Vikings in North America - Proof

I love this bit - it had never occurred to me before...
"The Viking voyage represents multiple milestones for humankind. The settlement offers the earliest-known evidence of a transatlantic crossing. It also marks the place where the globe was finally encircled by humans, who thousands of years earlier had trekked into North America over a land bridge that once connected Siberia to Alaska."
 
Brilliant, fascinated by stuff like this but thought it was all but commonly accepted now that columbus was very late to the party and im sure ive read theories of other visitors to north america but that may have been trans-pacific rather than trans-atlantic. the populating of the americas is a fascinating story
 
Colgates_shaving_foam said:
I wonder why the Vikings didn't go on to colonise North America?

Guess they must have run into some very fierce native resistance.
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May have been that they simply didnt arrive in sufficient numbers to sustain a presence, harsh winters, hostile natives, long supply lines, limited resources brought with them, hunger, disease, vastness of the continent - as Scandinavians they will have been accustomed to crossing relatively short distances overland before coming to another shore - not something the american continent accommodates. Its interesting to consider the parallels of the lewis and clarke expedition into the american heartland and up to the pacific northwest and the challenges even they faced hundreds of years later with a firm colonisation of much of that same continent. vikings were incredibly brave and intrepid people really
 
That's an amazing find

If you look at the globe it makes sense that they can hop from Norway > Iceland > Greenland > Newfoundland rather than the one massive trip that Columbus did
 
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red_harrington said:
That's an amazing find

If you look at the globe it makes sense that they can hop from Norway > Iceland > Greenland > Newfroundland rather than the one massive trip that Columbus did
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Could be wrong, but isn't that still a common route for transatlantic flights today?

When I flew to NYC a couple of years ago it was nearly all land (and stunning when over Canada)
 
changingman said:
Could be wrong, but isn't that still a common route for transatlantic flights today?

When I flew to NYC a couple of years ago it was nearly all land (and stunning when over Canada)
Click to expand...
Yep

I stand corrected about emergency reason


Most people assume this is to remain as close as possible to land in case of an emergency — i.e. keeping close to airports in case a diversion is needed. In fact has nothing to do with emergencies. It’s simply the shortest distance.

Between continents, airplanes follow what are called “great circle” routes, accounting for the earth’s curvature. These routes won’t make sense if you’re looking at a traditional flat map, because when the earth is crushed from its natural round state into a horizontal one, it becomes distorted as the divisions of latitude and longitude stretch apart. (Depending on the layout used — what cartographers call “projection” — the distortion can be grotesque. Kids grow up believing that Greenland is about ten times larger than it really is, thanks to the preposterous polar dimensions of the commonly used Mercator projection.) If you have a globe handy, however, the logic of great circles is very apparent. Measuring with a piece of string, it’s obvious that the shortest distance between New York and Hong Kong, for instance, is not westerly, as it would seem on a map, but pretty much straight north, up into the Arctic, and then straight south. Over the top, in other words.

That’s the extreme, but the principle applies to many long-range pairings, and this is why passengers between America and Europe discover themselves not just high up, but high up — over Newfoundland, Labrador and occasionally into the icy realm of Greenland. Across the Pacific, same idea: a flight from Los Angeles to Beijing will touch the Aleutian Islands and the easternmost portions of Russia.
Ask the pilot.com
 
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zorro_mfc said:
Yep

I stand corrected about emergency reason


Most people assume this is to remain as close as possible to land in case of an emergency — i.e. keeping close to airports in case a diversion is needed. In fact has nothing to do with emergencies. It’s simply the shortest distance.

Between continents, airplanes follow what are called “great circle” routes, accounting for the earth’s curvature. These routes won’t make sense if you’re looking at a traditional flat map, because when the earth is crushed from its natural round state into a horizontal one, it becomes distorted as the divisions of latitude and longitude stretch apart. (Depending on the layout used — what cartographers call “projection” — the distortion can be grotesque. Kids grow up believing that Greenland is about ten times larger than it really is, thanks to the preposterous polar dimensions of the commonly used Mercator projection.) If you have a globe handy, however, the logic of great circles is very apparent. Measuring with a piece of string, it’s obvious that the shortest distance between New York and Hong Kong, for instance, is not westerly, as it would seem on a map, but pretty much straight north, up into the Arctic, and then straight south. Over the top, in other words.

That’s the extreme, but the principle applies to many long-range pairings, and this is why passengers between America and Europe discover themselves not just high up, but high up — over Newfoundland, Labrador and occasionally into the icy realm of Greenland. Across the Pacific, same idea: a flight from Los Angeles to Beijing will touch the Aleutian Islands and the easternmost portions of Russia.
Ask the pilot.com
Click to expand...

Good post, do we still have a couple of flat earth-ers on here it might upset them if we do.
 
Colgates_shaving_foam said:
I wonder why the Vikings didn't go on to colonise North America?

Guess they must have run into some very fierce native resistance.
Click to expand...
I imagine few actually did it. Heading of west from Norway most have seemed crazy back then unitl they found Iceland. The leap from Iceland to Greenland even crazier, off the edge of the known world. I imagine those who did make it were actually lost travellers. Enough people to set up communities for a short time but not enough to start sending people back to start a colony. Shame for them really because North America is SO fertile compared to their traditional homelands. Farming would have seemed effortless
 
In fact I should have said Vikings got there over 470 years before John Cabot reached Newfoundland from Bristol in 1497.
To his dying day Columbus believed he had reached the Indies not a new landmass later called America(s).
 
Yep seems a bit misleading. That Vikings beat Columbus to it was already known. The "news" here is they've been able pin down a date that the settlement (which was already known about and was already known to pre-date Columbus) was in existence.
 
changingman said:
Could be wrong, but isn't that still a common route for transatlantic flights today?

When I flew to NYC a couple of years ago it was nearly all land (and stunning when over Canada)
Click to expand...
My first holiday as a kid to Florida had us flying from Manchester to Newfoundland to Orlando. I remember it like it was yesterday.
 
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