Any Vikings around here?

[Stefan Härtel]

1. The Vikings had such things as "provinces", which they called Things. These Things had, I believe capitals. If I'm right, then you can and should put palaces in following cities:
Eidsvold
Borg (hey, that does sound Swedish!)
Gula
Frosta

(Again, I can help you out with a map )

2. What you can do, is make it start in 872. This was the date of the first unification of Norway. You can cover the struggle between Norway and Denmark (which was unified in the 10th century). Denmark held Norway from 1028-1035.

3. Maybe I can help you out. I've got the "Chronicle of Canada", and I'm very sure that there's some info in there. If I'm successful, I'll write that in the next mail (this evening).

------------------
Follow the masses!
30,000 lemmings can't be wrong!

Our survival is based on continouus changing.
-Mao Tse-Tung
God might have created us as equals, but democracy and science pretty
much screwed that whole idea..
-Onepaul


Visit my Homepage at: http://members.xoom.com/SHaertel/Index.html

[Sten Sture]

Let's go viking!

Hendrik - do you know the text by Gwyn Jones The History of the Vikings?

I have a couple of other reference sources and I'll check them out this evening...

[Hendrik the Great]

I thought skraelinger means something like ugly looking people. But I guess thin trolls are ugly looking, too.

-Provinces, Things are good! Frosta is very good. I was planing to put one there anyhow.
-872? Hmm...I thought it would be nice to let the player unit Norway on his own and then move on.
But it would take care of some problems...

"Gwyn Jones The History of the Vikings"
No, never heard of it. But I'll be going to a good bookshop tomorrow perhaps they have it and I can take a look.
I'm really interested in those sources...


The most important thing at the moment are the cities I can put a palace in, starting locations and when to start.

I have very detailed chronologies of the history of the viking expansion and so accounting for almost every year after 500AD right up to the 15th century.
I even know when how many ships arrived where and under what circumstances.
I love the Internet
[This message has been edited by Hendrik the Great (edited April 26, 2000).]

[The ANZAC]

I know Vikings had local warlord-controlled town areas called jarls, if that helps. That good be a high trade, shield, and food terrain in the middle of bleak Scandinavia.

[Hendrik the Great]

Because I think there are that many people around here who might know about what I am looking for, unless, of course, you would be Viking.
But on the other hand maybe you are. So here are my questions.

I want to make a scenario about the viking exploration and colonisation of Iceland, Greenland and North America.

1.Does anyone know what the "capitol", if one may call it that, of the Norwegian, Swedish and Danish Vikings were? The centre of rule would also suffice. I have some very contradicting info on this.

2. Should I start before or after the unification of Norway?
Expansion began in the 790s but unification was only a century later which triggered the emigration of many Norwegian Vikings to Iceland.

3. Does anyone have information on the native population of Greenland and East-Canada and the Northeast USA between 800AD and +/- 1450?

4. Any other suggestions are welcome, of course.

Oh, and you may also help me by answering those questions when you are not a Viking.

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Mathias' Civ II Page http://members.xoom.com/thalys/index.html
[This message has been edited by Hendrik the Great (edited April 26, 2000).]

[Coug]

I'll see what I can do...

preliminary info: The vikings called the indians "skrælinger" which basically means "thin trolls" or something like that.

[Harlan]

I've got a ton of Viking related units available for you to use over at the Cradle of Civilization site, in both ToT and pre-ToT form (I'm in the middle of making a Viking related scenario too).

As for the capitals, those countries really weren't unified in the modern sense back in the 800s. Capitals tended to move around a lot too, but Jelling was a pretty consistent one for the Danish. If you're focusing on western colonization, you don't even need to include the Swedish, since they were focused on Russia.

[Hendrik the Great]

Well, I was at that bookshop and I couldn't have been more disappointed. Not a single usefull book about Vikings! Darn!

Every bit of information helps ANZAC. No matter how small.

Thank you Harlan I will take a look at them at once. So I could basicly not give them a capitol at all, right? In order to get to that stage unit Norway and get a tech for that allowing you to build palaces.
That would allow for some nice events.
Make research to unit Norway, do unit Norway, receive tech throu events that allows palace construction and also create Viking Refugees that run off to Iceland becasue they don't like the new King.
Nice.

I have been thinking about not going to use Sweds. They won't be playing a big part in the scenario anyway and it would allow me to use two native civs instead of only one.
One in Canada(shraelinger) and one in the northern Islands with Greenland(Inuit).

[Coug]

Triple post...
[This message has been edited by Coug (edited April 27, 2000).]

[Coug]

Triple post...
[This message has been edited by Coug (edited April 27, 2000).]

[Coug]

On Greenland:

There were two Grends on Greenland. The Northern and Southern Grend. A Grend is not a village, more a concentration of farms. The Northern Grend had 100 families, approx, at it's peak and the Southern Grend had 200 families at it's peak. This was around 1300. While both Grends could sport a church, the Southern Grend could even brag to have a bishop. There are records of several "incidents" between the Inuits and the Vikings. One such incident was described, more or less, as this:

quote: When the Inuits came, they banged some sticks together. They made an awful noise, so we fled. Knut, however, stood his ground. He ripped off his shirt and started shaving his breast with his sword until he bled. Then the Inuits fled.

Those were the days.

On Vinland:

Vinland does not mean "Land of the Grapes" as it was first believed. Instead, it means "Lands of Meadows", or as it does today, L'Anse aux Meadows. 8 houses were found there, a quite small Grend, but there were believed to be more Grends as the Vikings on Greenland had to travel to Vinland to get the timber they needed for their houses on Greenland. It is also believed that the Vikings traveled as far south as Florida. Proof: Shells found in Florida can only be found in Florida can also be found one other place on the earth, the North Sea. Rumor: They have even found a Viking settlement as far south as that. I cannot confirm this though.

Also, in the 1500s, British and French mapmakers even wrote "Nortumbega" on the maps of America. Nortumbega being the old name of Norway. Hugo Grotius himself said that all territories north of Mexico should be considered Norwegian.

[Hendrik the Great]

This is beginning to get interesting...

Just wondering; are there any good Viking-English dictionaries on the internet? Or lists of common Viking words?

Unfortunatly my map only extends as far south as the Great Lakes Region. It sounds very intreging but I would like to stay with the more known and proven part of history.

When was the approximate time the colonies on Greeland vanished? Around 1450?

[Captain Nemo]

You were looking for Viking city names. I know that Jellinge was a Capital of some tribes for some time. Definitely an important one. Another one is Trelleborg where they found the remains of a huge Viking army camp, very organized and structured. I used it as the model for the "walled viking cities" that I made for Alex's scenario: Conquest of the North, though I could only fit in 6 "longhouses" within the walls as opposed to the 16 in the original.
Here is a list of the Danish Viking Kings from 900-1100:

Gorm the Old 900-950 approx.
Harald 950-985
Sven Forkbeard 985-1014
Harald Sweynsson 1014-1018
Knud the Great 1018-1035
Knud (Another one)1035-1042
Magnus the Good 1042-1047
Sven Estridsen 1047-1074
Harald Hen 1074-1080
Knud the Holy 1080-1086
Oluf Hunger 1086-1095
Eric the Very Good 1095-1103

Some of them may have been Kings of Norway too, since there was a lot of connections there.

[Sten Sture]

Trelleborg did have a great design! Four squares of four longhouses surrounded by a rampart and an array of longhouses out side the wall.

Some other Viking cities - Hedeby, Birka, Gamla Uppsala, Sigtuna, Helgo, Valsgarde, Truso in Estonia, Wollin in Germany, Kaupang (Skiringssal), Dorestad in Frisia, Lindholm, Skara, Lund, Ribe, Viborg, Arhus, Alborg, Odense, Roskilde, Grobin in Latvia.

[Hendrik the Great]

Yes, Jelling was an important centre of the Danish. For Norway I will use either Frosta or Trondheim, depends.
What's more concerning me right now is when to start and how long to give the player in matters of time. Till 1066/1085 or until the end of the 15th century when the last colony in Greenland disappeared for good.

The map is relatively small. I can get about 3 cities max. onto Denmark for example. If I really pack them together with only 1 square apart. But the ocean is more than big enough.

I do have enough material to find appropiate city names. What I'm looking for is starting locations because the player(if he's playinbg the vikings) won't have more than one or two cities to start with. I'll probally remove the palace then from the vkings so they have to make progress towards this. As pointed out there wasn't really any capitol or real unified Viking country until 872(well, more or less) when Harald Fairhair unified Norway under his rule and triggered mass emigration to Iceland whcih had been discovered in 860.

I will be going to the the city tomorrow to get some books on Vikings when I go to the library. Hopefully I'll find some with good pictures for units and cities...

Oh, and Cpt. Nemo. May I use some of your terrain graphics? Some of the ones that are in the "Nemoland" collection.

[Sten Sture]

According to my sources, the two Greenland settlements were called the the Eastern and Western settlements, even though they look more north and south. The eastern settlement was at the southern tip of Greenland and was also called Brattahlid. Both areas had evidence of Skraeling or Eskimo habitation, but had been abandoned before the Vikings got there.

The Inuits weren't supposed to have migrated across from Canada to the Thule region until c1200.

The Western(north) settlement was abandonded by 1340 and the central one near Ivigtut c1380 after a Skraeling attack that killed 18 and captured two more. The Eastern(south) settlement survived tenuously until c1500. The Greenland trading monopoly which was held by Bergen, suffered a great deal in the Black Death in 1349 when Bergen lost 35% of its population. Bergen also had cheaper access to Russian furs and hides and didn't need to access the Greenland market for goods.

The Jones test (Oxford Publ) has 15 maps of various regions from the viking era and numerous old Norse translations. If you can find it, I think it would be very helpful. Jones also wrote The Norse Atlantic Saga which I have not seen, but I understand it is excellent. There is also a Yale? (iirc) publication called The Vinland Map and the Tartar Relation which has several ancient maps and texts in it. I have a copy of it, and I'll look through it this weekend to see if it would be worth tracking down.

yer viking skolar,

Sten Sture

[Hendrik the Great]

Forget about the dictionary I asked for. I found one.

Sten, I found a map of the settlments in Greenland. Although it is very basic it gives a good idea of the location and extend of it.

Also I found the Saga of Erik the Red. I just don't know what to use it for.
I also have translations of the course that Bjarni "something I can't spell" took. That was the man to first saw America.

I'm beginning to think that I might want to make it in several scenarios that are link together somehow. That was a lot going on in that time and I don't know if I can put it all into one single scenario.
-The First scenario would probaly be from 793(Lindisfarne) until the unification of Norway which was either in 872 or in 890 depending which book I'm suppossed to trust.
-The Second one from the unification until 1066 or 1085.
-And the third one from either 1066 or 1085 until the end of the 15th century

Seperating it this way would allow me to go around some problems and would make it more realistic.
Aside from allowing more events for each time period.

[Captain Nemo]

No problem use any terrain you want. Take a look at the Viking cities too if you like.

[Stefan Härtel]

Well, I found out that Erik or Leif something else battled the Dornat Indians in Labrador/Nova Scotia. The Dornats however were subdued by the Inuit (Eskimos).

Need city names? How 'bout Haithabu in Schleswig-Holstein (Sorry the onlyone I can think of right now).

------------------
Follow the masses!
30,000 lemmings can't be wrong!

Our survival is based on continouus changing.
-Mao Tse-Tung
God might have created us as equals, but democracy and science pretty
much screwed that whole idea..
-Onepaul


Visit my Homepage at: http://members.xoom.com/SHaertel/Index.html

[Hendrik the Great]

Can you tell me where you found that Stefan? On the internet or in a book?
Oh, and I know where Haithabu is. I've been there two times when I was till living in Germany. In other words: a very long time ago.

Thank you Captain Nemo! I will do that.

But I think I will make a new map. I find the one I have now a bit too small.

[BeBro]

Hi, her are some other city names. Found them on an European map from the year 1000 AD:
-Stavanger, Stiklestad, Nidaros (Norway)
-Schleswig (Danish at this time)
-Rouen in northern France (Normandy)
And on another map from 1230 AD:
-Grataheide, Kopenhagen (Norway)
-Kalmar, Visby, Linköping (Sweden)

[Stefan Härtel]

I found that information in the Chronicle of Canada.
I've been to Haithabu once, being the only time I've actually had contact with the Viking culture.
There's a book about the Vikings in my favorite series. I decided to buy it Tuesday.
I'll send you any valuable infos then.

------------------
Follow the masses!
30,000 lemmings can't be wrong!

Our survival is based on continouus changing.
-Mao Tse-Tung
God might have created us as equals, but democracy and science pretty
much screwed that whole idea..
-Onepaul


Visit my Homepage at: http://members.xoom.com/SHaertel/Index.html

[Hendrik the Great]

You don't happen to have that map available on your computer, do you Bernd? If so could you send it to me or tell me where you got it from?
However, I would preferably need one somewhere between 793AD and 860AD. The closest I have come so far is one from 980AD which isn't really that great because it doesn't show much else than borders. Which is nice on the one hand but doesn't help me that much.

Stefan, you just gave me a fantastic idea! I now a lot of sites about Canada perhaps they have just what I need.

But you don't, just by chance, have a map I can use in the scenario, do you? Because I do get the feeling that the one I have now may be too small.

[BeBro]

Hendrik, the maps are from my "Bildatlas der Weltgeschichte", but I can´t send they to You (no scanner). Anyway, in another book about the middle ages I found a great map of the viking campaigns (8th-10th century). It shows some other cities:
-Gokstad and Oseberg(where the wellknown longsships have been found),Helgea, Nonnebjerk, Fyrkal, Aggersborg
I´ll ask some of my friends to make scans of all these maps, but I can´t make any promises about it, because a lot of them are very busy...

[Hendrik the Great]

Scanning the maps may not be necessary. I'm sure I can find it in my school's libary right when school starts again in a week. They have a lot of stuff like that and I think I once saw something like it there. If not I can still bother you with it.

On a site note. I went right on looking for Canadian sites and I hit the Jackpot! A lot of info on Vikings in Canada and how they got there. Great pictures, too. Unfortunatly not that much useful about Inuit history. At least I know now they arrived in North-West Greenland around 1200AD and then made their way south.
There are several good sites. I'll guess I should have waited with my site-update a few hours...

[Sten Sture]

The Vinland Map text that I mentioned has a ton of information and about twenty copies of medieval maps, but most of the maps are both illegible and in latin. The combination is not encouraging. The only thing I can add after a cursory review of the book is that the (correction - Western) settlement may have been called Huidferk.

Several of the maps are at the Royal Library of Copenhagen. They may have a web site with better renditions of these old maps.
[This message has been edited by Sten Sture (edited May 01, 2000).]

[Stefan Härtel]

I have 6 historical atlases (what's the english plural for "atlas"?).
First of all, I can offer Europe in the Dark Ages (9/10th century)m which has all viking raids on it.
Vikings in England, Iceland in the Middle Ages, northern Europe 1000, Christian missions in northern Europe (10/11th century), Trelleborg (viking camp), Haithabu and a couple more... Tell me what you want.

------------------
Follow the masses!
30,000 lemmings can't be wrong!

Our survival is based on continouus changing.
-Mao Tse-Tung
God might have created us as equals, but democracy and science pretty
much screwed that whole idea..
-Onepaul


Visit my Homepage at: http://members.xoom.com/SHaertel/Index.html

[Hendrik the Great]

Sten: Well, Latin wouldn't stop me from understanding. Why the heck did I take 4 years of Latin in school?! I sure could use some pratice...
And I found two maps of the settlements on the net. One at a Canadian site and another one at a site from the local government of Greenland. The Eastern Settlement was called Brathahilda( I'm sure it's spelled differently) and I can't recall what the other one was but I have that info on my harddisc now. Huidferk was one of the farms. I also found out what the settlement in New Foundland was called.
Next thing to do: Take a look at the Royal Library.
Thanks.

Stefan: All of them? j/k

I can use Europe in the Dark Ages (9/10th century) Vikings in England, Iceland in the Middle Ages, northern Europe 1000 and maybe Trelleborg (viking camp), Haithabu .
What are the other ones about you mentioned?

However, to be honest I think I do have enough once I get those maps. What I do need now would be some kind of chart or info about the technological, social and cultural development from ca. 800AD to 1100AD which will be approximately the time in which the scenario will be situated.
No, no scientific studies, just something dealing with common/general developments of the time.

I know I'm asking a lot. Thanks to all who help!

Then I'm going to need a lot of free time and even more patience so as to get this done before the summer holidays end. I don't want this to take as long as my last one did.
[This message has been edited by Hendrik the Great (edited April 30, 2000).]

[Mercator]

You should check out this months (May 2000) issue of the National Geographic. There's an article about the Vikings in it! Including a map you could use.

[Hendrik the Great]

Sten: Huidferk may well have been in the western settlement. I just choose the information I found the most trustworthy. However, there are many contradicting sources on this kind of stuff and there is really no sure way of telling which one is right and which one is not. Often there even is contradicting information on the same website. But thanks anyway for your troubles.
I could really need the map of trading commodities. I have been trying to find a useful one but till now to no avail. Probally I can use the map of Iceland, as well.
If you want you may also send me the map of the eastern settlement however I have one myself(from the net) so it's not a necessity.
You will most likely need my email for sending me the maps so here it is: kaktusdh@worldonline.nl

Mercator: Thanks! I will go to the next place that sells them right tomorrow.

Guess I will have to do a lot of reading in the next days...