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Vikings in America: This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things - Ep 145
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In this episode of A Life in Ruins Podcast, the lads sail themselves into the tempest that is the hoaxes, pseudoscience, and popular culture of Vikings in North America. We start off by going into the history and timing of the Viking Age and their settlements in Iceland, Greenland, and their short stay in Newfoundland. Then we get into hoaxes like the Vinland Map, the Kensington Rune Stone, and the recent nonsense of Vikings making their way up the Mississippi River and then to Oklahoma.
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Transcripts
For rough transcripts of this episode go to https://www.archpodnet.com/ruins/145
Links
- Evidence for European presence in the Americas in AD 1021 by ,Margot Kuitems, Birgitta L. Wallace, Charles Lindsay, Andrea Scifo, Petra Doeve, Kevin Jenkins, Susanne Lindauer, Pınar Erdil, Paul M. Ledger, Véronique Forbes, Caroline Vermeeren, Ronny Friedrich & Michael W. Dee
- THE VIKINGS AND THEIR IMPORTANCE FOR THE NORTH ATLANTIC (ICELAND, GREENLAND, NORTH AMERICA) FROM THE BEGINNING OF THE EXPANSION IN THE 9TH CENTURY UNTIL THE EXTINCTION AROUND 1400 by Christensen C.S.
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Transcript
Introduction to Vikings and Podcast Name Change
00:00:00
Speaker
You're listening to the Archaeology Podcast Network. Welcome to episode 145 of Life and Ruins Podcast, reinvestigate the careers and research of those living life in ruins. I am your host, Carlton Gover, and I am joined by my co-host, Connor Johnnan and David Howe. For this episode, we're not joined by anybody, just the three of us. We have a good outline. I think it's going to be a fun time. What are we talking about tonight, tonight, fellas? Connor, what are we doing? Vikings, me lord.
00:00:29
Speaker
Vikings, my lord. Vikings, my lord. May I ask why we changed it from those living life in ruins, and now we change it to a life in ruins and research?
Viking Myths and Media Influence
00:00:40
Speaker
Keywords to try to get our goddamn podcast on top 10 lists in archaeology and science, because for some reason we were not hitting the keywords that were needed to get popped up, because pseudo archaeology by Kinquilla is beating us on the charts for whatever reason.
00:00:56
Speaker
Low hanging fruit, bro. Low hanging fruit. And we've also, we don't just do the careers anymore. We do start going into research. So I figured we'd hit that. People like the careers. Huh? Careers are dumb. People are like, I just want to hear about sites. And I'm like, look, look at yourself. You got the internet. Come on.
00:01:15
Speaker
Yes, it is. Read Hancock and just get it over with. Read Hancock, get it over with. We're eliminating all our audience here. So thank you for those who like the career ones. Yeah, we'll still do them. But yeah, we do want to talk about research. But yeah, the impetus for this whole thing was I've been cleaning out my Facebook feed, doing some curation of what I'm shown on Facebook. And I'm part of all those archaeology groups.
00:01:45
Speaker
And I've been leaving them because they just got so much pseudo arc. And I saw one post recently that was about Vikings in Oklahoma. And I was like, you know what, we just did, we've done a couple of episodes recently on settling of the Americas and we haven't really talked Vikings. It was mentioned in Settlers of Cerruti in which we use it as like an outlier in the European settlement of the Americas. I was like, you know what, we haven't talked Vikings. The season two of one of those Viking shows just wrapped up recently.
00:02:15
Speaker
It's like the sequel to Vikings about Ragnar Lofbruck. Yeah. Season two of Valhalla just wrapped up in a really good show. I was like, let's talk
Viking Heritage and Exploration
00:02:24
Speaker
about Vikings. We have something that we can all contribute to. I do love that we also start with Vikings and then we're going to bring it back to the Americas because we're selfish little bitches. We need to clean the slate real quick.
00:02:41
Speaker
And also, our audience is probably going to be interested in this. So this is what we're going to do. So we're going to outline what we're going to talk about. What we're going to do is I'm going to pull up my 23andMe and actually show the world how much Viking I actually have, because everyone's like, I have Viking DNA. First off, do you have Cooper DNA? Do you have Shoemaker DNA? Oh, do you have
00:03:06
Speaker
Wagon Rider DNA? No, you don't. You have Scandinavian DNA, you plebe. You plebe. Did not expect it to go this way. How much parvo DNA do people have? You don't have parvo. You had it, apparently. Par for the coast.
00:03:30
Speaker
shut up okay what are you so so real quite right as this tradition I forgot my freakin password
00:03:43
Speaker
a summary of the Vikings. There's a romanticization of Vikings in popular culture. Everyone thinks they're warriors, but Vikings are really seafarers and traitors. Baseline, that's what they do. You'll find them originally starting out in Scandinavia. This is really including Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland. We're talking about the late 8th century to late 11th century
00:04:06
Speaker
common era or AD, so 700s to 10 hundreds. Did I do that right? Yeah, so it just so happens to be around the middle of the warming period, which causes a lot of, let's say, anxiety to be safe around the world. It causes mongols, it causes the Iroquois to start bashing each other's brains in, it causes the Crusades, causes a lot of problems.
00:04:35
Speaker
Yes, 100%. Well, it crusades come later. Yes, but here's the deal. The medieval war period that caused all of the crops and shit to fail all over the world made Europe be like, well, we don't have nothing.
Vikings in Europe: Geopolitical Impact
00:04:51
Speaker
And all the Muslims in the Middle East had everything. And they were like, oh, you know what? Day is full, my lord. And they went and just killed all of them.
00:04:59
Speaker
Okay. So the medieval war period for everyone, it's from 800 to 1200. So the Viking period happens, like just as the start of it, but ends half midway. It's almost like the people that were farming in Scandinavia had nothing, you know, they were famining in crop failings. So they had to go steal shit from other people. Yeah. And so in the context, like England's kind of like fallen apart. Europe in general is kind of falling apart during this period and not
00:05:28
Speaker
not doing super good. Right. So the Roman Empire in the West out of Rome has fallen by the fifth century, sixth century AD, and then it moves to Byzantium, Constantinople in the Byzantine Empire, Eastern Roman Empire. So like some of those old Roman holdouts in England, France, they're going by the wayside. England is a mix of different kingdoms. Like it's not, it's like reconfiguring itself as Vikings
00:05:55
Speaker
or these Norse folks begin to start doing their raids, and it's not doing it out of bloodlust, which is how it's often romanticized. These people want farmland. That's the impetus. Scandinavia, not a great place to be a farmer. Having farmland is a status symbol, and so that's what they're coveting. England is rich in farmland, and they start raiding. England doesn't unify, and they start using Vikings to their advantage. It's not like
00:06:24
Speaker
there's different Norse factions. So there's factions within the Vikings, there's factions within England and France, and they're all vying for power in one way or another. So it's not a homogenous Vikings versus English. There's a lot more geopolitics that are at play here, in which they're using each other really to set up Vikings for farmland. And that's, yeah,
00:06:45
Speaker
Northumbria, Mercia, East Anglia, Essex, Wessex, Sussex, Kent, Wales, and Strathide, is that the word? There were the kingdoms that existed after the fall of Rome in Britain of like, it was basically warring states and they would fight each other. But while that was happening, the Normans who were endorsed themselves from France were invading with William the Conqueror, but at the same time, the Vikings and Scandinavian people were migrating from
00:07:13
Speaker
Let's quote, migrating from Scandinavia to the northern parts of England. The first Viking raids are 793 and the Normans come over at the end of the Viking age in 1066 and wrap it all up. It's Vikings from Scandinavia.
00:07:28
Speaker
They're also in France, which is a whole different thing. And then to kind of settle this up, yeah, William the Conqueror comes in, he's Norman Viking, and he settles everything in England. And that's the end of the Viking Age in 1066. And that's when we start getting to the mid and late medieval period. And then that sets the stage for a unified England. And all the- Oh, Stefan's gonna get mad at us because we always fuck up England, United Kingdom.
00:07:53
Speaker
So I think it's just England at this point. England, Ireland and Scotland, like the whole British Isles is British is what he said. But English is different than British. Like English is people who live in England. He said Irish people might debate that they're not part of Britain.
00:08:11
Speaker
the British Isles, but it's technically an island off of Britain, you know, like that. Yeah. I think there's a United Kingdom. Yeah. It's not doesn't include Northern Ireland. Is that correct? Is there Ireland proper? Ireland proper.
Viking Lifestyle: Diet, Ships, and Trade
00:08:23
Speaker
OK, yeah. So North Island is definitely part of Britain.
00:08:26
Speaker
of the United Kingdom. Britain is different. Yeah. So the Vikings aren't this militaristic, holy shit, badasses that show up. It's just a very interesting geopolitical world in Northern and Western Europe. Exactly. And they come in with some tactics like the shield wall.
00:08:47
Speaker
that really is able to capitalize on military tactics post-Roman Empire in England. But anytime horses and cavalry really get involved in these battles, it goes south for the Vikings pretty quick. But they are also larger people generally. We have that from the archaeological record, as well as historic documents. We're talking about a group of people that are
00:09:09
Speaker
heavily invested in eating protein, cheese, milk, cattle, and they're like six foot tall people that show up to these like medieval, early medieval peasants in England who are like five, five, maybe. There is some bioanthropology at play here in terms of diet that is affecting the ability of the warrior class. Are we saying that human variation exists between different groups of people? No.
00:09:41
Speaker
I was going to make a cranial morphology joke. So if you measure the ads, right? So it's like the, that was a horrible stutter and I apologize for those listening.
00:09:59
Speaker
It's a theme of this podcast. It's way more complicated than it seems. And also at the same time, these people, they're farmers and they're traders. They're trying to access more farmland. We also have Viking, the Rurik dynasty took control over territories in the East, specifically with the Slavs and the Finns in Eastern Europe. They annexed Kiev in 882. And that's where the Kiev and Rusk come up. So they are like Vikings.
00:10:27
Speaker
but they're called the Kiev and Rus, and they start trading really with the Byzantine Empire. They're the first people to really connect directly Northern Europe and Scandinavia with the rest of the Mediterranean world to really create the European sphere of
00:10:45
Speaker
of control that we know of today. Like this is where it kind of starts. This is where Scandinavia has entered the chat in terms of being in the political world of the greater European continent. The first surviving account of a Viking funeral comes from an Arab trader actually who was in Kiev or like in the Slavic lands up there and was trading for furs and he was trading like silver and gold and stuff with the roost that were up there.
00:11:11
Speaker
And like they were like, hey, like their chief had just died and he's writing about it. And he's like, these people are like filthy. They spit into the same like barrel of water that they wash. Like they all pass it down and wash. And he's like, they have, they said they were promiscuous and had no dignity or like whatsoever, according to an Arab wealthy man at the time. So like they were probably just people living in the woods. But like.
00:11:33
Speaker
they they sacrificed one of the slaves to be with the king and stuff like that and like burned the longship and stuff and like that's all from an Arabic account which to your point Carlton it's like they've entered the chat like you don't think about Vikings and Arabs ever interacting
00:11:49
Speaker
Yeah, and you have evidence down even in like to Baghdad of Vikings making it down there at least in terms of trade goods and things like that. I think something we're kind of skipping over a little bit is just the use of waterways and boats is like the most important thing. They're not, like Carlton had mentioned, they're not
00:12:09
Speaker
cavalry, they're not invading large chunks of land. What they're doing is using the waterways and ports to create these trading networks, maybe annexing small areas of Scandinavia, Europe, Britain, et cetera. But they're not really traveling inland because their strength and their economy is really built on boats trading and stuff like that.
00:12:37
Speaker
Unless it's, yeah, they can get in because the Viking vessels, the longship is amazing work of engineering because it has a shallow draft in the water. So it only sinks like a couple of feet. It has a very broad hull.
00:12:53
Speaker
at the bottom, and it's an ocean-going vessel, and it can go riverways. Unlike other boats at the time, you either had your freshwater vessels or your ocean-going vessels. You didn't have one at all, and that's what the Viking Longship was. They were able to sail out of the fjords in Scandinavia, up the river Thames, down whatever river, the Seine, whatever's in France.
00:13:13
Speaker
Yeah. So they can penetrate deep without changing. And these are small, sleek, very pretty looking vessels that can get into deep arteries pretty quick without you noticing them.
00:13:25
Speaker
They can make it to like the Caspian and Black Sea down the Danube. Like that's, that's super impressive and not something you normally see. They're light enough to like, they can ocean fare, but they can also be carried on like logs and stuff like pretty easily, which I think was the, but yes, going up channels and stuff was like what made them super effective and efficient.
00:13:46
Speaker
Yeah, going up rivers. And they're single mass ships. They're pretty easy to, relative to some of those other ocean going vessels, you can make a lot of these. And that's what these Viking traders did. And they come in different forms. And they're just really cool feats of engineering that were really, that was the technology that really allowed the Vikings to capitalize on being connected into this globalized trade system.
00:14:10
Speaker
Yeah. I mean, everyone's seen them and they're also, um, they're symmetrical both in the, uh, in the aft, in the, what's the front of the ship? That's not the keel. That's the bottom, the prowl. So they can like turn around super quick. You can just stop what you're doing, like turn 180 degrees and row the other way. And it's still as effective as, you know, they're really cool ships that allowed them, as we've said, and what we'll allude to later to get to Denmark.
00:14:40
Speaker
they're able to follow to get to Iceland, Greenland, and then very briefly, Newfoundland and Eastern Canada. Could you say that the Vikings used their boats similar to how Genghis Khan used horses? I think so. They just used it in a way that was never seen before.
00:15:02
Speaker
Yeah. Like a technology that was spread very fat, like effective in areas that it wasn't like endemic to. Yeah. Yeah. And kind of like that.
00:15:14
Speaker
And so we're boats, boats were everywhere, horses were everywhere, but this is like a new use of it that is so unique that allows them to kind of thrive and expand over large periods or larger. It's like the aircraft carrier. You know, it's kind of that same thing. Like it was a radical transition in naval warfare. Like put a bunch of fucking planes on a ship and now you don't have these major ship to ship battles with battleships anymore. Now it's like fleet. Now you're just throwing aircraft at each other.
00:15:40
Speaker
like a bunch of darts to a dartboard and sinking them from a distance, and that's how battleships ended. So very similar, the introduction of the Viking ship was a radical change in seafaring that allowed Vikings
Viking Settlements in the New World
00:15:51
Speaker
with one ship to trade in fresh and saltwater across the Mediterranean and North Atlantic. Absolutely fascinating. On that note, we'll be right back. We're going to dive into Viking settlements, Iceland, Greenland, and then Canada.
00:16:15
Speaker
And then listen to David. What can you do? When David gives the terms to the people on Sea of Thieves, it's just like... I got it. Pretend I'm on a longboat. We're playing Sea of Thieves, and what you can do is interact. Take people or you can interact with them. And I get on the fucking prow of the ship and I go, all right, here's how this is gonna go.
00:16:36
Speaker
You got two options. The second one, really gonna suck for you. The first one, lay down your arms, climb to the top of the sailboat, your crow's nest, raise the lion's flag. You have ten seconds.
00:16:51
Speaker
And this one-off New Zealand kid was like, ah, the first one. Yes, sir. Yes, sir. I forget how many children played that game, but we just get on their bully teenagers the entire time. Like, listen, anyways, we'll be right back with episode 145 of Life of Ruins podcast. Welcome back to episode 145 of Life of Ruins podcast. We're talking Vikings. We're giggling. We're having a good old time.
00:17:18
Speaker
We did want to continue our conversation and talk about a little bit about the occupation of Iceland and Greenland by the Vikings, except for Carlton's keeling over in laughter. Yeah, my bad. No, you're good. You're good. They definitely made it to Greenland and Iceland. Spent some time over there.
00:17:42
Speaker
Yes. After getting to England and France, they kept going west. There's a couple of reasons for that, one of which is still that desire to find more farmland as alliances and boundaries are being drawn up in England.
00:17:59
Speaker
There are still groups of Scandinavians who are still seeking farmland and trying to find land that hasn't been, quote unquote, claimed yet. So we have early, for those that know their geographies, Iceland is a small island in between, a small-ish island in between the British Isles and Greenland. Also, one of the only places on earth not colonized by indigenous peoples first. When the Europeans got there, they were the first to get there.
00:18:28
Speaker
making them indigenous. Oh, careful with that one. Yeah. Okay. They get to Iceland in between like eight 70 to nine 30 CE. So this is after their, you know, rating England in seven, in seven 93 when the first Viking weight show up. So about like a hundred years later, they're pretty well situated between nine 30 and 1200. And they kind of continue on as like the holdouts of non-Christian
00:18:58
Speaker
of Scandinavians from about 1200 to 1262, and there's occupation a little bit after that. Basically, in 1262, they become part of the Norwegian rule. That's when that ends. Basically, they come under the country of Norway, the kingdom of Norway, they become under Norwegian rule in 1262.
00:19:23
Speaker
They get there a hundred years after they start rating England, but then Greenland's a little bit different. So basically another hundred years later in the late 1980s CE, that's when we start seeing Vikings in Greenland and they last there until like the 15th century.
00:19:41
Speaker
Not a great place to be a farmer. And this is where we, in both Iceland and Greenland, they, especially Greenland, not very green. They struggle pretty hard in their farming practices. They try to go back to like ancestral farming practices in Scandinavia because they're really trying to make it work. It's not as great there. And they are interacting with Inuit in Greenland.
00:20:05
Speaker
Yeah. So we do have good evidence for that. And, you know, presumably eventually they look a little bit more West and there are anecdotal things talking about either maps or oral histories about people think reference North America. Yeah.
00:20:27
Speaker
Specifically, there's the Vinland map and the Vinland sagas. So there's kind of... Vinland is vaguely made out to be Newfoundland. And then Lonsaw Meadows is there, which is confirmed to be a Norwegian or Norse settlement. But it's not quite sure if that's the one that Lee for Torvald Ericsson was at.
00:20:50
Speaker
And the dating doesn't really line up what they talk about in their kind of... In the sagas. In the sagas, yeah. The beginning evidence of Vikings in North America isn't solid to start out with. And there's also another guy, Eben Norton Horsford, who's a...
00:21:11
Speaker
chemist and part-time Scrooge impersonator who believed that there's a legendary settlement called Norembega that appears on kind of 16th century maps. And he thinks he found that in North America, made a plaque for it, made a building, really went ham on it, even though there's not really a ton of evidence. But he spent the money and thought it was. So those are kind of the anecdotal evidence of Vikings getting to North America.
00:21:41
Speaker
Yeah. And just for reference, like the first legit map that we know of that has cartography of Vinland, 1503 by a Genoese map maker. It's called the Canaro map. It mentions a site of Vinland in the first time in history. So that's confirmed. So 1503, we do have it. And that's only like, what? Nine years after Columbus gets to
00:22:05
Speaker
Is granola 11 years. Yeah. So, I mean, that was pretty quick once, once Europeans really found.
00:22:16
Speaker
came in contact with, with North America. But yeah, there is definitely a confirmed Viking site in Newfoundland as a very short occupation. I'm trying to find the date for it real quick, but it's, it's the burials there. And some of those remains are fucking filled with stone projectile points. So, uh,
00:22:38
Speaker
Yeah. So I think, I think the latest, I think the latest dates are the 2021 article that is, uh, we'll put in the show notes says that, uh, the beginning date of Norris activity is 10 21 80. I'm assuming. And, and you know, they really only think it and articles say that they only live there for at least like 20 years. There's this really, yeah. And we're out.
00:23:08
Speaker
I think they found coins there. Yeah. It was very quick. It's at the end of the Viking age. And also you have to contextualize like how those ships, the Viking long ships are great, but the journey from, you know, Scandinavia, you have to go to England, then you have to stop off in Iceland and you have to stop up to Greenland. Like it's just not, they don't have the ships meant for that long distance continuous trade, especially in the North Atlantic, which is not fucking fun to sail many times of the year.
00:23:36
Speaker
No, the storage is on those things. On those large boats you have Columbus on or large galleons, you have the ability to store tons of supplies so you can make those long journeys and survive well when you get to the location that you actually get to. You've got to drop some of the axes to fit some more water on that ship. It's probably that old projectile points now.
00:24:01
Speaker
little margin for error with the Viking ships. It seems like predominantly they're using Newfoundland for timber, which they already have access. Once they're brought into the larger European sphere of influence, they have access to timber. It becomes they don't need it anymore. Once they're brought in as a European player,
00:24:24
Speaker
They have access to timber. They have access to farmland. They don't need people in Newfoundland anymore, fundamentally. And people have been situated now in Greenland and Iceland for 100, 200 years at this point. They're good. There's no reason to keep going. And especially what it seems like the contact with indigenous First Nations in Canada wasn't very positive. So yeah.
00:24:49
Speaker
Anecdotally, I don't know if this is true. I've never read it, but I've heard this in multiple like history things is that the Vikings brought, um, like traded in some of the areas, uh, milk for like other like goods that the natives had. And like the natives got super fucking sick because they have no enzyme to digest lactose and they were like, thought they were poisoned by them. So they attacked rightfully. So last time I got dairy poisoned, I wanted to shoot someone myself too.
00:25:18
Speaker
I've never heard that before. That sounds like a Thanksgiving story to me.
Debunking Viking Myths in America
00:25:24
Speaker
I saw it in like a documentary on History Channel and usually they're not too off, but like that might not be true. But look at that. Yes, the home of ancient aliens. You know what? You might be right. History Channel pre-2010 had some good stuff.
00:25:43
Speaker
But in terms of who are the first Europeans that we know interacted in North America, it is definitely the Scandinavians with this settlement. Greenland counts as North America. They've known about it.
00:25:59
Speaker
Once again, we hit on this several times in the podcast, some of the last people to figure out that the Western Hemisphere existed were Central Europeans or Western Europeans. However, that hasn't stopped settlers in the Americas from reinventing
00:26:19
Speaker
how long in particular Vikings have been in the Americas. So we kind of want to talk about this because we talked a little bit about salutrine. This isn't salutrine, but in terms of like a pseudo-archaeology and pseudoscience and taking these ideas of like what's already a very fascinating, cool piece of human history of Scandinavians interacting with in North America, now they're taking it a step too far.
00:26:43
Speaker
Yeah. This, this is what pisses me off is like we have Vikings in North America. Like for fuck's sake, can we just keep that? Can we just enjoy it? Can we rally behind it? Love it. But instead we always have to, or people are always going to take that back and apply it for their own nefarious goals and or rewriting history. So just, just enjoy the Vikings for fuck's sake.
00:27:08
Speaker
I see several websites that point to it. One of them being citing a podcast. So we can't say that that's not true. You know, the one named everything everywhere.com and let's see, there's, there's several when I pull up Google search. So it may just be a rumor, but like for those people that are confused about what David is talking about, he's talking about the, the thing that we talked about like 10 minutes ago.
00:27:31
Speaker
Yeah. It does say here on the Vinland Wikipedia pages, they traded milk. So anyway, confirm that that one little story is true. We can't say that they didn't get lactose intolerant poisoning. Okay. That's been established. Thank you for.
00:27:48
Speaker
Do you think they got gluten intolerant poisoning? I think it's just like if you're lactose intolerant that assumes the poisoning.
00:28:05
Speaker
Jesus. There are things that pop up that are specific to this pseudoscience behind pushing back or reinventing where and when Vikings
00:28:19
Speaker
interacted in North America in particular. It's generally more prominent in American discourse because for some reason, white supremacy is really globbed on to Vikings and the romanticization and mythos of Vikings as this warrior race. It's becoming more prevalent today, this idea. It's strongly linked to identity. As Connor mentioned, there's this Vinland map. What is the Vinland map, Connor?
00:28:48
Speaker
So, I actually don't have that off the top of my head. David, you know this, right? The Vinland map? It appears to be a map of a land of vines. Thank you, David. I don't know what the answer is. The Vinland map. No, you couldn't. Like we had mentioned before. Look at this map.
00:29:06
Speaker
Like we had mentioned before, Vinland map is associated with the saga of Eric, the red leaf Erickson, et cetera. And it's suggesting and describing locations that could be in North America, specifically 15th century map. And it allegedly shows locations as Connor said, Newfoundland. Yeah. So it's, I feel like we went backwards there.
00:29:34
Speaker
It's a forgery. We figure that out. There's the Vinland map. It's supposed to show Viking settlements from the 1400s. Turns out it's a 20th century forgery. It first popped up in 1957 when Yale University acquired it. It was supposed to be this genuine pre-Columbian map.
00:29:55
Speaker
It also shows Africa, Asia, and Europe on a landmass south of Greenland that's labeled Vinland. At this point, people have an idea that Europeans had visited that area in the 11th century.
00:30:10
Speaker
In 2018, it was recently confirmed forgery. The Vinland map is bullshit. Luckily, there is another thing that has been proven a forgery, the Kensington Runestone. Yeah, classic. Yes. I first learned about this on the History Channel.
00:30:32
Speaker
I forget what it was about, but it wasn't Curse of Oak Island, but they did a whole thing. I think it was just Vikings in America. Didn't he put the runes like as English words? Wasn't that like how they debunked it? No, so it was modern. It was like, so they brought in a bunch of lexiconographers, conifers. Lexiconneries.
00:30:52
Speaker
whatever they do, Lexa Connery and the, the Norse runes were much later runes than what the age was claimed. So basically there's a farmer in Minnesota or is it Wisconsin? One of the Minnesota Vikings would make sense.
00:31:10
Speaker
Yeah, maybe. I think it's Minnesota. A farmer finds it, basically like up turns a stump and in the stump itself is runestone. And using archaeological analysis, one, we know that it wasn't in the ground very long because you don't have, the roots aren't leaving the residue
00:31:30
Speaker
that they would have if the stone had been in there for like hundreds of years, like all the soil, the soil markers, everything doesn't work towards that. And then second, when they took a gander at it,
00:31:41
Speaker
It's like, wait, those ruins are not from the 11th century or before. Those are very much ruins that modern people knew of at that time. I think 1898 is when it was discovered. Yes, 1898. It turns out the Kensington Runestone, the guy that found it is fucking Scandinavian. Minnesota and Wisconsin, those are parts of the United States that were heavily occupied, colonially, by Scandinavians.
00:32:05
Speaker
And if you look very closely, the dude that found it, actually knew runes. He invented this. The guy that found it is the one that placed it. It is an absolute hoax.
00:32:19
Speaker
If it quacks like a Norwegian. If it quacks like a Norwegian. Yeah, but they discovered this and disproved this pretty quickly. It was like 12 years later. We're not winning the 2018 this time, which is good, but it hasn't been fully not accepted by groups in Minnesota, Wisconsin, et cetera. There's a museum today that kind of glorifies it.
00:32:46
Speaker
you can go to the website. It's fucking crazy. Because the website, it's the Runestone Museum, and they don't mention it's a hoax at all. It's a bad, bad website. It just says, we have the Kensington Runestone in our museum. The Runestone and the enduring mystery of its origin continues to be the hallmark of the Runestone Museum. It's like, no, it was debunked in 1910.
00:33:08
Speaker
We all know it's bullshit. It looks just like the Rosetta Stone. The guy was just trying to make a ... I mean, this is the dude's name. The discovery of the Kensington Runestone changed the life of Olaf Olman and his descendants forever. Like, the dude is Scandinavian as fuck. And he found the ... Yeah, no. It is absolute bullshit. And it is in Minnesota. And many places in Minnesota and the businesses there do have Runestones or Vikings as identifying symbols, like there's the Minnesota Vikings. That is an area that was colonized by Scandinavians.
00:33:34
Speaker
I mean, that's the link. These people are bringing their culture with them and trying to, as we've talked about on this podcast in archaeology a lot, trying to claim ancestry to a place, and that was the way these people were doing it. It's like, oh, look at these Viking runestones. They're capitalizing on the fact that people at this time, after the Chicago World's Fair,
00:33:52
Speaker
whereas becoming more well-known that Vikings had got here before Christopher Columbus, pissed off the Italian Americans, but the Scandinavian Americans loved it, and they were kind of seeding the ground. Very much like the English did with Piltdown Man. Piltdown Man. With the hoax of the first upright, big-brained hominin in England, these people are doing the same to set themselves as descendants of this land. They're like, oh, well, we don't feel bad about killing all the natives. They were already Vikings here in Minnesota 800 years ago.
00:34:22
Speaker
According to my 23andMe, I am 48.7% Northwestern European, and I'm going to use that blood right to say that I don't like that the mascot for Minnesota is Vikings. I want it changed. Is it Northwest Europe, the English Isles?
00:34:36
Speaker
I'm looking at all of this and it says it could be Norwegia, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Germany, France, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, and Dora, United Kingdom, or Ireland. So how is, how is Norse? It's like Haugher. But yeah, either way, I take offense and I want it changed. And I will tweet that right now. On that note, we will catch you in the next segment where we change it to the Minnesota rune stones.
00:35:06
Speaker
Thank you, David. We'll be right back. Welcome back to episode 145. We're in the third segment here with me and Carlton and Connor talking about Vikings and Norwegians and people who commit Viking acts of Norwegian descent is what I should say. Yes. And so Vikings in Minnesota. It's like Keough. It's a lifestyle.
00:35:30
Speaker
Vikings in Minnesota are a well-known hoax and ongoing bullshit issue within popular culture, but more recently,
00:35:41
Speaker
Now we've got Vikings in Oklahoma. So that post I was talking about in segment one, it was talking about like Viking rune stones in Oklahoma. And this has spurred this idea that is even like far more fucking far fetched. So like, how did Vikings get to Minnesota? Well, they got to Newfoundland, followed, not the James River, the Hudson River. No, what am I talking? I didn't look at a fucking map. Hudson goes down New York. That makes sense. Canada. St. Lawrence.
00:36:09
Speaker
the
Media's Role in Perpetuating Viking Myths
00:36:10
Speaker
St. Lawrence river into the great lake and they could like access the great lakes. That's how they got to Minnesota. This theory of how they got to Oklahoma is now they sailed all across the East coast around the Florida panhandle and like up the Mississippi river. Like now we're adding a, uh, like Minnesota is pushing it. Like it's bullshit.
00:36:29
Speaker
But it's like, OK. But see, that means, though, if they're going through the Caribbean, they're going to come into classical Maya's at that point and be trading with them. So let's look for some obsidian back in Norway. Yeah, there's volcanoes there already. But initially, like in the Viking sagas.
00:36:49
Speaker
they talk about getting to Newfoundland. Like it's mentioned and that's really, well, maybe this is legit. They don't ever mention Minnesota. They don't ever mention fucking Oklahoma. They don't mention, like the Vikings themselves don't talk about it. More importantly, indigenous people of the Americas don't fucking talk about it. You do find groups that do talk about Newfoundland. They're like, yes, but like, so the two groups that we're talking about that would have been there, fucking nothing. They're not saying a goddamn word about it.
00:37:16
Speaker
And this is a case of very similar to what happened in Minnesota. The people that are perpetuating these runestone myths or Vikings in Oklahoma are of Scandinavian descent. So it is the same cookie cutter bullshit argument. They're Scandinavians in Oklahoma. And this is being way more wrapped up at this point with white nationalism.
00:37:40
Speaker
is specifically in Oklahoma. They're debunked in a very similar manner to the Kensington Runestone. The geomorphology doesn't fit, the taphonomy of the artifacts don't fit, and the runestones themselves are not runestones from that age.
00:37:56
Speaker
They're much more modern, much more like kingdom of Norway kind of rune stones. Rune stones aren't homogenous. Yep. Homogenous. Homogenous, right? Like other languages, like other alphabets, rune stones change. And so these are easily discredited discoveries. So I'm sorry for our listeners.
00:38:21
Speaker
There are no Vikings in Minnesota. The Vikings never sailed the Mississippi River and into Oklahoma either.
00:38:26
Speaker
Yeah. Well, the crazy thing is that there's Wikipedia pages with this now. So we have, it's gotten big enough to where they're wanting to write about this in Wikipedia and they are correctly citing it and saying it's incorrect. These are all been proven false. There's been master's thesis on one of the rune stones. So guy was like, I'm going to tackle this in my master's thesis and disproved it. So it, they are growing.
00:38:51
Speaker
And I wouldn't be surprised if this grows into other, if it's Alabama, or if it's Mississippi, or if it's somewhere else, like that, that shit didn't move. That ship has sailed to Hawaii, that there is a Hawaiian Viking ship hoax. And this was perpetuated April 1st, 1936, by the Honolulu Star Bulletin, which published a story about a Viking ship discovered in Hawaii, which was accompanied by a photo of the rare find. However,
00:39:19
Speaker
No such thing was ever discovered there. So that's because there was a conversation at a bar where one guy said, I hate you. How is being here on our Island? And the guy was like, well, you know what? We were here first, bro. And that's what that started as guaranteed. And then he died in Pearl Harbor. What? Possibly. This was 1936. So I made him a sailor at a bar. I'm going to hell. That's cool, guys.
00:39:47
Speaker
We've lost him. Connor has exited the chat. He's dead. We've lost him. He's crying. The rule of comedy, if it's 10 years later, it's fine to laugh about. What's crazy about this is a lot of this stuff, because there's not much academic literature on it. There's academic literature, particularly on the Newfoundland stuff, because that is archaeological context. It has been studied. But if you just Google hoaxes, a bunch comes up. But if you look at the comments section of these web pages,
00:40:17
Speaker
people are losing their fucking minds. Like, no, this is true. This isn't a hoax. And then like the history channel perpetuates it because there's also this like curse of Oak Island show. I don't know if anyone's watched it. I can't get into it. Like I usually love dumb shit like that. I can't. Is that about Vikings? I thought it was about just like, it's like, uh, they're recently, one of the more recent episodes, they think they found a Viking artifact. Yeah. Yes. Where is Oak Island, Virginia?
00:40:42
Speaker
No, that's Roanoke. Roanoke, right. Okay, so I thought it was a shout out. A colony of Roanoke is in the Carolinas, but there is a Roanoke, Virginia. So Oak Island is in Nova Scotia and Canada. So we're getting closer. That's not too far fetched then. I mean, like, is it new Finland's right above Nova Scotia. Yeah, I buy it. But anything that deals with the history channel on that show, it's like,
00:41:10
Speaker
Let's ask the vice-princess Canadian Dusty Shrombo. Check out Carl Dunn again. Still by an impression. The vice-princess Canadian Dusty Shrombo has been killed by drinks.
00:41:30
Speaker
Even if they did find something like good right now like they've put themselves in that corner where there's pseudoscience so like Yeah, it's not easy to get out of it like right like I've labeled them as such Maybe it's just me being a dick, but like you you kind of made you kind of made your bed Now you shitting it or something whatever this thing is
00:41:51
Speaker
I know. Well, you coined that term. That was a Connor. That's a Connor quote. No one says that. You don't shit where you sleep. You don't shit where you eat. That's because the green man can't see it doesn't mean you don't fear him, man.
00:42:13
Speaker
Shouldn't a toilet or in the woods, okay? I'm so mad that we, that vibe, that reel got pulled of our, uh, inspiration, uh, turning life and ruins quotes into inspirational. Why'd it get pulled? Because it had, um, Carly, they just, Carly Rae Jespen song. And that got flagged as copyright infringement. She probably posted a meme or two here and there. We were doing it for a bit. I was. You were, you were, you both were.
00:42:43
Speaker
There are some gems out of that. We just need to take the old memes and turn them into reels and then make money off of it. That's true. Also, archaeology life is now a 15,000 person followed page that just takes our memes. Or they take other archaeology memes. Yeah, no, fuck those people. I've been ranting about those guys for a while because I want to try it. Like I messaged him, like, dude, at least fucking credit us.
00:43:06
Speaker
Yeah, this is the official stance of the Life and Repodcast. Fuck you. He's an archeology student, too. He's out there. If you're at SCAs, bro. Quit stealing our shit. Yeah, quit fucking stealing our shit like Jesus. Speaking of, I will not be going to SCAs this year due to my feeble state, and so I will not be there as promised. Carlton, you will be there though, right? I have to be there. I fly on Tuesday and I take a red-eye Friday because I have to run a pow-wow Saturday.
Viking Myths vs. Indigenous Narratives
00:43:35
Speaker
Yeah, I won't be there either. God damn it. You can accurately describe a powwow as a powwow. Yeah, I'm actually running a powwow. You just can't refer to like a meeting at work as a powwow, right? Is that the new thing? I think so. Yeah, that's, I mean, I follow a few indigenous creators and they're like, you can't say this, you can't say that, you can't say that. And then the next day it's like reversing that. So I just, I literally just can't keep up, but I want to respect it.
00:44:09
Speaker
What do natives think about this sort of perpetuation of Vikings and things like that? Because we have this on the script.
00:44:20
Speaker
Oh yes. So actually I talked with me, I talked with this with Matt Reed, maybe like a year ago. So Matt Reed, Pawnee Nation, Tip Oak, you know, cause we're out of Oklahoma now. It's, it's becoming problematic where it rears its ugly head a lot, especially in land claims in Oklahoma.
00:44:39
Speaker
where there are people that are like, well, Vikings were here first. And, you know, it goes back to the whole myth of, well, we were already here, so it's not native land. So no, to my knowledge, I have never once heard an indigenous oral tradition, which mentions Vikings in Oklahoma or in the continental US. And they mentioned a lot of things. They describe everything. But Pathfinder was a hell of a movie.
00:45:06
Speaker
It was Carl Urban, man. No big deal. Question for us in the audience just to ponder. With the Vikings or the Norwegians getting to the North, I should say, getting to North America and Greenland at the time they did, would that not have spread diseases that could have then spread as well, contributing to the decline of native populations before Columbus?
00:45:30
Speaker
I think the interactions were different. I think that's why primarily like one new, those Northeastern Canada, more isolated, not as densely populated based on the evidence of violence and like the small and habitation.
00:45:50
Speaker
Norwegian blood on your face after hitting them with a like a cell tax you're gonna get some diseases from that That is that is blood-borne pathogens, but I don't know if they actually spread any
00:46:03
Speaker
Yeah. My knowledge of indigenous geography in Canada, especially Northeastern Canada, is really bad. But we do know there was much more continuous and upfront contact and partying in Hispaniola, which was part of a much greater and immediate trade network. And then the Spanish stayed for a long time with much more people.
00:46:26
Speaker
So like the Vikings is like what, 30 to maybe 150 people pop in there for 20 years and then get the fuck out. Like that disease vector is very small, it seems like. And it looks like, you know, based on projectile points being embedded in Viking skeletons, like wasn't very great. The initial interaction in Hispaniola was different. And then the continued interaction in Mesoamerica, which was a hub of trade.
00:46:54
Speaker
like that thing. That's when diseases really just kind of spread, right? Yeah. Not to say that there wasn't disease passed along with them, but I just think that the effect on the larger community is probably smaller. Or it might have happened so long ago, right? Because we're talking about the 11th century, that there might have could absolutely have been, but it was much more isolated
00:47:16
Speaker
case, and we just won't see it as compared to what happened in the late 15th century and 16th century, right? And they weren't living in cities as big as Madrid and London and Paris to be having that much disease. The Vikings may not have had those diseases on them anyway, being isolated up in Northern Europe. They might've had something because they were in close contact with pigs and cows all the time.
00:47:38
Speaker
Oh yeah, they had something nasty. That's really interesting. I mean, yeah, you wonder what that impact is in the larger scope of things. 20 years in an archaeological sense is nothing, and in human interaction sense is real small. Yeah, that's a really good disease vector question of how do those pathogens spread.
00:47:59
Speaker
You know, I think you're right. Like in Mesoamerica, it's just there's millions of people. Tenochtitlán was just done. Like there's there's no stopping that. Yeah. The correct word is orgies. Well, if we want to get into Columbus's diary, that's a little dicey. Yeah, it's a little hairy. Not. Yeah, Columbus was a fuck. Even the people with Columbus were like, this guy is sus.
00:48:26
Speaker
They were like convicts that came over. Those early congee stores were just not good people, even by European standards. They were just...
00:48:34
Speaker
Did you guys listen to my episode last week? Nope. My friend and I were spitballing this. The Conquistas all came over as entrepreneurs. Like they weren't like soldiers really. They weren't like, they're just businessmen. But also it's like a known thing that a lot of CEOs and businessmen are sociopaths because they have that like cutthroat. So like most of those people, if that holds true, coming over to the Americas were just sociopaths let loose with swords and germs.
00:49:03
Speaker
just destroying North America. That goes into that whole context. Vikings were looking for land. They wanted to be farmers.
Comparing European Explorers: Vikings vs. Spaniards
00:49:10
Speaker
And if it's going to be difficult to farm, we're going to fuck off. That's why they left Newfoundland. It was difficult to farm there. There's other places we can farm that are easier. Whereas, as David mentioned, the Conquist stores were there to make money. They were there for gold, and that was the end goal. And they wanted that goal.
00:49:27
Speaker
Right? That's the same difference between the relationship with the French and the English and the Spanish and the Americas is the context in which they're colonizing. The French were like, we're here for natural resources and beavers and we're not staying. And so they made great relationships with the indigenous as trading partners where the English did the same thing, but once the Americans got all uppity and wanted their own country, then they're like, well, we want the rest of this place as ours. Get rid of everyone else.
00:49:53
Speaker
I think it's the condition of independence. Like King George the third is not allowing us to eradicate the Indian savages. Like we want to move west of the Appalachia. It's verbatim in this country's like manifesto. Like King George, George the third to fuck off is we want to kill Indians.
00:50:11
Speaker
I did. I saw that too, that like in the early expansive wars with the Tecumseh and stuff, like the British residing with the indigenous being like, Hey, we told them not to settle past the Appalachians. If you don't want them to do that, join with us. It's like the Americans were like, no, we're going to get them.
00:50:30
Speaker
They're going to the end zone being California. We're going all the way, 100 yard line. We're getting to the end zone. North America history is just fucking crazy. I did like that episode, David, and I know we're totally off topic, but I was really thinking about how Pawnee Land was under New Spain and then New France.
00:50:49
Speaker
and then America while also still being half in Spain for a while ago. It's just, we're in Spain and then like, yeah, it was just like, I was like really lucky. I was like, holy fuck, like my ancestral territory has been under the influence of like three major, technically four major powers over the course of 500 years. Yeah, dude, it's wild. And like all those early concrete explorers like walked up through it to like Arkansas from Florida. You just don't think about
00:51:14
Speaker
frickin' Kabeisa Devaka walking through Nashville. What he like did, you know, in full plate armor with malaria. That's where he saw the Memphis. Where are the indigenous? That's where he saw the pyramids in Memphis. I can't do a Spanish next. In the Hinnith. In the Hinnith. Anyway, yeah, yeah, yeah. I thought that that stuff was fascinating. But it's the same thing with the Viking stuff, like
00:51:41
Speaker
You just don't think about that globalism back then, you know, like just how small the world actually is in a way. Yeah. And I think at the same time in the 11th century, that's when Polynesians were interacting with South America and gotten to Rapa Nui. Right. And while all this is going on, there are Inuit in Alaska.
00:52:01
Speaker
training with their cousins, the Inuit and Eastern Russia. And like they have fucking Venetian beads in Alaska at this part. So like people are still connected. Like there's still way more going on. That's just not, we forget it's like North and South America. We're always connected into this world, but like,
00:52:18
Speaker
to them at that point without thinking about it in terms of cartography. It's like, it's just the land that way. It's not like it's a new thing. So when people say like Columbus didn't discover America, I disagree. I think like for the most of European culture and like the enlightenment era, like North America was discovered then because that's when people came in droves and they started mapping it out and stuff.
00:52:42
Speaker
Well, I think the idea of like Christopher Columbus didn't discover America because it already been technically discovered for 15,000 years. Like I think it's a juxtaposition of like, yes, Europeans are now made aware of it, but like. Like full on like annexed. Like I guess would be the weirdness. I mean, like, um, um, brought it, brought like,
00:53:03
Speaker
It's the minds of Europeans. I think the world became far more globalized when Christopher Columbus brought it into the European world. But it was still part of a global cult network that people had been here interacting with their regional partners, which were interacting with their other regional partners. So there's stepping zones between North and South America already on a broad basis with Europe. So there was already a very long chain of interaction. However, the world became globalized once Europeans
00:53:32
Speaker
Central Europeans, because we've just established that the Swedes already knew about this place.
00:53:37
Speaker
Southern Europeans. Yeah. Yeah. So like Southern Western Europeans are like, Oh, now it's part of, but then there's a whole talk about the Basque and the Basque knowing about who cares. Yeah. There's a whole, and then like Christopher Columbus wife is Basque and these Basque fishermen are coming back with cod. Like there's a whole other like current. Yeah. It's a book called cod. It's called cod. I want to, I want to rephrase that. So I don't sound like a white supremacist, but like,
00:54:07
Speaker
If you're looking at Newfoundland, it's a little bit past Greenland with a huge cloud behind it. They don't know anything else there. Columbus, what he did was go way to the middle of North America, Central America, and be like, there's some shit here. And then it expanded from there. Not to say that he didn't discover it first, because he did discover it first. The other people technically discovered it. But I think that term is just thrown around to be like, Columbus bad. And it's like, he was.
00:54:32
Speaker
Yeah, he forged the link between North America and Europe. He created the potential for a link between those two. I think that's a better way of putting it than saying, because discovery is a... It's a channel. Yeah, it's like now they own it because you discover something.
Historical Narratives and Exploration Reflection
00:54:52
Speaker
That's not something that we want. Let's say he was the first to exploit it.
00:54:57
Speaker
I'd buy that. Yeah, I'll take that deal. Yeah, I'll take that deal. That's a good deal. You take that deal, Donny. That's a good deal. I make that deal. Just so people know, not crazy. It's called, it's called cod, a biography of the fish that changed the world by Mark Kirlanski. And there's a great quote. Cod, it turns out is the reason Europeans that sail across the Atlantic.
00:55:16
Speaker
And as the only reason they could, what did the Vikings eat? Nice and Greenland? And on the five expeditions to America's recorded in the Icelandic sagas? Cod. Frozen and dried in the frosty air, then broken to pieces and eaten like heart attack. What was the staple of medieval diet? Cod again, sold salted by the Basques and enigmatic people with a mysterious unlimited supply of cod. During the medieval warming period where the European fisheries were absolutely fucking destitute. Where'd they get that cod? Evidence points to Cape Cod.
00:55:46
Speaker
interesting yeah we talked about that in cultural class it's a whole fucking thing like there's there's some things behind it like she might have known chris they got caught up in it um let's end this episode now caught up in yeah yeah yeah we're uh before we go on another tangent let's end this episode we're gonna get 22 boys
Conclusion and Listener Engagement
00:56:13
Speaker
There's a second book called Salt. Guess what that one's about? The salted cod is particularly good. Codder's going to assault me if I keep this fucking record. All right. Like, follow, subscribe. Thank you for listening to us. We got links in the show notes to all the things we referenced during this podcast, which was like two things because we are terrible.
00:56:50
Speaker
site sources uh guys please be sure to rate and review the podcast where these new formats are kind of fun uh so just let us know what you're thinking comment i'll try to make a post on instagram for you guys to comment on let us know what you think because i know people that follow the instagram are the ones who do listen we do have the discord if you guys want to join that and yeah just be sure to rate and review and with that we are out
00:57:04
Speaker
at finding sources, but we are not wrong.
00:57:21
Speaker
Thanks for listening to a life in ruins podcast. You can follow us on Instagram and Facebook at a life in ruins podcast. And you can also email us at a life in ruins podcast at gmail.com. And remember, make sure to bring your archeologists in from the cold and feed them beer. Connor, do you have a cheese? They see this was sent in by our lovely friend Jesse tune. So you guys have already seen this. So act like it's funny.
00:57:48
Speaker
So why do astronauts use Apple products instead of Microsoft products? Because they can't open windows in space.
00:58:13
Speaker
This episode was produced by Chris Webster from his RV traveling the United States, Tristan Boyle in Scotland, DigTech LLC, Culturo Media, and the Archaeology Podcast Network, and was edited by Chris Webster. This has been a presentation of the Archaeology Podcast Network. Visit us on the web for show notes and other podcasts at www.archapodnet.com. Contact us at chris at archaeologypodcastnetwork.com.