We Scandinavians
Your lot made it to my country, Canada, a few centuries before Christopher Columbus was even born. Of course, I'm talking about the Vikings.
The remains of one of their settlements was discovered in Newfoundland, and there may have been more. Our northern natives and Eskimo tribes have stories of giants arriving in great vessels. Some of those giants assimilated themselves into the native communities, so say the legends. Certainly sounds like they're talking about the Vikings.
Indeed. L'Anse aux Meadows in Vinland the Good is hallowed ground for Norwegians. BTW Leif Eiriksson's father Eirik the Red was from my home province. IF his son Leif was born here before he settled on Iceland, then Rogaland discovered America! (And when I look at pictures of the wild, barren Newfoundland coast it looks exactly like southwestern Norway. They must have felt at home - or cheated if they were looking for an El Dorado. :-)
And let's not forget that our gay buddy King Magnus Eiriksson sent out ships to check on the Norse settlements on Greenland and found them alive and Christian in the 1350s and 1360s (i.e. after the Black Death). A few decades later they either succumbed to malnourishment and / or assimilated with the Inuits, as you point out. BTW an interesting fact is that the Inuits were settling Greenland from the north at approximately the same time as the Norsemen from the south. So they only gradually met.
There is a stone obelisk in northern Quebec which is clearly the hammer of Thor, the Norse God that the Vikings would have worshipped. The hammer points inland, leading many to believe that was the direction the Vikings went.]There is a stone obelisk in northern Quebec which is clearly the hammer of Thor, the Norse God that the Vikings would have worshipped. The hammer points inland, leading many to believe that was the direction the Vikings went.
Interesting. I found a description of it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammer_of_Thor_%28monument%29 But to me it clearly must be an Inuit inuksuk, because there are no Scandinavian counterparts of such stone hammers. The Vikings wore the Hammer of Thor as an amulet or carved it into things, but never erected obelisks in the shape of it. And it could just as well be described as a cross.
Speaking of which, this is another Canadian archeological mystery I'd like to know more about:
The Micmac Stone Cross in Newfoundland and
Baie du Nord Mikmaq CrossMore than feeling chauvinistic pride of a so-called Norse discovery of America I'm fascinated by the cultural similarities and assimilations it reveals: That it's not always right to claim something as proof of "Norse Viking presence", because the native nations had quite a bit in common with the Vikings - as they all were northern cultures with their own independently evolved, but similar approcaches to survival their harsh northern world. And that a nation like the Mikmaq might have assimilated European influence (from European whalers, fishers and fur trappers) as early as the 16th century. And when this has been studied in our times, it's mistaken for original native heritage. We have many of the same issues with the contact between the Norse and Sami cultures in Norway. (And the mixture of Varangian, Slavic and Finno-Ugric elements in Russia.)
BTW a crazy Norwegian, Petter Amundsen, is currently digging at Oak Island in Nova Scotia hoping to find proof of who wrote Shakespeare's works!
