What if the the Norse taught Iron working to the Amerindians?

The Unicorn

Well-known member
Thorfinn Karlsefn went Viking and settled in New Foundland, a few years later they left with no lasting impression, but what if they lasted a few more years and ended up teaching some basic iron working to the locals (a slave used for working the smithy, a smith forced to flee to the locals, whatever).

Without horses, oxen or more advanced farming techniques the tribes will still be semi nomadic, but iron spear and arrow points are far superior to so they'll make the adjustments needed to accommodate smiths with their (far less portable than flint knapers) equipment, and the knowledge of iron working will spread.

What do you think Europeans will find when they show up in the 1500s?
 

Val the Moofia Boss

Well-known member
Not sure if it will catch on. The peoples of South America adopted agriculture and wound up building rather large civilization compared to the peoples of the North, and yet the Northerners never adopted those same ideas. There were some ancient cities in North America, not sure why we didn't see more of them. There might be more going on here in regards to how ideas are adopted.
 

The Unicorn

Well-known member
Not sure if it will catch on. The peoples of South America adopted agriculture and wound up building rather large civilization compared to the peoples of the North, and yet the Northerners never adopted those same ideas. There were some ancient cities in North America, not sure why we didn't see more of them. There might be more going on here in regards to how ideas are adopted.
Building cities and farming requires a very different culture than nomadic tribes, changing from stone age to iron age nomatic tribes is a much smaller change. More importantly the later provides a direct, and massive increase in fighting and hunting ability, so it will spread one way or the other - either by other tribes adopting it, or by other tribes getting pushed aside by the iron using tribes.

Also, iron tools are much easier to carry than cities so they'll spread much faster.
 

bintananth

behind a desk
Wouldn't catch on.

Metalworking requires a steady source of metal. That requires mining the ores and extracting the metal from it. With Iron that takes something which burns hotter than wood does.
 

Bear Ribs

Well-known member
This seems theoretically doable to me. Jamestown once produced enough iron ore to ship it back to England so there must be at least some deposits (No idea if any are left or how largethey were) and there's more than enough coal in the Appalachians right next to it to run a smelting operation.

That said it wouldn't be particularly easy. The woodland tribes would need to build a permanent settlement at Jamestown (Likely other deposits I'm not precisely aware of as well), roads to coal mines, and a second settlement at the coal mines to support those, while also building the social structures required to support all that. This seems unlikely unless the Norse import a lot more than just ironworking.

And then the cities would lose 90-95% of their population to smallpox and die anyway so it'd wind up another interesting ruin and not change much history, without disease resistance there's very, very little that can change the future of the Native American populations.
 

The Unicorn

Well-known member
Wouldn't catch on.

Metalworking requires a steady source of metal. That requires mining the ores and extracting the metal from it. With Iron that takes something which burns hotter than wood does.
Charcoal works, and Newfoundland has deposits of Iron ore that the Norse could have mined and thus taught how to mine. For that matter, there are ways to smelt iron with just wood fire, although I believe that requires particular types of ore.

That said it wouldn't be particularly easy. The woodland tribes would need to build a permanent settlement at Jamestown (Likely other deposits I'm not precisely aware of as well), roads to coal mines, and a second settlement at the coal mines to support those, while also building the social structures required to support all that. This seems unlikely unless the Norse import a lot more than just ironworking.
The Norse didn't use Coal so no way for them to teach using coal.

Wood and charcoal worked just fine for smelting Iron for the norse it would work the same for the Amerindian tribes. Also keep in mind this is prior to them getting horses, we're not talking about some fully nomadic tribe that needed to follow the herds or whatever - they would settle in a location for months at a time, then move on once the local game was depleted. Some even did some very primitive farming, then moved on after a couple of years to let the soil recover. Norse style smelters would take a few days to setup, and other than the clay, charcoal and iron ore which would need to be at the location you wouldn't need much if any special equipment to set up.
 

ATP

Well-known member
Then,gradualy it should get to Aztecs before Cortez come,just like their enemies.Aztec would fall becouse they were bloody idiots,but Tlaxalans with Iron weapons should beat spaniards for next 100 years or so.
Indians facing England - they would fare better.Smaller colonies,so probably no USA.England would take that territories,but later,and they would remain england subjects.
More indians surviving/as british subjects/ and when spanish empire fall,Tlaxallan and other tribes which had states could have them again.
 

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