Vinland: North America's Viking Colony
this video is brought to you by shaker and spoon shaker and spoon is one of my absolute favorite sponsors on this channel because they send you cocktails not exactly what they do is there are a subscription cocktail box and they send this out to you once per month and basically in here is all the magic that you need to make 12 cocktails four of each different kind let's have a look inside the box what you do is you have three cards like this this one is called the don't tell richard these are cocktails for use with dark rum all you have to do is provide the dark rum everything else you need is included in this box and it is a lot of stuff from this which is lemon water to coconut water to stuff for making cold brew coffee and best of all i mean that stuff you could maybe buy at like a larger supermarket but what shaker and spoon really do is they send you these tiny little things but impossible to get agree i mean i'm not impossible to get but you know you go to the shop and you buy or 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whiskey one what you can do is go to the link in the description below or just go to shakeranspoon.com forward slash geographics and you'll get 20 off your box and uh well with that said let's get into today's video it was the settlement that rewrote history sometime around a thousand a.d a viking ship left greenland on a mission that would push european exploration to its limits for nearly two thousand miles the crew battled hostile seas and a lack of navigational aids braving weeks of unknown dangers then finally they saw it the long rumored distant land filled with forests its climate a paradise compared to their frozen home the vikings named this new world finland after the wild grapes that grew there but you and i know it today by a very different name the greenlanders had just landed in what is now canada and their settlement would become the first european colony in north american history for centuries considered a mythical place finland's existence was only confirmed in the 1960s when the remains of norse buildings were found at le as umedo in newfoundland and even now much of it remains shrouded in mystery from exactly where the greenland has explored to why they abandoned europe's first new world colony today that story for centuries it was one of european history's biggest riddles sometime around the 13th century two norse oral histories have been separately written down known as the saga of eric the red and the saga of the greenlanders they dealt with events that had happened over 200 years earlier each saga had its own characters each with its own spin on events yet they contained remarkable similarities telling tales such as that of greenland's discovery they were clearly true one of these similarities was the discovery of a place called vinland as recounted in the two sagas known collectively as the finland sagas finland was a sort of paradise a place of infinite natural riches because of this scholars spent the next few centuries arguing whether it was real or just some drunk fantasy dreamed up by a lonely viking far from home but today we no longer have to speculate thanks to archaeological finds over the last 60 years we now know that vinland was real and its story is more awe inspiring than those dead dudes studying the sagas could have ever have dreamed the tale of how the norse came to reach north america nearly half a millennia before christopher columbus begins way back around the year 800 a.d and it begins not with a long boat landing on the shores of canada but with a whole bunch of vikings colonizing scotland's northern isles although no one was thinking it at the time the arrival of the norse in shetland and orkney was the first of a series of stepping stones that would ultimately lead all the way to finland just 25 years later the second step took them to the pharaoh islands after that a far bigger step led to the colonization of iceland but it would be the next step that proved decisive the discovery of greenland if you're a regular biographics watcher or sister channel you'll already know from our video on eric the red how he came to establish greenland's first settlement for today's story though the key part is that eric didn't explore greenland alone he took his family with him including his son leif eriksen and it was life who would take the last and biggest step of all well at least according to one of the sagas as we said earlier the two vinland sagas contain a lot of differences and not least is the first to settle finland the saga of the greenlanders is clear that leif erikson was the driving force while the saga of eric the red gives leif a supporting role but has a guy named thor finn kaufmani as its hero basically comparing the two sagas is like comparing 2003's full metal alchemist series with the 2009 anime same characters same origin wildly different stories and you're sure about this so we're just gonna go with what the majority of historians say and that's that the saga of the greenlanders is probably the more accurate version fair warning though take everything you're about to hear with a bit of a pinch of salt born sometime in the 960s leif grew up in iceland where he was mostly raised not by his dad but by a german thrall or slave named tirka but while tiaka is said to have become more of a father to life than eric the red ever was that didn't mean life was free from his father's influence in 982 eric was banished from iceland for killing a man rather than go alone he took his family with him sailing west in search of a rumored unexplored land that was how olaf became one of the first europeans in history to set foot on greenland a witness to the founding of the island's first norse colony for the still teenage lad it must have made one hell of an impression the adventure of the long voyage the romance of an undiscovered place in just a couple of decades that experience would inspire the boy to undertake his own great adventure a voyage to north america it was 986 a.d when bajani hayolfson accidentally made history a wannabe greenland colonist who set off later than the others bajani got caught in a storm after leaving iceland and was blown wildly off course by the time the winds abated his ship had come in sight of a strange land mass thick with forest this place clearly wasn't greenland which bhajani knew to be treeless in fact it was something far more interesting bajani heilsen didn't know it yet but he'd just become the first european to set eyes on north america well sort of technically of course greenland is part of the north american plate facts i'm sure plenty of parents have already helpfully pointed out in the comments but while both greenland and the extreme west of iceland may technically be in north america there was nothing technical about bajani's discovery this was the real deal the coastline of modern canada rather than land majani sailed north along the coast eventually turning east after several days at sea he had at last reached the greenland colony there he told everyone of his astonishing tale only for people to be like cool story bro i'm gonna go talk to someone else now yes it seems no one was interested in bijani's history changing discovery no one that is except for leif erikson it's not exactly clear at what point leif heard about this mysterious western land but the tale certainly seems to have stuck with him when as an adult he returned from norway around a thousand a.d with a mission to spread christianity one of the first things he did was contact bhajani hailfson and buy his old boat a few months later leif gathered up 35 men got in bijani's boat and set off into the great unknown as adventures go it was next level stuff all i've had to go on was a vague description by bijani of a voyage he'd taken over 15 years earlier standing in his way was a stretch of treacherous icy ocean even vaster than the distance separating the already remote greenland from norway by writes it was an adventure that should have ended with leif earning the nickname leif the very dead instead it would be the making of him the first land the crew sighted was unencouraging after a dangerous voyage a jagged icy coast came into view a rocky land that appeared even more barren and dead than greenland's inhospitable east today we call this place baffin island but laith called it hella land meaning stone slab land but rather than turn back the vikings carried on down the coastline looking for somewhere less hostile to human life somewhere like markland markland or forest land was the exact landscape bianni had described skirted by beaches with dense trees growing in the interior since a lack of trees to build boats was one of the greenland colony's biggest problems it's kind of surprising lathe didn't stop here on what is now the labrador coast but no lathe eriksen was still searching searching for that perfect spot to settle after two more days hard sailing he found it even today newfoundland is a place of rare beauty the sort of tempting spot canada's tourist board had wet dreams about for the norse colonizers it was like heaven lush and green with a milder climate than greenland or iceland the island contained everything a viking could possibly need there was food in abundance including grapes although modern scholars think what the crew thought were grapes were actually naturally fermenting gooseberries still they were grape-like enough for leif to name this new world finland or wine land but he did more than just name it that winter the crew built a small settlement they named leifspudia as the weather turned cold the sagas record that the norse were amazed by the mild frosts and comparatively long daylight hours by the time the warmer weather returned there was no longer any doubt the greenlanders would return to this place as soon as possible and when they did it would be with the intent of founding the first permanent european colony in the americas for any greenlander watching as leif erikson unloaded his ship it must have been a little like a kid watching santa unpack his sleigh prior to their return home the crew had packed their craft with timber grapes and all sorts of exotic food stuffs on top of that they'd even bumped into a whole bunch of shipwrecked norse on the way back and rescued them her feet which earned leif the nickname the lucky but while leif eriksen had now reached the peak of his fame it also reached the point where he exits our story either just before or shortly after the finland vikings returned home eric the red died leaving leif to assume the role of the greenland colony's head honcho while that meant everyone giving him fist bumps and a sick new longhouse to live in it also meant no more opportunities to go exploring leif was needed now in greenland the finland saga would have to be continued by someone else or rather several someones life's siblings and sister-in-law would all take stabs at colonizing the new world it's here that the sagas and the archaeological record begin to diverge as we'll see in the next chapter the settlement established on newfoundland seems to have been peaceful if short-lived a stable prosperous place according to the vinland saga though the expeditions after life were marked by almost non-stop trauma and bloodshed the next person to take a stab at these new lands was probably laff's brother thorvold at some point maybe around a thousand and three thouvald and his men were exploring some corner of markland when they ran smack into a gang of indigenous americans leif's expedition had somehow managed to avoid contact with any native people so this moment on a forgotten beach on a long forgotten day should have been truly momentous the first documented meeting of americans and europeans unfortunately thorvald was apparently super into perpetrating viking stereotypes because he killed eight of the nine men without even blinking sadly for thorvold the one who escaped returned with an army in tow and a battle broke out on the shoreline and that's how within a few hours of becoming the first european to ever meet an american thorwald also became the first european to be killed by one it was an encounter that would set the tone for all future expeditions the trouble was the norse never seemed to figure out a way to either get along with or defeat the locals who they called scrailings a word most sources translate as wretches wretched or not though the scrailings were a force to reckon with when late former sister-in-law gudrid thor bajan nardotia and her new husband thor finn carl stephanie tried to establish finland's biggest colony yet they initially got an okay with the natives from their base of straumfijo they developed a trading relationship with the local tribe that seemed to blossom until karlsephany's men killed a scralling for trying to steal weapons their settlement became a target for attacks while the vikings could mostly fend them off the sheer time and energy required convinced them to abandon their colony after just two winters still at least something historically valuable came of the aborted settlement while there goodrid reportedly gave birth to a boy that she named snorri thor finnessen if true that would mean snorri beat all other claimants to the title of first european born in america by over 500 years there are yet other colonization projects recounted in the vinland sagas one by leif's sister freydis that turned into a bloodbath one that supposedly ended when a dude called bajani grimolsson had his boat eaten by seaworms at this stage though we're really reaching the limit of what the sagas can tell us alone so for a moment let's put these tales aside and focus on an entirely different source the archaeological record because scanned as they are the traces the vinland vikings left in canada are all sorts of impressive way way out on the northern tip of newfoundland's great northern peninsula lies the only confirmed north settlement in the whole of the americas uncovered in the 1960s by norwegian archaeologist ann stein inkstart and her husband helge la's omers is a marble to behold a collection of now rebuilt viking dwellings thousands of miles distance from their owner's home while a lot about the site remains up for debate for example if this was the settlement leif erikson founded or a later one there are things we can't say for certain thanks to radiocarbon dating we know it was built between 980 and 1020 a.d about when the sagas say the greenlanders explored finland we know too
that it was an unusually big settlement one that could hold 90 people including at least a handful of women we also know that for whatever reason it didn't last our best estimates say that it was in use for only a decade before it was abandoned what caused its abrupt end remains a mystery not that you should go thinking this was the viking equivalent of the lost colony of roanoke rather than a place for living archaeologists things that it can better be understood as a kind of base camp a place to refuel recharge or store your wares after an expedition there was equipment for repairing boats a blacksmith and carpentry shop a set of eight long houses with large storage areas the idea seems to have been that different expeditions would use the settlement for anywhere between one and three years people would bed over winter at its quarters and then head off to explore the rest of finland and spring and summer each time they returned it would be with furs timber iron or edibles anything that could be stockpiled before they finally returned to greenland weighed down with treasure unlike the greenlanders then the vinland vikings weren't here for the long haul we can deduce this from the absence of graves and the tiny middens or trash heaps that they left but it's worth remembering that la also meadows wasn't likely the only settlement the descriptions the sagas give of leif buddhi for example portray a way mulder climate to the one you'll find in northern newfoundland that means at least some of the finland vikings probably traveled further south in fact it's likely vinland itself referred to a vast area rather than a specific place but figuring out its exact dimensions is a colossal pain in the backside since sla also meadows remains the only confirmed norse settlement in canada although there's some buzz around a possible second site on baffin island places they may have visited have to be puzzled out using the few clues to hand for example the discovery of butternuts at the site points to the vikings visiting as far south as new brunswick where they grow locally the repeated references to grapes in the sagas also point to another outpost in the south perhaps on prince edward island but nothing is as intriguing as the settlement of hope a vital southern settlement in the sagas hope was rich in salmon and timber and a great source of grapes unlike the staging post at la sumeros though the location of hope remains a mystery theories are placed everywhere from shallow bay in new brunswick to as far south as modern day maine yet despite decades of searching we've never found it for a while in 2016 it looked briefly like satellite imagery had picked up its traces at point royalty and the south of newfoundland but that sadly turned out to be an illusion in fact if hope was only ever a flimsy summer outpost it might now be lost forever eaten away by a millennium of harsh canadian winters of course hope might not even have been the most remote outpost of the vinland vikings go looking on the internet and you'll find claims that leif's brethren sailed all the way to minnesota or even right down to mexico however there's pretty much no actual evidence for any of this beyond faked rune stories and wishful thinking so you can probably file this alongside aliens did it in terms of plausibility no matter where hope actually was though pretty much everyone can agree on one thing it didn't last very long that's because the finland colony was about to collapse in the most spectacular way possible in all the finland vikings thought to have lasted around 10 years 10 years it's shorter than justin bieber's career or the length of time between george r.r martin novels with such a tiny lifespan it could be tempting to think they must have been wiped out in some great cataclysm but no at the lasso meadows site all the settlers equipment and tools seemed to have been taken with them there's no sign of violence and while the two holes were burned it's thought the norse torched them as a kind of leaving ritual so the million-dollar question is what happened what caused this group of manly scandinavians to ditch the treasures of the new world after just a decade all we have are guesses the most popular one is of course an inability to get along with the locals the saga of eric the red explicitly blames the scrailing saying they were a source of constant terror and not worth the danger yet there are no signs that lawsuit meadows of attacks bar a single arrowhead found in a wall hence others think the scratching threat was overhyped that may be the end of the finland colony has less to do with violence and more to do with practicalities in the centuries it existed norse greenland was as remote from norway as could be a hardy outpost of several hundred thousands of kilometers from their natural home finland was that distance all over again further from greenland than greenland was from norway and while norway and iceland were populous enough to supply greenland with a small but steadiest trickle of colonists there was simply no way to repeat the trick even further west with only some 500 greenlanders alive at the time lyon's su meadows flourished there just wasn't the manpower to establish a successful vinland base add to that a short sailing season between the two plus a bunch of pissed off locals tried to chase you out of their home and it may have been that keeping the colony going was simply more hassle than it was all worth yet the end of the colony didn't mean the under viking visits to the new world on the contrary little clues in the archaeological record point to return trips that continued for decades or even centuries of these the most fascinating has to be the main penny found during excavations of a native american site in the 1950s the belly hails from norway was minted during the biking era but here's the kicker it dates from between 1065 and 1080 a.d after the settlement atla also meadows was abandoned suggesting continued contact between the new and old worlds there are other clues too in greenland viking farms post-dating the vinland era have been excavated which contained the fur of bison and lumber from trees native to canada in fact an icelandic document dated to the year 1347 casually mentions norse ships sailing to markland to collect timber suggesting these sorts of voyages happen semi-regularly finland then seems to have been luring vikings on a seasonal basis for centuries possibly right up to the collapse of the greenland colony in the 1400s yet despite all this north america's viking history would soon be forgotten the great expeditions there consigned to oblivion that they were ever rediscovered is only thanks to an incredible stroke of luck although the tale of vinland faded into myth it wasn't forgotten altogether in the early 19th century a craze began in the usa for locating the saga's fabled land with books placing it everywhere from cape cod to martha's vineyard so it's not like the world was like vikings in america nonsense plenty of people still read the sagas looked at the remains of the greenland colony and induced canada or america was the only place left to go but there's a big difference between assuming something is true and actually proving it just ask your average flat earther unlike flat earth as though the vinland fans would eventually be proved right and it would all be thanks to one couple in 1960 norwegians helgen and stein ins dad decided they were fed up just speculating about vikings in the americas and that they'd rather just go find the evidence so that year they toured canada's northeast coast hunting for any traces of norse remains after a long journey they reached the village of la sumeros and newfoundland there they started asking around about viking ruins one man agreed to show them some old mounds everyone assumed had been built by first nations people improbably these random mounds would turn out to be the remains of the settlement the ingstads were looking for for the next seven summers the couple conducted excavations with growing excitement they found evidence of iron smelting unheard of elsewhere in the americas dug up a wooden boat building frame that matched the dimensions of a typical norse rivership but it would be a single find in 1968 that finally proved their theory right the excavations up until 1967 had uncovered a whole lot of evidence that vikings had probably been there but nothing that could prove it with 100 certainty then on the final day of their final dig season in the summer of 1968 they uncovered a bronze pin a small straight pin with a ring used for fastening cloaks a pin in that style had only ever been found at viking sites at that moment the vinland sagas stopped being just a story they became a piece of history again a european history in the new world that pre-dated columbus by hundreds of years today we're still on the lookout for more signs of vikings in canada and the u.s
long-lost settlements are artifacts that could tell us more about this brief exciting era the moment when the two worlds met for the first time already there are candidates after that false start back in 2016 there's some buzz about a possible sight in tanfield valley on baffin island but even if that doesn't pan out the search is far from over as technology improves it becomes more and more likely that we'll find another fragment of the vinland story maybe the remains of a seasonal hunting camp maybe the lost settlement of hope itself maybe just another viking coin buried in the earth thousands of miles from its homeland whatever it is it will represent a tiny miracle another fragment of europe and america's shared past recovered and preserved for us all perhaps this way eventually the full saga of the vinman vikings will finally become known so i really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below don't forget to subscribe and as always thank you for watching
2021-11-25 06:49
