First Contact: the Viking vs. Native American Battles

under green cliffs runs a winding channel disturbed by a lone navigator a man striking forward in a canoe meant for three the eight companions with whom he set out have been abducted by pale and bearded men armed with radiant weapons and shields the man reaches his village tells them of the ambush and then rallies a war party for the counter-attack his people are native to the land long ago their ancestors abandoned the eurasian landscape braved prehistoric seas in the tundra of mammoths and settled deep into a world hitherto untouched by humans as one age passed into the next the bridge between the two hemispheres was broken and each half of the planet diverged in mutual ignorance of the other millennia bore witness to the cyclical death and birth of great empires peoples and languages prophecy and faith the vikings of scandinavia having ravaged europe and established outposts on iceland and greenland have just interrupted tens of thousands of years of hemispheric estrangement they promptly kill their eight native american captives this small band of norse men are led by thorvald eriksen his brother leif earlier made landfall on the american coast but failed to encounter any native inhabitants now the swarm of indigenous canoes comes into view the vikings gather to their ship for cover a staccato reign of stonehead arrows beats against their raised shields after some time the siege ends and the indigenous people paddle away but a fateful arrow protrudes from the trembling side of thorvald eriksen he asks his men to lay him to rest in this foreign soil with a pair of crosses at his head and feet after the captain's final orders are carried out his men returned to the american settlement founded by leif eriksen and return to greenland in the spring but soon there is another stir a distant toll of iron and plumes of listless smoke dragon boats cruise along the water's edge a man called thorphin carlsephany has reached the leif erikson settlement along with a party of nearly 70 settlers christian and pagan alike it seems divine favor has blessed these seagoing people with a beached whale from which to feed they settle warmly in their sod houses for the long winter one day out of the spring woods people appear although frightened at first by the norse bull they soon opened their packs to present warm pelts from the local fauna and gesture toward the norse weapons through guarded and fumbling attempts to communicate karl stephanie makes clear that he will not trade his iron weapons instead he offers the milk of their livestock the native americans take delights in the strange beverage trading all of their pelts for it then they disappear again karl stephanie orders his men to build the palisade around the settlement the people return in the fall in greater numbers with more pelts in the tense reunion one native american attempts to take an iron weapon and a viking strikes him dead the other native americans flee but karl cephny anticipates retaliation he sends out his norse warriors to lure them into the forest and then they ambush them [Applause] tomahawk and arrow meet axe and shield the vikings scatter the native americans and leave a number of them dead in the woods carl stephanie's expedition remains at the settlement for the winter then they load their ships with american grapes and pelts and depart this story comes directly from the saga of the greenlanders one of two icelandic sagas that record the viking settlement of greenland leif erikson's voyage to mainland america in the viking expeditions to the american lands they called markland hellu land and finland the other called the saga of eric the red tells this same fundamental story with important differences it combines the expeditions of thorvald and karlsephany into one and records a massive battle in which native americans kill multiple fleeing vikings who are in turn only rescued when the brave woman freitas scares off the native americans by beating her exposed breasts with a sword both sagas are the products of oral histories probably first written down in the early 1200s each is clouded by medieval folklore corpses reanimate to give prophecies and disembodied voices guide the explorers in eric's saga thorvald is killed when a one-legged creature shoots an arrow into his groin these stories are the relics of the closing of an age as viking clans coalesce into kingdoms and the scandinavian settlements on greenland are abandoned and the old tales of a short-lived quest to a western land are resigned to a compendium of rumor and fable to be told around the hearth or carried far by the traveling merchant it's in italy around 1340 that a monk relays what he's heard of markland further westwards there is another land named marcolada where giants live in this land there are buildings with such huge slabs of stone that nobody could build with them except huge giants however no sailor was ever able to know anything for sure about this land or about its features in 1492 the vatican records that no news has come from greenland that country at the end of the world in eight decades christopher columbus reaches the bahamas that same year scholars are left to doubt that the vikings ever reached mainland north america until in 1960 archaeologists in newfoundland discover mounded ruins excavations will resurface sod houses in iron forge and chopped wood recently dated to the year 1021. here the contemporaries of the eriksen brothers and karl stephanie may have traded with indigenous people and launched expeditions possibly as far south as maine or new york but after a handful of years the mighty vikings abandoned their colony mysteriously retired from their efforts to expand their domain westward in a bountiful country the tentative mapping of their expeditions reveals that the norse had likely met the ancestors of the biothic or dorset native americans a people whose resistance may have been the death knell for these first european settlements in the americas thus reads the saga of eric the red although the land was excellent they could never live there in safety or freedom from fear because of the native inhabitants so they made ready to leave the place and return home if america had been spared the wrath of the vikings europe hadn't been so fortunate when i watched vikings merchants and explorers from magellan tv i was blown away by both the brutality inflicted on europe as well as the lasting impact the viking era had on the world today you can go watch the documentary right now it has this really cool balance of present day sights of fabled viking raids alongside really quality battle recreations all wrapped up in a great overview of who the vikings were history those viewers can take advantage of a special holiday offer right now buy one get one free gift card for an annual membership by clicking on the link in the description you'll have access to vikings merchants and explorers as well as magellan's huge catalog of 3 000 history documentaries and they're adding new documentaries in history crime and science every single week so click that link and you can start streaming these through your tv mobile device laptop or other streaming device right away

Channel: History Dose

Views: 5,999,571

Keywords: erickson, laif, leif, viking, norse, pagan, saga, greenland, iceland, native american, first people, indigenous, thorfinn, greenlander, battle, war, l'anse aux meadows, lanse, beothuk, newfoundland, medieval, columbus, first contact, vinland

Id: Vnlwdd5JFEs

Length: 9min 0sec (540 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 30 2021