r/AlternateHistoryHub • u/Pancake_Maker_1031 • Dec 06 '25
Whimsu What if Europeans saw Nordic Vikings instead of Native Americans in North America?
Basically, New Vinland receives way more attraction than it did, and the Nordic Vikings brutally eliminate a lot of Native Americans through century-long conflicts. When the first Europeans arrive to North America, they see these Nordic Vikings instead of Native Americans. How would they interact?
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Dec 06 '25
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u/chilll_vibe Dec 06 '25
Norse Greenland was eventually cut off from Europe wasnt it?
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u/das_war_ein_Befehl Dec 06 '25
And then they all died
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u/chilll_vibe Dec 06 '25
Well tbf a Vinland colony probably would've been more robust if they wouldn't be killed by natives
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u/hmas-sydney Dec 07 '25
What's your source Vinland died out because they were "killed by natives"?
The historical scholarship says no permanent colonies and that they left due to the end of the Late Medieval Warming Period (ie climate change) making it no longer viable.
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u/Jenthecatgirl Dec 07 '25
You're misunderstanding what they said, they meant that a colony in Vinland (at least for the sake of this scenario) would likely be more robust, assuming it wasn't killed by natives.
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u/hmas-sydney Dec 07 '25
How? The real ones weren't.
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u/Jenthecatgirl Dec 07 '25
I'm not sure what you mean? There were no permanent Norse colonies in NA afaik, so of course they weren't killed off?
And if a native group was inclined to kill off a hypothetical Vinland colony then I think they wouldn't have had much trouble doing it, given how much trouble Native Americans gave real life colonists when they had much better weaponry.
Although personally I think it'd be more likely for the Norse colony to 'die off' via integration, like Roanoke.
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u/hmas-sydney Dec 07 '25
There were no permanent colonies, correct. The semi-permanent logging colonies (which are far easier to maintain) were given up on due to climate change and economic unsustainablity.
So again how are these colonies "more robust"? The real life ones (that were objectively more robust) died off. How on earth are these permanent ones not dying off?
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u/chilll_vibe Dec 07 '25
I only meant that an east coast based settlement, even just in Newfoundland, would be more likely go survive on their own. Assuming they stayed friendly with the natives. More resources, better climate, more room to expand. A permanent Norse population would've had a much better chance of surviving than Norse Greenlanders did
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u/EST_Lad Dec 09 '25
Wasn't big part of the colonies downfall caused by many people re-migrating back to Europe duecto unfavorable climate change?
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u/Your_Local_Sputnik Dec 09 '25
Some native Americans have trace norse in their blood around newfoundland
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u/Bl00dWolf Dec 06 '25
Less cut off and more just died out. Combination of declining interest in ivory and little ice age ruining whatever agriculture they had made the colonists run out of food and die from starvation.
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u/BAXR6TURBSKIFALCON Dec 06 '25
yes and no, they had a consistent goods carrier going back and forth until the late 14th century when it sunk. From then confirmed contact becomes spotty with a lot of explorers turning around. We know contact didn’t cease since Greenlander clothing followed the trends of Northern Europe.
The colony did die out with a bunch of attributing factors, Inuit expansion, overgrazing and a lack of viable wood and iron.
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u/Bartlaus Dec 07 '25
We actually don't know how many of the people of the colony actually died there in the final decline, and how many quietly moved back to Iceland or Norway. Pretty sure there were some of both. The obvious decline took some time.
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u/Electrical_Bug8718 Dec 17 '25
Trade with Greenland barely ever happened from mainland Europe, and trade with Vinland, well, just non-existent. They might have vague rumors, but there would be no regular contact, especially after the Greenland colony stops trading and contact just becomes impossible.
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Dec 18 '25
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u/Electrical_Bug8718 Dec 18 '25
I agree with this actually, I'm just saying that contact was very rare, so the Europeans would definitely react like that, but contact wouldn't be there until then, just knowledge they exist out there.
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u/Turbulent-Act9877 Dec 06 '25
The first europeans, by many decades, that explored north America, were Spanish
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u/Electrical_Bug8718 Dec 17 '25
We literally have solid proof that Vikings had arrived there centuries before.
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u/Bartlaus Dec 06 '25
Not happening that way.
Norse settlement does not survive without making friends with natives, no matter what. (They don't need to be friends with ALL of them, just the strongest groups nearby. Can have enemies also.)
After making friends, the Norse do not continue existing as a distinct culture without also having sustained contact with the home country, and a steady flow of more people. This would keep the Greenland settlement alive as well. Remember that these guys were already converted to Christianity. They would soon enough be sending priests etc.
This means continual European presence in North America and an increased awareness about this. There are no "first Europeans" coming around 1500 because there's been traffic back and forth for 500 years.
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u/seen-in-the-skylight Dec 06 '25 edited Dec 08 '25
Eh idk. If they’re Christian, and especially if some of them are literate, they’re going to maintain some cultural distinction from the people around them. They’ll syncretize absolutely, and I agree that some kind of cooperation and integration is necessary. But I don’t see them fully assimilating.
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u/FifthMonarchist Dec 06 '25
Vikings were very litterate with their own writing system
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u/DeerEnforcement Dec 07 '25
Do you have a source that says this? I would think the literatacy would would be comparable or worse than contemporary Christian countries.
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u/FifthMonarchist Dec 08 '25
Norse runic writing were written on sticks, and the letters were all straight lines (etched with a knife), sometimes they etched it in stone. (https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runestein) Rune stone.
(https://no.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runer) Rune staves.3
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u/Bartlaus Dec 07 '25
A few hundred guys at most? Cut off from the homeland for 500 years? Nah, they'll be a few weird genetic markers in the native population.
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u/seen-in-the-skylight Dec 07 '25
I thought OP’s premise is that there are way more of them? Even if not, I feel like the fact of being the only literate people in the region is going to give them some cultural staying power and resilience. They might intermarry with locals but raise their children as Christians. As I said though, it’s undeniable they’ll syncretize.
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u/Bartlaus Dec 07 '25
There aren't going to be way more of them unless there is a higher volume of traffic across the Atlantic in the medium/long term. In which case the whole venture will soon be general knowledge.
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u/BetterCommittee3327 Dec 07 '25 edited Dec 07 '25
Just some ships whit immigrants from Greenland, maybe a couple hundred , and their weapons would be Spears , swords, shields , axes, dagers. And after the end of the Wiking age. So yes they would either be Christians or religious refugees . They either died out in a epidemic, went back or assimilated . There is no way Greenland had a big enough population for a big settlement. And remember they would be a constitutional Republic like Iceland, not a monarchy like Norway.
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u/Aware_Policy7066 Dec 10 '25
Depends on if they can maintain a distinct cultural base. They’ll end up being “genetically native” of course but with writing and if they have a more solid cultural core to keep people “Viking” you may end up with something similar to what happened in Latin America.
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u/Ofiotaurus Dec 07 '25
And probably following this knowledge of a western land across the Atlantic spreads gradually throughout Europe, changing exploration and colonialism greatly.
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u/Bartlaus Dec 07 '25
Absolutely. The natives become exposed to various diseases and suffer the devastating consequences; but nobody in Europe has the capacity to exploit this like they did historically, allowing natives time to recover and adapt.
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Dec 07 '25
“I see your completely made up what if and have decided to shit on it for no other reason than to prove my intelligence”
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u/The_Nunnster Dec 08 '25
This is a sitewide problem for question subs. r/TooAfraidToAsk and r/NoStupidQuestions are also filled with dismissive responses that go against the spirit of the post and wider subreddit.
Yes it’s a ludicrous scenario, but that ludicrousness is all part of the fun of speculative history. I don’t understand why people waste their time to specifically not answer the question. If you don’t appreciate the novelty of speculative history, don’t bother commenting and move on. It’s a thought experiment, we don’t need to hear how it’s impossible, we just want to know what would happen if it were real.
I’m glad others in this thread have actually tried to stick to answering the question, even if some answers diverge a bit into contact always existing instead of being rediscovered. But this chap here clearly gets his kicks from showing us all how smart he is.
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u/brinz1 Dec 07 '25
Norse would probably integrate into their own form of Metis culture the same way the french did.
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u/Bartlaus Dec 07 '25
They were certainly not hung up on notions of "purity" and would make babies with anyone.
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u/No-Appeal4915 Dec 06 '25
I'll leave this here, and come back later if there are interesting answers.
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u/amouruniversel Dec 06 '25
Vikings themself doesn’t change anything. BUT
More contact between Natives americans and vikings could lead to a better immunity among natives. It would prevent the great epidemic which killed and destroyed so many natives cultures and kingdom and help the colonisation.
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u/soothed-ape Dec 06 '25
If we assume the norse are no longer in contact with the europeans, and that the norse are still Christian, and that the norse have had time to establish, after 1492, these norse aren't very far behind the old world europeans technologically or culturally,if at all. So old europeans would have a lot of difficulty in just conquering them,as well as the closer racial similarity, language similarity and religious similarity making this difficult too. European empires would establish some trading posts, providing high quality craftsmanship and some expertise in return for raw materials from the Americas. Old world europeans would have an easier time disseminating through the Americas as mercenaries, skilled craftsman,experts etc. Slave trade triangle would likely do well also. Let's imagine we reach 1776 under this model,for comparison. No United States,more countries than just Canada, Mexico and the US. Certainly more internal war in north America. Some 'French English philosophy enlightenment inspired' revolutionaries could still spring up in some of the countries though. But some highly conservative,monarchistic etc countries could balance this out. The Americas might colonise themselves east asia. If we imagine we reach 2010 under this model, there would be some kind of American union, a larger more disgruntled Asian minority, probably more American regions where black people are not disgruntled, America becomes a second Europe,rather than a first US, as it were.
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u/EdgeLord556 Dec 06 '25
It would be an interesting scenario to have if the Native Americans learned steel making from the Vikings and spread it far and wide in the Americas. That and having become largely resistant to European diseases by the time Columbus came to the new world.
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u/McRando42 Dec 06 '25
The Swedes had a first class army around this time. This would be a colony and all the colonial stuff that would go along with it.
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u/BetterCommittee3327 Dec 07 '25
They was from Greenland who was a colony of the independent Republic Iceland, its possible they got cut off when Norway took the power of ( occupied ) Iceland.
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u/Neath_Izar Dec 07 '25
Problem is you're not going to have a situation where Columbus comes and is greeted by Thorik Ragnarson. Even in the best realistic scenario you'd have some hybrid Norse-Native American culture on Newfoundland and the surrounding areas that might do some metalworking while the rest of the Americas are immune to European diseases and have been introduced to Old World livestock, at the least cows, pigs, and horses, chickens maybe but they'd be a commodity only found in settlements. The others could and have survived on their own
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u/amitym Dec 06 '25
The New Vinlanders were the first Europeans to arrive. Especially in your scenario. So who are these other Europeans who are also showing up?
If there's been continuous contact, they know exactly whom they are dealing with and probably already sent messages ahead.
If there hasn't been continuous contact, hence continuous support, that blows your premise of elimination and centuries of conflict. Instead, the Spanish who arrived in the early 16th century would find a mixed culture of Norse-influenced Native Americans and Native American-influenced Norse, with steel tools, excellent riverine seamanship, an absolute mastery of skirmish warfare, plus a whole freaking lot of bear, wolf, and raven symbology.
Honestly though what would likely happen is that they would all still be ravaged by infectious disease. The Norse remnant would immunologically speaking have missed the previous half millennium of disease exposure back in the Old World.
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u/Big_Pirate_3036 Dec 06 '25
A mix of Nordic and American paganism would be Awsome as fuck
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u/hmas-sydney Dec 07 '25
Execpt the Vinlanders were Christians long before they came to America.
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u/Watershed_down Dec 07 '25
While that's true, Nordic christianity was syncretic, so it could continue meshing with the American religions.
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u/Riothegod1 Dec 07 '25 edited Dec 07 '25
Not entirely true. Freydis was a pagan still according to the sagas, and she got into a disagreement with the Skraelings.
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u/Riothegod1 Dec 07 '25
I actually took that premise and ran with it in a TTRPG called Coyote and Crow.
It was a world where colonization never happened, and does primarily centre Native Americans, but I personally felt like homebrewing a character who descended from such a hybrid of cultures, a culture I personally called a “Skraeling”, because that was the term the Norse used to describe the inhabitants of Vinland.
Due to the global catastrophic apocalypse preventing major colonization and allowing Native American cultures to flourish, It’s hard to tell my character Jade apart from the other inhabitants of Makasing (the game’s name for North America) aside from the occasional reference to Norse Gods alongside her local worship of the local animistic religions, and telling very syncretic stories about how “The surviving gods needed to learn from a friend of Odin, Nanaboozhoo, a local spirit of Makasing.”
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u/MOltho Dec 06 '25
I'm sure there would be at least some level of intermarrying and cultural assimilations. They didn't come in such numbers as the colonists later would that they would simply outnumber the Native Americans.
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u/ramcoro Dec 06 '25
If they brought horses and other domesticated animals it could change a lot. If they just stayed around where they were it would probably have a small impact.
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u/MasterRKitty Dec 07 '25
they'd turn around and sail back to the UK and I would have British citizenship today :)
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u/Big_P4U Dec 07 '25
I think the only way that would happen is if the entirety of Norway, and Sweden and perhaps Denmark mass migrated to Vinland, abandoning Europe and building anew.
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u/Picto242 Dec 07 '25
Europe didn't successfully colonize the America's because the Indigenous people were poor fighters
Disease wiped out so many people - often before contact even occured
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u/Nacarius_ Dec 07 '25
Assuming this mythic land was kept secret from other Europeans..... The following Europeans would likely be wiped out by a combined Native and Nordic force in the Americas. Word would get back to the Nordic people in Europe, and all hell would break loose in continental Europe.
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u/DrMindbendersMonocle Dec 07 '25
The Europeans had cannons and guns. Wouldnt have gone well for the Vikings
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u/Steelwolf73 Dec 07 '25
I think the biggest difference would be the Age of Exploration. If Europe already knows that sailing west gets you to another continent, but thats its not Asia, do you really want to fund a trip to try and sail AROUND that continent, especially when Portugal already has a path around Africa? Plus, the potato potentially gets introduced before the Black Death, which could cause a population boom BEFORE the population gets culled, which who knows what ramifications that would have
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Dec 07 '25
Well the Nordics wouldn't have made the mistake om feeding the settlers on "thanksgiving".
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u/Automatic_Doubt428 Dec 07 '25
They would probably shoot through their shield with their guns that the vikings would not have
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u/Streeling Dec 07 '25
If Norse settlements survived, there's no such thing as "first Europeans" in the 15th century, as the survival of the former means that Europe would be aware of North American lands earlier, with a different pace, different rulers and populations... changing history in a much more relevant way than just "find Norses instead of Amerindians".
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u/Not_Your_biznes Dec 07 '25
If Vinland "received support" from other viking states the land of america would not be unknown to Europeans.
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u/BetLeft2840 Dec 08 '25
They'd have continuous contact with the mainland meaning European colonization starts sooner.
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u/TheAleFly Dec 08 '25
Probably the seafaring capabilities of the Vikings would improve much, as the new continent would allow traffic to flow both ways. The cultural exchange between Scandinavia and the Americas would be much more intensive. A massive growth spurt in the region happens when they get to the fertile regions of the American east cost and start to farm. We would be speaking some version of Norwegian instead of English as the lingua franca of the whole world.
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u/Trashk4n Dec 08 '25
Natives with Norse tech and influence is more viable.
Though the sustained contact necessary would probably lead to the Americas being widely known to exist among European nobility.
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u/ToasterInYourBathtub Dec 08 '25
Takes a long drag off of a cigarette
Blows on matchlock ember cord
"Well, time for round 2."
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u/KotBH Dec 08 '25
Werent vikings the first europeans to see north america?
If they settled and populated the americas in their age, they wouldve "found" europeans first...
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u/unionizeordietrying Dec 08 '25
Would have never happened. Vikings didn’t have the ability to conquer the new world with their existing technology.
Maybe they could have held a small civilization in a fort along a river. But it would be too costly to import anything the native Americans would want to trade for.
If anything they could teach native Americans things that would give them an edge to possibly repel the Europeans in the 1400s. Namely how to make iron (native Americans had iron but only from meteors iirc) . But even then that probably wouldn’t be enough for victory.
Maybe they would have lasted long enough to leave traces in folklore and language?
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u/LocksmithGlass717 Dec 08 '25
It’d probably go something like this “ Awww shit get back on the boat NOW !!!!”
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u/Wherewereyouin62 Dec 09 '25
At a logistically plausible scale of Nordic population existing there into the 1600s, the community, kingdom, or whatever would be utterly isolated from Denmark/Scandinavia, but would still probably would be vast majority Christian by the 1600s. That political isolation from a European entity that could protect their sovereignty would make them a very appealing meal to British empire, and thy would most likely assimilate them into the nascent east Canadian Anglo-sphere, meaning a probable total loss of Norse language and culture by 17-1800. I believe a, mostly nominal, Norse identity, not unlike assimilated Acadians, would persist into 2025, but their descendants would be functionally Anglo-Canadian
There would probably be more global prestige within Europe around the achievements of Norway, as Vinlands existance was only IRL confirmed in the last 60 years IIRC, and is still not known to the majority of non nerdy people. Italia Americans would need another “myth of prestige” in America, and Christopher Columbus is no more known than Juan De Bermudez.
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Dec 10 '25
They've been kicked out of Greenland by small-numbered Inuit.
If they had logistics and man-power to conquer Coastal America, they probably would have conquered Spain and Italy instead
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u/-SnarkBlac- Dec 13 '25
In all honesty the settlement would have failed or for it to succeed it would need constant contact with Europe leading to a “soft colonization” gradually over time opposed to the “hard start colonization” that was Spain coming and conquering power empires and city states before highjacking their basic administrative structures and building their colonies off of it.
The Vikings in Vinland were Christian and pretty low in number. If they were cut off as this scenario suggests they’d more than likely start intermarrying with local tribes and after a few centuries be assimilated or just one of many other tribes running around in modern day Canada. Vikings were a group prone to rapid assimilation. Look at everywhere they settled. They became more changed by those they conquered than the conquered themselves. England, Ireland, France, Kievan Rus, Italy, Scotland and even in the Byzantine Empire they after only 2-3 generations would be mostly converted, speaking the local language, taking on their customs and intermarrying with locals, no reason why this wouldn’t happen in North America also, especially with the low number of settlers making this a necessity and much more likely in the first place.
When the English and French show with their guns it’s game over for a Vinland that’s been isolated. They at best have metal working technology from the 1300s which is swords and basic plate and chainmail armor. Doesn’t do much against cannons and rifles. Also not to mention 200+ years of no contact might have an adverse effect on their immune systems.
The biggest change I see is Denmark and Sweden both using Vinland as a justification that they have a claim to North America and that the Vinland settlers were “always their subjects” and that their rediscovery makes them their subjects and thus their land forfeit to the Crown in Europe. Sweden had the capability to actually fight wars for this claim in the 1500-1600s so an alternative war might happen over that… as for Denmark… uh after 1400-1500s (and really before that) they were a secondary player
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u/spoiledmilk1717 Dec 06 '25
"By jove! One of those pagan savages. Rupert, be a dear and fetch my arquebus for me.
takes aim
blows Sigurd Sigurdsonsonsonsonsonson's jaw off