this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2025
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It would have been interesting if the Vikings had survived longer than they did.
North American history would have been a lot different if they had. I still think it would have been a bloody, genocidal history ... but a vastly different history.
The vikings knew about metallurgy and making iron. What would history have looked like if iron manufacturing and knowledge had developed in the New World for 500 years before the arrival of the Spanish? What kind of empires or kingdoms could have developed and influenced themselves over that time period?
Imagine Columbus conquering Central America, moving north and running into a mixed Indigenous/Viking kingdom that ruled the Atlantic coast of North America and had iron weapons, ship technology and were more than capable of conducting war. Imagine what would have happened if that same Indigenous/Viking kingdom got their hands on gunpowder, firearms and cannons.
On the other hand, a funny thought is what might travel the other way - American flatbows are some of the most powerful in the world, and have a long history, whereas at the point of Norse contact in Vinland, the English and Welsh had not developed their tradition of longbow archery (as late as the 13th century, crossbows were still the preferred weapon amongst the English, as they outperformed traditional European shortbows in most metrics).
Americas-influenced Viking archers ravaging Europe, anyone?
It would be hard to imagine an America with extended contact with Europe which didn't absorb the technologies offered by those connections. Trade/travel is one of the most reliable ways of transferring technology across cultures - being but one step removed from the northern polities of Europe would have almost certainly caused a technological explosion amongst Native American polities. And at such an early (relative) date, when logistical concerns were still a massive constraint on long-distance travel? It would be hard to imagine any later 15th-16th century European expedition being successful, even without indigineous gunpowder.
Funny enough, I was just reading a series of essays on the logistics of the Medieval Crusades. Sea travel was fucked at that early point contemporary with the Viking discovery of Vinland, we really take even good sailing ships for granted in our conceptions of the past.