Dude, who even knows.

19th December 2022

Post with 13 notes

So when the Vikings came to “Vinland” did they spread any European diseases to North American humans?

  1. who-canceled-roger-rabbit said: I figure the Vikings would’ve brought SOME disease right off the bat that North America hadn’t yet been exposed to, though they might also catch something themselves. In actual history I know Europeans did bring some new diseases home with them (including syphilis I’m pretty sure), though the diseases they introduced to the Americas did way more damage so it didn’t really balance out.
  2. who-canceled-roger-rabbit said: So when it did cross the Atlantic, it’d likely hit both the Norse Vinlanders and the First Nations at once. Again though, that’s just speculation.
  3. who-canceled-roger-rabbit said: Yeah, hell they even made it as far as Iraq and Morocco. I figure they eventually would’ve brought SOME disease to the Americas if they’d stayed. My point was more that I haven’t heard of smallpox in particular reaching Scandinavia by Erikson’s time. By the time smallpox, or again maybe bubonic plague or something, made it that far north, the Vikings might have already been in the Americas for some time.
  4. kontextmaschine said: @who-canceled-roger-rabbit eh if Vikings were in Constantinople I question how isolated from European disease networks they could stay
  5. who-canceled-roger-rabbit said: I mean who knows, maybe disease would’ve depopulated the Americas eventually, but it would likely go through Scandinavia first. And again, at the time the Vikings reached North America, AFAIK they didn’t have the advantage of resistance to diseases to which the people they encountered hadn’t been exposed yet. So if disease (possibly including the Black Death in this timeline?) did cross the Atlantic via the Vikings, the effects might’ve been less lopsided.
  6. who-canceled-roger-rabbit said: I don’t think smallpox (which was one of the big killers after Columbus) had made it that far north yet. I actually had an idea for an alternate history where the Norse outpost in Vinland survived, and the trans-Atlantic contact came with less depopulation because the Europeans who first arrived weren’t quite as germy and didn’t have such a pronounced technological advantage as Spain, England, etc.
  7. ghostlyharmonystarfish said: I’ve heard it suggested that Viking diseases caused the downfall of Cakohia and the Mississipian culture. But, no.
  8. kontextmaschine posted this
    So when the Vikings came to "Vinland" did they spread any European diseases to North American humans?