Roxana Cooper Wrote:
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>> "It is the effort to make lanse meadows and
>> asterix by the mainstream that bothers me. They
>> only gave up the ghost grudgingly and like the
>> article they still have that desire to have it go
>> away."
>
> Nonsense! L'Anse is fully accepted as a Norse
> site! As for the rest; we've discussed the need
> for solid proof any number of times before. Until
> L'Anse we didn't have anything but the sagas -
> which were less than conclusive. Hence
> skepticism.
>
>> "Almost all interpetations of the site state it
>> was a boat repair facility."
>
> L'Anse if very small. Too small to be a serious
> attempt at colonization as described in the the
> sagas.
Huh? The sagas speak of a settlement attempts involving only TWO ships.... which (especially after allowance is made for supplies & lifestock), would have involved no more than 50-70 people per attempt, maximum. Hell, one decent longhouse could have held ALL settlers from any given attempt.
Remember, ALL the sagas mention is:
1) Sighted by Bjarni Herjulfsson, who DIDN'T land.
2) Leif Eriksson lands with ONE ship and 35 men, building 1 house and several other utilitarian structures. He returns home with a cargo of wood.
3) Leif's brother Thorvald lands with ONE ship (same site?), builds several dwellings and spends two years before returning to Greenland with a full cargo of wood.
4) ANOTHER brother (Thorstein) tries to visit, but the ONE ship"was thrown off course by a storm and all on board, except for a woman, perished."
5) Thorfinn Karlsefni lands with TWO ships, spending 3 years in the SAME dwellings built by Leif Eriksson & his kin, before returning to Greenland with full cargoes of wood. (Pitched battles with locals).
6) Leif's sister Freydis lands with TWO ships (one Greenland, one Iceland) at the SAME site and spend a year there before Freydis engineers the massacre of the Icelanders (chopping up the Icelandic women herself, with an axe) & returns to Greenland with full cargoes of wood. (Some conflict with locals)
Note that few buildings are mentioned as being built, that cutting timber for resale back in Greenland was a major preoccupation, and that the last two attempts (the only halfway serious ones) both resulted in significant loss of life.... NOT exactly condusive to encouraging imitation.
>> "Logically one does not travel grom Greenland or
>> Iceland to the new world to get your boat
>> repaired. You get maintenace to push further on."
>
> Presumably to wherever 'Vinland' was.
Presumably, after traveling to L'Anse Aux Meadows AKA Vinland, any prudent seaman would repair his boat BEFORE RISKING HIS LIFE IN A VOYAGE BACK HOME WITH A VALUABLE CARGO OF WOOD.... especially if said vital transportation had been exposed to a Newfoundland winter or two.
>> "Also the viking/norse drive to explore seemed
>> to be unlimited. They were not "we got here Whew"
>> and pack up and leave. They met the muslims and
>> they went all the way to the Black Sea in what was
>> called Rus."
>
> The Viking drive to explore seems to have been
> directly related to trade opportunities - of which
> there were pleny in eastern Europe.
Yep. You'll notice the Vikings didn't explore south along Africa.... they had their hands full trading & raiding closer to home.
> Native
> Americans had things to trade but don't seem to
> have been inclined to accept the Vikings as
> partners.
They didn't get the chance, no such offer was made.
> The sagas describe them as extremely
> unfriendly to the settlers - probably for good
> reason.
Karlsefni killed some on sight. Others were upset over Norse refusal to trade steel weapons. And the Norse laughed at them when they were frightened by an angry bull (which they'd never seen before), which sparked a major battle.
Freydis's bunch also ran into trade conflicts.
At no point was any partnership deal offered.... this was typical of Norse exploitation activities, from what I've heard.
Kenuchelover.
> The Vikings explored Russia et-al by going up
> big navigable rivers. None of the eastern seaboard
> rivers would have taken them any farther west than
> the Appalachians - if that far. The Mississippi is
> a very big river but its mouth is awfully far
> south for Viking penetration.
>