sometimes hit a beach with thousands of warriors. It appears they came, divided and conquered Dublin, Cork, York (from Old Norse, Jarvik or “Horse Bay”) in Ireland and England, and Inverness, Tulloch, Dingwall and Comarty in Scotland, just to name a few. 

In this pursuit of expanding their cities, influence and populations, Leif Erickson decided to settle in Newfoundland in 1,000 C.E. However, after only a few years there, he and his Vikings left. It seems the problem they had, as later Europeans would have at Jamestown and Plymouth Rock, were with the indigenous people, or Skraelings as the Icelanders called them (meaning, “short ones” or “screamers” or “scruffy ones”). Even though Leif Erickson and his fellow Vikings fought them off and were superior warriors, the large numbers of native peoples in North America appear to have been too much for the small Viking settlement and they abandoned Vineland (Land of Grapes). This is why one of the Icelandic settlers after Leif Erickson of Vineland, Thorfinn Karlsefni, wrote “Vineland is a rich and fruitful land, but one that we cannot safely inhabit.” 

However, Viking explorations to North American did not stop, and Viking parties continued to sail to what is today Canada and the United States using their rivers and Great Lakes networks to traverse the northern areas of North America. I was curious to find in the Sterling Library at Yale a report that in the 14th century, King Magnus IV of Norway and Sweden possibly sent several ships to North America via Greenland to convert the Skraelings to Christianity.  Some of the crews of these ships were never heard from again.  This might have happened to the Knutson expedition (circa 1355) documented, in part, by the controversial Kensington Rune Stone from Minnesota (circa 1362).  I am sure other expeditions also failed to return back to Iceland, Greenland, Norway or Sweden, just to name a few, of where they started besides the Knutson mission. What happened to them? Did they drown, which often happened in the Atlantic. Did they die of disease? Did the Skraelings kill them? Well, it looks like they survived and the phenotypical traits and cultural traditions of a certain, domesticated Lakota Sioux tribe gave dramatic clues as to what happened to some of these Vikings.

In the mid-1700, the French explorer Pierre Gaultier de Varennes de la Vérendrye in North America found a tribe in Minnesota/North Dakota called the Mandan and they were blond, blue-eyed and non-nomadic. They had a writing tradition that resembled runes, the Nordic form or writing, built huts that resembled Icelandic homes and told tales that resembled Christianity—i.e., their God helped save mankind in a huge canoe during a flood, fed a multitude of people on a mountain one day with loaves, fish and buffalo meat, and had died on a tree for all humankind. Moreover, each village had a large, ceremonial canoe in the middle of it apparently to honor Noah and the flood.  

In the early 1800s, George Catlin, famous American stenographer, author and explorer, visited these people and was also struck by their fair skin, red and blond hair, and green and blue eyes. Also, they had unique ways of building ships and constructed their villages within strong fortifications (like Mound Villages found in Ireland). Unfortunately for the Mandan, and hundreds of other Native American tribes, smallpox wiped them out in 1837 and the tribe vanished from the face of the earth. Archeological digs there in the 20th century did find bones with rune-like writing and artifacts that resembled jewelry and decorations from Scandinavia. However, before extensive, proper archeological digs could be made, the Garrison Dam was built and commissioned in 1960 and flooded the area, destroying this native land and probably the remaining artifacts and burial mounds of one of the longest, most established European/Viking settlements in North America—a blend of a Native American tribe with Scandinavian warriors, both culturally and genetically, that had lasted for at least 500 years. However, when one looks at the history of the NFL team, Minnesota Vikings, one can see a lot of truth in that mascot. The Vikings apparently were in Minnesota for hundreds of years before they had a professional football team named after them. And, I believe, most Americans need to know that the Vikings were in America 500 years before Columbus spotted any Caribbean islands in North America and had successfully interacted with the original inhabitants and influenced their culture and peoples.