American History Hit - Did Vikings Reach the US?

Episode Date: February 17, 2025

What is a Viking? Did they really make it to the United States? And if so, how far did they get?Don speaks to Martyn Whittock about the norse landings in North America. From the Icelandic sagas to the archaeological evidence that supports them, listen as we separate the truth from the myths.Martyn is an author, educational consultant and former teacher. His book on this subject is American Vikings.Produced and edited by Sophie Gee. Senior Producer was Charlotte Long.Sign up to History Hit for hundreds of hours of original documentaries, with a new release every week and ad-free podcasts. Sign up at https://www.historyhit.com/subscribe.  You can take part in our listener survey here.All music from Epidemic Sounds.American History Hit is a History Hit podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Towering cliffs, spotted with green, are punctuated by waterfalls, inlets, the opening of what might be a small bay. In the waters around us, teeming schools of fish shimmer on the surface as birds dive into them. Nearby, two plumes of water aspirate, as great whales. exhale from below. A rainbow arcs through the mist. Scanning the shoreline for a suitable landing spot, we head for a break in the rocky outcroppings, where we see an inviting blue-black calm beyond the huge boulders. From all we've seen today, everywhere we've sailed, it seems certain this land is without inhabitants. Can you imagine? A world far from our own, a new land, a warmer land, rich with forests, open space.

faces and abundant wildlife. At home, we will boast of our success. This voyage to a new realm, a new world, which we call our own. Hello everybody. I'm Don Wildman and this is American History Hit. When we were young in grade school, those of us of a certain age learned that Christopher Columbus discovered America in 1492. Never mind the man never set foot on the mainland, but only on sandy islands in the Caribbean. Never mind that for more than 10,000 years, Mankind was already here, developing sophisticated societies across continents, north and south. Turns out the voyages of Christopher Columbus were mostly about Christianization and the coming colonial incursions of the Spanish Empire.

Historically, Columbus's so-called discovery is really a whitewash on the darker realities of conquest and domination. Nonetheless, it was the notion of discovery that stuck for us youngsters. And so it was, until we received the boggling news that it was actually the Viking. who were here first. They were the European explorers who first discovered America, having set foot in present-day Canada five centuries earlier than Columbus. This historical misattribution had taken hold because the record of Vikings in North America

was known to be more legend than fact, based on sagas and not scholarship. But in the 1960s, all that changed. Archaeological discoveries in Canada proved that European first arrival was a definitively Norse achievement. Everyone else came along much later. We discussed this today in the company of Martin Wittick, an historian and author from the UK whose newest book is American Vikings, How the Norse Sailed Into the Lands and Imaginations of America, which comes out on November 7. Hello, Martin, how are you? Hello, good to speak with you. Martin, my inner child is alive and well, so many questions. First, the identity of Vikings. I've never been clear. Who were they, and where

did they come from exactly? Well, although today Vikings has become the label of choice that describes any Scandinavians in the so-called Viking age from the late 8th century to about 1,100 or so, at the time, technically speaking, Viking was more what you did than what you were. If you went Viking, you went out on a spot of muscular free enterprise, although those people who were on the receiving end of the muscular free enterprise tended to describe it in rather more negative terms because there was this explosion of raiding, accompanied also with trading and exploring, that started towards the end of the 8th century, affected most of the communities of Western Europe, including the British Isles, included the Eastern Baltic, down into what we now call

Russia or Ukraine. We hear of Vikings. turning up in Baghdad on camels. They really did. They raided North Africa, raided Italy. So Vikings were these usually male. There is some debate about female involvement as well, but primarily male testosterone-fueled, smash and grab, take it and take it back to the homelands. But this was followed by a period of settlement and then that meant that Norse or Scandinavian peoples then settled along the coast of what we now call the English Channel and in the UK and also in Iceland and Greenland and so on. So technically we should call them the Norse and we should actually say Vikings for the Raiders and the young warriors and old warriors too for that matter.

But I tend to say Vikings because we all know what we mean by that but it just has to have that explanation with it. It has a health warning. Vikings were something quite specific but today we use it for the whole explosion of Scandinavians, settlers, merchants, traders, men, women, etc. But technically it had a precise meaning at the time. What had triggered that idea, I mean, that one aspect of being a Norse, the Viking activities? Was it the seafaring? Was it an expansion of seafaring abilities?

Or what really created this idea? There are a number of trigger factors that seem to have caused it to happen in the second half of the 8th century. One was population increase in Scandinavia, which caused tension within their societies and looking outward for the getting of wealth and so on. Secondly, it was the beginnings of very early state building in Scandinavia, very early state building. And that meant that those people that lost out in the competition needed to look elsewhere if they wanted to get the goodies of life. It also meant that those people who'd succeeded in Scandinavia who become the top dogs, if you like, in the emerging kingdoms of Denmark and so on, could then finance their outward activities from a much more

powerful and resourceful economic base. So they're in a strong position to actually exert their power. At the same time, state building in Western Europe, particularly amongst the Franks, was putting pressure upon, for example, southern Denmark. And so some of this is a pushback. But one of the really strange factors that led to it was disruption in the caliphate in the Islamic world and the shift of power from Damascus to Baghdad. And what that did was it disrupted the long-term trade connections between the caliphate, the Islamic caliphate and the northern world. Silver flowing north, slaves, fir, amber, etc. flowing to the south and the southeast. And when that was disrupted, people in the north, the elites had to look elsewhere for the silver, which fueled

their gift exchange, their form of society, and they turned increasingly to raiding and booty taking. Wow. We think of the world is so small now, but it was actually small then. I mean, international events were affecting things as far north as Scandinavia. That's incredible. Yeah, it is quite extraordinary. As I say, we actually hear of Vikings turning up in Baghdad on camels.

They said they were Christians, probably because they were hoping for a tax break, because as people of the word, people of the book, they had a better relationship with Islam, along with Judaism, had better relationship with Islam than people who were sheer pagans. Elsewhere, Islamic sources describe them as al-Majus, fire worshippers, pagans, and right may Allah curse them. But when they turned up in Baghdad, they said, oh, actually we're Christians, which they probably weren't. But you're absolutely right. It's an interconnected world that connects Western. Central Asia, the Middle East, right across Europe, with the British Isles, and on to Iceland, on to Greenland, and of course, from there, in due course, to North America. Amazing. Was it driven, I mean, we're so affected by the media and the movies we've seen. Was it more about trade than it was about conquest? I think it was a mix of both. I think basically, when people went on a Viking expedition, I think when the enemy was strong, they probably did a bit of trading, where they saw an opportunity, they did a bit of raiding. There's a famous case from Portland in Dorset in 789, which is earlier than the raid that trashed Lindisfarne in 793.

And a ship turns up at Portland Harbour in Dorset, and the Kings Reve, local representative, rides down from Dorchester to sort out their tax arrangements and to take them back to the Royalville to discuss their tax arrangements. and why they were coming to the kingdom. And they killed him. They killed him there. Now, clearly, he thought he was going to do a little bit of income revenue discussion with some foreign merchants. But in that situation, they clearly did not like his tone. He clearly didn't bring enough of his own guys with him. And it turned out very badly for him.

I have no doubt that further down the coast, they probably rocked up and said, anybody wanted buy a bit of amber? Anybody interested in some first from the north? I have no doubt they'd done some trading elsewhere. The same people did their killing at that point. So they were very opportunistic. And I think it's trading and raiding, depending upon the reception, and the perception of who they're raiding or trading against.

And at what point do the ambitions become about settlements and creating a civilization elsewhere? When does that turn? This tends to happen after about a generation of, of the raiding and attacking. There is also, I think, something of an ideological pushback as well. This was often frowned upon in the past, but historians are a bit more open to this now to see that Vikings were also pushing back against aggressive Christian expansion, particularly from the Frankish Empire, because at this time Scandinavia was pagan.

So I don't think they just set out to trash the Christian world, and they were helped by the fact that Christian monasteries were in isolated places, which if you're on a venture of smash and grab, is extremely useful. fortuitous for you. But I think there was to start with also some element of pushback against an aggressive Frankish empire that have been expanding towards them. But this happens for about a generation. And then from about the 850s onwards, we start to see Viking raiders becoming settlers and land takers. They were great at sniffing out weakness, sniffing out civil wars, sniffing out political division

and then moving in and exploiting it and doing the best they could within that situation and that's when we start to see Eastern England fall under their control that's when we see areas along what we're on this side of the channel called the English Channel

fall under their control we start to see land falling under their control as well in what we now call Scotland and the Northern Islands the Western Isles and in Ireland as well which was a patchwork of different Princeton's at the time So it really is from about the 850s onwards, after about a generation of raiding that the settlement situation happens because they see that they can really carve out a piece of the pie. And the same thing's happening in the Eastern Baltic as well.

By the middle of the 10th century, we have a Viking Slav community forming at Kiev or Kiev Rus from at 950s onwards. And they become part of the deep story of both Ukraine and Russia, which is at the heart of the conflict going on at the moment. It was only a few years ago that Putin put up, for example, a statue of Saint Volodymyr, or Vladimir the Great, who was the Viking Slav ruler, who became a Byzantine Christian, and was a key former of Kiev Rus. These Vikings contribute to deep stories wherever they go, contested deep stories. So before we talk about America and all that, I want to dispose of one image in my mind, these fabled ships. How much of this is art direction, you know, from our age, versus what they actually looked like and the ships that they were in.

I see a sort of Roman design to them, right? The number of things you have to put to one side. Okay, put to one side the horn helmets, put to one side the winged helmets. There's absolutely no archaeological evidence for this at all. We do have carvings from Scandinavia showing beings with winged or horned helmets, almost certainly deities. It's a misunderstanding. So we've put that to one side.

There would have been a range of crafts used, and obviously they would have also been using what we now call merchant ships, if you like, deeper drafted vessels, wider vessels, bigger vessels. But there's beyond doubt, it's true that Norse seafaring tradition had really come of age by 750, 800. And these are shallow, drafted, fairly large vessels, which can be road, which can be driven by sail, and which can go very far inland because of their shallow draft, even when the river is not very deep. So we see them besieging Paris, for example. We see them besieging British towns, which today you'd be puzzled, thinking that's so far inland, we see the same thing happening in Ireland. But I think that when we see

the big expansions into Iceland and Greenland, whilst it's probably reasonable to have some of these long ships in our minds, we should be thinking about sturdier, wider, deeper drafted vessels, which are more merchant vessels, because if you're taking things out onto the North Atlantic, you need a much tougher craft that's not going to be overwhelmed. So perhaps we need to put to one side a little bit of the dragon-headed long ships when we're thinking about Iceland and Greenland and perhaps think about perhaps more, you know, prosaic ships that can withstand an North Atlantic storm.

Sure. So this is my simplistic understanding, and I mean in grade school. Vikings come from Scandinavia. At some point early on, they sail to Ireland. From Ireland, they learn of Iceland. From Iceland, they learn of Greenland. And that's where they understand that they vastly. exists even farther west. How true was this simplistic idea? This is, by the way, the theory of

why Icelandic people are so bloody attractive because they kidnapped all the pretty people from Ireland and took them to Iceland, right? Well, that simple explanation that you just gave is a pretty good starting point, actually. It's a pretty good starting point. There is this westward drive because of misfortunes at the hands of their enemies in Francia and England. They need to look elsewhere. They can't always get their own way in Ireland. There's unification happening increasingly in the 10th century in Norway. So there's a westward push, which in many ways has a lot in common with the westward movement of European settlers in the USA in the 19th century. In a sense, this is like Viking Manifest Destiny, if you like. Go west young man, go west young woman.

The same kind of drivers are there. There are poor factors, but also push factors. So you're you're right. They then move from Ireland to Iceland. So by the 870s, they're settling in Iceland. And we know a significant amount of female DNA, so matrilineal DNA in Iceland today, is Irish. So many Irish women as slaves, wives, concubines, it might not have been a choice situation. We just don't know accompany the movement to Iceland. And they're still there in the DNA today. From there, explorers find Greenland. There's various debates in the sagas.

Is it found by accident? Are they working on earlier Irish information? There are legends for the Middle Ages of St Brendan, the Navigator, sailing into the North Atlantic. If that really happened, there may want to be in a backstory whereby people knew that way beyond, you know, Skellig Michael, way beyond the Western Isles of Scotland, there was something further west.

But there are also tales that talk about people blown off course, sailing to various places and chancing upon unknown lands. But the long story short is from Ireland and the British Isles to Iceland and then in the 10th century to Greenland and then towards the end of the 10th century a movement to a land much further to the west, possibly discovered by accident. They talk of it as Markland, as Helluland

and most famously as Vinland, the land where wild grapes and wild wheat grows. and where there's a real possibility of a lifestyle that's a lot better than the lifestyle on Greenland. And that brings us to North America. This is all recorded in saga form. What does that mean exactly? And are we talking about just a few stories or lots and lots of them? We're primarily talking about two sagas, which is the saga of the Greenlanders and Eric the Red Saga.

And these sagas were written in Iceland, we think in the 13th century. Their manuscripts date from, in one case, the end of the 13th century, and in another case about the middle of the 14th century. But they're probably pulling on much earlier evidence. And so in the 13th century, Icelanders are recording a whole bunch of things about their mythical ancestors, their legendary ancestors, their history. This is a big thing in Iceland. And these two sagas get written.

and they talk about adventurers. And so this is where we have people come onto the scene like Leif Erickson, Fradis, his murderous daughter, Thurstein Erickson, Goodrid Thorburn's daughter, amazing characters, and their doings. Now, some sagas are very mythological. Some sagas seem very historical. Most sagas are a mix of the two. They're deep stories rooted in some kind of remembered past,

but enhanced because these are works of literature. But when you read these two sagas, Saga of Greenlanders and Eric the Red Saga, they read remarkably realistically because whilst there are some aspects on them, so a Viking that's killed by a uniped creature who kills him with an arrow somewhere in North America, is possibly, we think, probably likely,

drawing on a mythological trope of strange beings in strange lands, most of it seems pretty identifiable. That really sounds like Labrador. That really sounds like Baffin Island. That really could be Newfoundland. That could be New England. And it could be the St. Lawrence Seaway. So we have a genre of writing, which is a mixture of literary artifices, but also drawing on traditions.

But in these two cases, we have every reason for thinking, even if we didn't have the archaeological evidence, there's more to this story than meets the eye. This is not just made up. Did they write sagas about all their world travel? I mean, were there monks? I mean, who was writing these things? Well, interesting enough, almost everything we know about the Viking Age is written by Christians, mostly from Iceland, Norse, who become Christians. Iceland converted to Christianity in about the year 1000, and by the 13th century, people probably feel more comfortable talking about the pagan past

because it no longer has resonance, Ireland's being Christian for at least a century and a half, maybe a bit longer. And so if you like, the detonator has been removed from these pagan writings. And so we then have Christians saying, Well, that's the reason why we say this. And that's why we've got that saying. And we call that island this and that day of the week that. And you know that phrase in poetry that we use when its roots are here.

And so they create a compendium, if you like, of where we've come from and what we're about. It's Icelandic antiquarianism of the distant past, the semi-pagan past at times, when it no longer seems to be dangerous. And so we don't have sagas that cover the whole of the Viking world, but we do have a considerable range of sagas which often talk about people who have done things in other parts of the Viking world. So Norwegians who campaigned in Circlan, in Saracenland, people who campaign in England as it becomes. But the key thing is, it's all written about two, three hundred years after the actual events, but there's undoubtedly real evidence in there alongside literary devices and so on as well. The two stars of this story we're concerned with are Eric the Red and his son, which was news to me, for some reason that had gotten cloudy for me, is Leaf Eric's son, which totally makes sense.

So tell me about their journeys. It's kind of a part one and two, first part being Greenland and second part being North America, right? Yeah, exactly. Basically, Eric the Red leads a colonization, small-scale colonization, never big, of Greenland. He's got into trouble back to the home in Iceland. This is a very violent society, very much of a feuding society. People are frequently being exiled for some extraordinary violent crime. And he gets into trouble and he basically packs up and he goes west. Like I said, this has real kind of American residents. He's heading for the open frontier. He's heading for the wild west, if you like, to the territories where he can still carve out a land for himself, away from the sheriff back home and so on, because the law hasn't got there yet. And he basically is behind the settlement of Greenland.

Great PR stunt, Greenland. This is this great place of prosperity. Well, Greenland was a hard land. Even though the temperature was better then, even though you could grow some crops in Greenland, it was still a pretty tough place to live. It really wasn't, you know, El Dorado. But settlement happens in Greenland.

And he and those around him start to sail from Greenland, Iceland, and to Norway and so on. And that's where we have the first accidental moment. movements to North America. There's various debates in the saga as to who's actually responsible for it. But the person that actually grabs this opportunity and says, I'm going to go there and I'm going to actually realize what's going on here. I'm going to explore it is Leif Erikson. So in Eric the Red saga, the main person who leads the movement, what you might call the pioneering settlement perhaps, to North America is Leif Erikson. He's the man who takes over from his father's

adventuring. He pulls on traditions from other people who say they've cited lands to the west, but they didn't necessarily land there. And he goes there. And that's when we start to see the exploration of lands that we're pretty sure a Labrador, Baffin Island, Newfoundland, and then the elusive Vinland, which is this place where the winters are better than in Greenland, where there's lots of things that attract you to it. But there is conflict with native peoples there who they call scrawlings. And that's this great tension story. What happens around the year 1,000 then decides whether the Vinland settlers are going to add Vinland to the North Atlantic Viking story or whether it's going to retreat into

myth for another five, six, seven hundred years. Right. We're well into the era that you spoke of before in terms of settlement. They have a different mentality now. Let's try this out. This might be a new homeland for us, right? Yes, absolutely so. And there are attractions. Iceland's pretty attractive. It's got a lot going for it. Greenland has. not got a huge amount going for it other than the fact that it's out of the control of the Norwegian king and you can do your own thing. But Vinland offers real attraction. The sagas tell us there's timber on Vinland. They're just not going to be able to keep a seafaring community going from what's available on Greenland. Not enough driftwood turns up there. Norway's too far away. The

British Is are too far away. There is timber. There's lumber that you can get. And the sagas talk about ships taking timber back to Greenland from Vinland. There are other things. There are furs. There are pelts. There are the products of what we'd now call the Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic. So there's a lot going for this place to trade, to take things back from, and eventually perhaps to settle. But the problem is it's at the end of a very, very extended line. It's drawing on a community at Greenland that can't really afford to send many people west. It is always going to be on the cusp of failure. The survival of the Vindon settlement is always going to be on a knife edge. Or perhaps as Vikings, we should say, on an axe edge. Yes. Where they choose to settle, where Leaf stakes his ground out, is it Labrador or is it Newfoundland? Good question.

Big debates ever since then. So right up until the 18th century, 19th century, people tend to think this is probably just legendary stuff. Then it gets picked up. We might touch upon that little bit later. But people lack archaeological evidence for this. But the 20th century has given us our answers. We now know that there was Norse settlement at Lonsormeadow on the northern tip of Newfoundland. And from there, it seems to be a base for moving into the mainland and down the eastern seaboard.

And it was dated in 2021 by dendro chronological evidence to exactly 1021. So 1,000 years after the trees were cut down, archaeologists and scientists were able to date those trees as being cut down by European axes in 1021. So we know there were Norse settlers on Newfoundland in 1021. We also find there pieces of wood that don't grow on Newfoundland that must have come from the North American continent, from the landmass. We found butternuts, white walnuts, which don't grow further north than New Brunswick or Maine, which means they must have travelled into what we'd now call

southeastern Canada or perhaps northern New England. Quite extraordinary. We've also found things traded with proto-inuit and early Native American people from the Canadian Arctic and sub-Arctic. So there's a lot of archaeological evidence coming in now from the Canadian Arctic, from the Canadian sub-Arctic, from this site on Newfoundland

with tantalising signposts that point to further expedite. into the North American continent and down the eastern seaboard. But how far? And that's the question. That's so interesting. I mean, that clears up something for me at my age, why it was that I was in grade school in the late 1960s. And suddenly they were saying, well, we think that may be this.

Because those discoveries had only just been made and confirmed and written about throughout the 1960s to 1968, pretty much, right? And this is the place you referred to, Lonsol Meadows, which is Newfoundland. describe the settlement there what they found archaeologically. Right. Basically, since before the First World War, people had been interested in this site because in the 19th century, the sagas get translated into English, and they become very popular in North America, both in the USA and Canada,

as people begin to think, oh, wonder if this really did happen, and people begin to look for evidence for it. And basically, there are humps and bumps by the coast at Lonsor Meadows, which look very much like the footings of longhouses and other buildings. You know, low mounds, the footings of... buildings. When they're excavated, they find four building complexes, large halls of a type that might have been lived in by elites in Greenland, Iceland and Norway, smaller halls that seem to be used for industrial purposes or slightly lower class members, warrior followers, even slaves. And they find

ironworking is going on there as well by the brook that runs down to the coast. And basically, they find a very small number of artefacts. But all the artefacts they find there of this particular period point back to European Norse settlers. So small amounts of personal items, working of iron, buildings in the style of Scandinavia, and trees cut down using European metal axes. But the key thing is the archaeology is thin. In other words, it was never a proper pioneering settlement. And it was either used for a short period of time or it was used several times over a longer period of time. And some of the Bayesian statistical analysis of carbon dating suggests that actually, despite the thin amount of archaeological data, it looks like it dates from a wide period of time of maybe a

century. So at the moment, there's a very real possibility that it was set up in the 1020s, finally abandoned perhaps as late as the 1120s and may have been a putting in point for repair, for recuperation, for rest before pushing on into the continent. It was not Vinland because grapes don't grow there, wild wheat doesn't grow there. It would have been more wooded at the time, but it clearly was a base camp for further westward movement. And that becomes even more intriguing because then we say

where might the further westward movement have taken them? Exactly. This would also be defended by the fact that there's no burial sites, right? I mean, that's what always archaeologists are looking for as far as further settlements and generations and so forth. No one's buried in these places. No, that's right. Assuming gendered identification of artifacts, and that's a debate in itself, but assuming traditional gendering of certain artifacts, it would seem to show mostly male, small input from women, no discernible,

children, nobody buried there. So it looks like the kind of place that people might have put in at, got themselves together, and then pushed on further. And as you say, no burials at all. But of course, this then raises the question about a whole bunch of other places within the North American continent and down the eastern seaboard, where since then people have claimed to have found Viking evidence, and that is a fascinating story in its own right. And that happens from the middle of the 19th century onwards. And that's perhaps one of the most controversial areas of my study and this whole study. Well, a modern American has to face the fact that the Minnesota Vikings are not named correctly, that there were no Vikings in Minnesota, although claims have been

made, speaking of which, the Kensington runestone, all this mythological evidence. Yeah, indeed, indeed. Okay. Benjamin Franklin in the 18th century writes to a friend and says, I think that the Norse may have found America. So Benjamin Franklin has a walk-on part in this story. As the newly minted America develops in the 19th century, it's very interested in origin myths. There's a bit of a pushback for ethnic reasons against Columbus because he's southern European and he's Catholic. And in the tense situation, particularly in the second half of the 19th century, with increased immigration from southern Italy, there's something of a pushback from white European Protestants. And suddenly Vikings become very attractive, and there is some hystericity behind it, of course.

And they predate Columbus, whereas the Mayflower settlers don't. And what's interesting is, it's about this time the sagas get translated into English, and people start looking for evidence. Also, in the 1860s, after the Dakota War, fought between European settlers and Native Americans, in the Midwest, we see an influx of Scandinavian settlers into the Midwest, particularly into areas like Minnesota, for example, Wisconsin and other areas. Other states will become states of the USA. So it's not surprising that in 1898, a man called Ormond, who's doing a bit of clearance on his land,

finds a runestone. And the runstone says, Vikings were here at the end of the 14th century. And it now has its own museum. And suddenly other runestones start to appear as well. People begin to identify runestones in a number of places. In the 20th century, they start to be found in West Virginia, that famous Viking hotspot. In Oklahoma, also that famous Viking hotspot. Of course, neither of these are famous Viking hotspots.

More controversially, we find some things in Maine, Spirit Pond Roonstones, that could possibly just possibly be something. The Narragansett Roonstone could possibly be something. But more likely, these are products of an attempt to find evidence of the Norse. And the fact it starts in the Midwest as Scandinavian settlers find evidence that they have title

to the land as they would claim it, that centuries old probably explains itself rather than actually points to where Vikings actually reached. And I know this is not going to go down too well when it comes to people in Minnesota. But I mean it's very respectfully, I think it is a

not necessarily correct thing. Yeah, it's a hoax. Yes, indeed. Okay, let's say it. Although I must say very smart people, in fact, a dear friend of mine has books on her shelf that she pulled out to show me years ago with exciting evidence of the fact that this had happened. It's an interesting psychology behind this, because this is a very nice person I'm talking about. There was no deep white supremacist agenda involved here. It's just a curiosity and an interesting one to find out the origin of where we all come from, you know, in this big mixed bag that is America. And this is a fascinating idea, you know, this furtherance of Viking exploration.

It's kind of sexy. And there are lots of ways they could have done it, given how ambitious they were and how resourceful they were. And there was plenty of waterways for them to take down that way. So there's lots of reasons to wonder. It's just that the evidence isn't really there. Yeah, that's true. I think actually if push comes a shelf, we have to say that virtually every single order of the runestones is almost certainly a hoax. The ones in Maine, just a possibility, but probably not.

I think in Nova Scotia, possibly, but probably not. The ones from the USA, I think they have to say, are all hoaxes. West Virginia, Oklahoma, the most famous one in Kensington. These are almost certainly done by people who wanted to forge a connection with the past and wanted to find evidence for them. And particularly, I think, in Minnesota, there was this desire of Scandinavian immigrants to feel connection with the land that predated their own taking of the land in the 1870s. This even figures in the story of the Chicago exhibition, doesn't it?

this seminal event in American history, when Chicago sort of demonstrates for the world and creates this enormous World's Fair, basically, that tells the story of America to this whole generation in a bigger way than it ever been done, the Disneyland of its time. And in that exhibition, there is stories of the runestones and so forth. And so that takes hold. Yeah, it's interesting, actually, the Colombian exposition, as it was called at the time, in 1893. So one year late, actually, because it should have been in 1890. shouldn't it because 1492, but anyway.

Obviously, they'd been busy and didn't quite get it all together for the right year. But basically, that event was actually called the Colombian one because it is referring back to Columbus. And Scandinavian settlers, encouraged by people in the Scandinavian homelands, put together a replica of the Gockstad ship that had been unearthed about 20 years earlier in Norway. And they sail it. They sail it. And it ends up being moored just off Chicago.

So basically, while people are beginning to say, oh, well, you know, it's Columbus and so on. there are other people pushing back saying, Vikings, Vikings, don't forget the Vikings. The Roonstone then gets found just a few years later in 1898, no doubt stimulated by this, but the Gokstad's ship is sitting there in 1893 saying Columbus wasn't the first and Columbus didn't even get here. But we did and it's quite an interesting pushback and that gets picked up within American culture into the 20th century and accelerates from there. Tell me about your new book and what kind of evidence you're citing and what new theories are being floated these days.

Right. Well, I wrote the book because I was interested in, first of all, the whole Viking story, and I find it extraordinarily interesting and dramatic. I was very interested in the evidence for and against Vikings going to North America. But I'm also interested in what you might call deep stories, the way in which we use the past in order to explain ourselves and identify who we are and what we're about. So that's why I wrote the book. And basically what the book does is it runs through the examination as if you were starting from scratch and saying, where is the evidence for this? So I look at who the Vikings are. I look at the mythology and ideas of the Vikings. So we've got some idea about the mental world as well as the actual world of the Vikings. I look at the stretched geography of the Viking to explain how they eventually seem to have got to North America.

I then explore the saga evidence and subject that to scrutiny and the evidence suggests that it might well be wrong. real. Then we then look at the evidence that came after that. So, for example, in the 13th and 14th century, there are other people writing about voyages to Vinland that aren't as famous as the sagas, which indicate the idea of Vinland was kept alive. I then look at how it's picked up in the newly minted USA, how that then gets accelerated in the 19th century by Scandinavian settlement, how it then gets picked up and taken even further in the 1920s and 30s as Vikings become useful tools for people who want to make ethnic statements about the fact that white muscular warriors have a long-term connection with this land. That's a dark side to the story. Some aspects of that feeds into Nordicism, which is a very right-wing view of the world in the 1930s.

It then gets accelerated again in the 1950s in a much more benign way in terms of comic book culture. and I look at how the Norse feed into the particular American comic book culture and how there's an American reason for that as well as global interest, expands into films, it expands into TV, and the key thing is that this is part of a global interest in Vikings, but it has a particular American flavour. Consequently, many Vikings speak, as it were, with an American accent, and there's a reason for that, because of Hollywood and so on and so forth.

And then it then gets picked up again in the 21st century, and this is where the darker side of it gets picked up again in the online world of QAnon and the dark web and so on and so forth, as white supremacists are now saying Vinland is the muscular white land that we are here to defend. So we find a guy at the capital with his body covered in Viking tattoos. We see Unite the Right Charlottesville 2017 and they're carrying Viking shields along with Crusader shields. What's all that about? We see a murder on a train in Portland and the person says basically, I'm doing this for Vinland. We see a man in New Zealand before a terrible series of mosque killings in the recent past saying hail Vinland. Vinland, what's that all

about? And that shows how people are in some areas of the very turbulent contested world that we now live in are once again taking the Vikings, the Vinland Vikings, and they are taking them in a very different direction to the benign and fairly innocent world of cartoon. culture and so on and so forth. It's a very complicated kaleidoscopic use of Vikings and it has some dark areas as well as some benign areas alongside the Viking patisseries and the Viking bakery shops and all that sort of stuff in the Midwest. Very complicated story. Desperately in need of clarification which is the true value of history and your book will do a

great deal for that. I want to alert people to the title American Vikings how the Norse sailed into the lands and imaginations of America. Wow, what a timely book. Thank you, Martin, for joining us. It's been great to talk to you. Thank you for having me on the show. Great to speak to you, too. Thank you for joining us on another episode of American History Hit. Please hit like and follow wherever you get your podcasts. Leave a nice review there. And if you'd like to make suggestions on any future subject matter, send us an email at ah-h at HistoryHit.com.

Thanks a lot. And we'll see you on the next new episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday. Bye for now.