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Comment by t05ter | Hacker News Reader

Can you elaborate on what impact they had? The vikings reaching North America early is pretty neat, but doesn't seem to have changed the course of history much. Their colonies West of Greenland were pretty much failures, as they were systematically unable to compete with natives for resources. They were eventually pushed back east by skirmishes with the Thule and harsh, underprovisioned winters.

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There's some evidence that Christopher Columbus ventured to the New World based on Norsemen knowledge of Vinland that had reached the Catholic Church.

Catholic historian mentioning Vinland:

https://www.britannica.com/biography/Adam-of-Bremen#ref19170...

There is some evidence Columbus visited Iceland in 1477 where there would have been more knowledge of the North American territories.

There were many stories about islands or land to the west.

Saint Brendan’s Isle would have been on many maps in Columbus's time, with Irish legends about it. Some of the other phantom islands from that era include Hy-Brasil, the Isle of Mam, Royllo, Satanazes, and Antillia.

While there may have been some influence from the Norse sagas, I think Antillia played a much larger role in his decision making. Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antillia#Medieval_beliefs_and_... :

> under the Spanish flag of Ferdinand and Isabella, Christopher Columbus set out on his historic journey to Asia, citing the island as the perfect halfway house by the authority of Paul Toscanelli.[45] Columbus had supposedly gained charts and descriptions from a Spanish navigator, who had "sojourned... and died also" at Columbus's home in Madeira, after having made landfall on Antillia.[46]

I am not saying that there could not have been influence from the Norse sagas, only that other (incorrect) geographical descriptions appear to have had a stronger and more documented influence on his decision.

That's fascinating, thanks for the link. Just to provide a little more support for the admittedly weaker argument I made earlier: the knowledge of the lands discovered by the Norse was extensively recorded by Catholic priests, and their works were read for centuries in Europe.

https://books.google.ca/books?id=SaXuAgAAQBAJ&pg=PR8&lpg=PR8...

and Christopher Columbus, as a literate Catholic, could conveivably have had access to this knowledge. The Catholic Church may very well have had an interest in these lands as potential places to spread its faith to. The Church even had a bishop in the Norse colonies in Finland.

But yes, clearly the legends you mention were much more prominent in the public consciousness of the time.

That should be: in the Norse colonies in Greenland, not Finland.

Very little impact on the present that I can think of (beyond Greenland's relationship to Denmark)

But the Greenland colony was inhabited by a few thousand people and lasted a few hundred years. Further more, the events around it are recorded in sagas that have survived to this day. Likewise the impact on the presumably hundreds of lives that we involved in the North American landings.

Anything that affects thousands of lives for hundreds of years is a big deal.

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