Closing the circle

I just read up a little on the Vikings - interesting stuff, especially Erik the Red and his son, Leif Eriksson. Erik was banished from the Viking homelands (Norway) for murder and, during his exile, settled Iceland and the southwestern part of Greenland. There, his son Leif heard stories about a land to the west, but the seamen who told the story hadn't dared to make landfall.

Fifteen years later, Leif gathered a (presumable rowdy) crew and went looking for that mythological land. He found it in the form of what's today's Canada. They even created a settlement there, called Vinland. There, the first European, a boy called Snorri, was born - and should remain the only one for another 500 years.

So much for the proven history.

But: The moment the Viking settlers made first contact with the local Natives was, in retrospect, one of the most interesting moments in history. Since mankind originated in Africa, it had spread into every direction, crossed the Bering Strait and settled pretty much every part of the world. This took millions of years.

When Leif and some American native first met, the circle was finally closed. Mankind had met itself on the 'other side'.

So much for my slightly feverish thoughts on this cold Saturday night. I',m supposed to be out but I'm drinking tea and fighting off the flu instead

Europeans had been to the Americas long before the Vikings, as proven by the existance of Clovis points in the New World.

interesting. never thought of it that way.

sort of like golan trevize finding earth after it had been lost for tens of thousands of years.

Hadn't thought of it that way before, but 'tis true. Odd that the Vikings would make land on the *west* coast of Newfoundland, but they did:


L'Anse aux Meadows

You mean Greenland, don't you. T'was because it was warmer there I supposed. Can probably also be explained by their navigation - they came from Iceland, could be they simply landed there.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Columbus wasn't the first European to make it to the New World, he was just the first to hold a press conference when he got back.

How should that be possible? Is there a link?

Well, during the ice age there was probably a lot of migration across ice bridges in the extreme northern and southern parts of the world.

For anyone interested in the Norse, check out the Sagas of Icelanders. Basically a collected volume of the Icelandic Sagas. I read it about three or four years ago- it was really good stuff, and it served as sort of a reference (both historically and in terms of writing style) for the 'flashback' portions of my Highlander story: Einarr's Saga.

Yeah, I guess Greenland is technically part of North America, so if you want to count that. I was thinking more of Newfoundland, where they established some permanent settlements, but to do so they sailed over the north side, foregoing the east coast altogether and settling on the west coast, closer to the mainland.

Some archeologists think they continued on down the coast to places now in the U.S. Can't remember if they found actual settlements or just artifacts, but L'Anse aux Meadows is a fairly large settlement.

Ah, gotcha. I know of three places that are described by Leif in the sagas: Woodland, Grassland and Wineland (Vinland). All have been identified.

I see what you're saying, but personally I don't think it's possible to cross such large distances where there is nothing but a closed ice blanket with no vegetation. Even if they somehow found the shortest route, we're still talking thousands of kilometers with no forward outposts and such. I'm pretty sure those people were tougher than us, but somehow, I just can't imagine a human spanning such distances with no modern gear of any kind (not talking GPS but sledge dogs and such).

On the other hand, I really don't know. Maybe they were smarter than I give them credit for.

I'm planning to!

I saw a show (National Geographic, History, Discovery or somesuch) about how North/South America were reached by different peoples from all different directions and methods over the past few thousand years.

It seems the Bering Ice Bridge was just one way (of many ways) people got here.

But it is very true, in 70,000 or so years since modern man emerged that our genes have become so varied it boggles the mind.

What amazes me is the different languages and cultures.
In any society, who are the first people to say "I'm using a different word - I'm talking a different way - I'm adding this or that to the ritual and ceremony?"

It happens because back then people were isolated into small tribes. Hell, just look at the differences in colloquialisms between people from Canada and people from Alabama. Without modern civilization tying the two areas together, it would only take three or four generations before you had two entirely different languages, eh?

But here's my point, using a small tribe as an example:

Let's say there are 100 people in a tribe, speaking language X.
Let's say 400 years pass, and the tribe is still intact.
If language gets passed along from parent to child, the tribe would still speak language X exactly as it did 400 years ago, except for some new words they may have added as their technology advanced.

In other words, if you are a child and say the wrong words (or use bad grammar) your parents and friends will correct you - nobody just starts using different words because nobody would understand them.

It's like accents - how do they start and who starts them?
Who is the one person who starts talking differently? I don't know anyone who speaks too much different than their parents, for example.

For German, read about Grimm's Law. It describes the earliest division between German and other indo-european languages like English. There are even some scientists who believe that all languages on the planet have the same source (hard to believe and without a doubt influenced by the biblical story of the Tower of Babel).

One thing is for certain: cultures without much influence from the outside do indeed speak the same language for centuries or even longer. Look at Chinese, in contrast to English or German which have always been the languages of open societies.

It happens when you start moving out into the world and encounter different people. For example, I do speak almost exactly like my parents but my mother doesn't speak exactly like her parents did. My sister, as I've said before, does not sound like my parents, ie, she has no Southern accent.

Appalachia country was populated by a lot of Scottish and influenced much of the rest of the Southeast. We don't have the same accents because over time, we've encountered different people with different languages and accents, which effected/affected(whichever) how we speak.

Guy I know from Iceland told me that the language has changed so little over the centuries that an Icelander can pick up one of the eddas written over 1,000 years ago and read it today.

But have you tried speaking to a 13-year-old lately? Access to media changes language rapidly.

As for the isolated tribes you're describing, they did trade with other tribes, and even other nations. So the merchants, at least, would be able to speak at least a little of other tribes' languages in order to trade.