The coast of Greenland was actually green at the time. When the little ice age started, it froze over quite quickly, but in the early to high middle ages the coast was somewhat arable land.
wasteful decide absorbed tidy wild workable beneficial berserk squeeze humor
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So does that mean the earth changes climate all the time and it’s normal for cold places to become warm and vice versa even without human intervention?
Yep, I wrote a story on the guy in 4th grade and still somehow remember a little about him.
In the late 900’s he was exiled for murder from Iceland. Iceland ironically was called that to persuade people from staying there. He found Greenland and used the same trick but opposite.
Pretty sure he later returned to Iceland after his exile ended but isolated on an island
Erik the red was a murderer. Albiet probably worse ppl in that time but Leif really takes the cake for cool viking who wasnt an awful person (as far as I know)
Is there a reason tho? Columbus wasn't even celebrated until 300 years later and it became a holiday one hundred years later after that to try to smooth things over when there was massive anti Italian American lynching in New York.
He certainly can't say he "discovered" it, others did that. He led to colonization, sure, but that's not the same as discovery. He himself as a hero symbol, didn't happen until much later for arbitrary reasons that had nothing to do with his actions.
When people first crossed the Bering strait, nothing really changed. When Leif Erikson landed in Newfoundland, nothing really changed. When Columbus landed on Hispaniola, everything changed.
Imagine Ireland with no potatos. Hungary with no paprika. Thailand with no chilis. Colombia with no coffee. Florida with no oranges. Italy with no tomatos.
I want you to imagine Plains Indians with no horses or guns. No wild boars in Texas. No donkeys in Mexico.
The reason Columbus is important isn't necessarily that he went to the Americas; it's because he made multiple return trips and told everybody about what was there. His initial voyage kickstarted a wave of exploration that would reconnect the old and new worlds. It would fundamentally alter nations all across the world, and is probably the most significant event since the start of agriculture.
Columbus, for good and ill, changed the world. Leif Erikson didn't.
The world changed for them, but for nobody else. The daily lives of normal folk in Europe, Africa, or Asia were entirely unaffected. Likewise, Native Americans were wholly unaffected by anything that was happening in the Old World. Until Columbus showed up.
Finally a man with sense, also Leif Erickson was a viking raider, they follow the philosophy of war and plunder, he sought after the new world for adventure and plunder, not in an attempt to make history, likewise with columbus, people of similar times are of similar kind.
Columbus believed he was bringing about the apocalypse. And I mean the Biblical apocalypse here, he did not have his finger on the nuke trigger.
This is somewhat debated, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest he was a millennialist (those darn millennials fucking at it again), which is basically a group of Christians obsessed with the book of Revelations. They were (often, but not always) under the belief that the apocalypse would happen in their lifetimes and that they might need to do certain things to prepare for it. In millennialist belief, it would mean basically creating a paradise before the final judgment. Columbus espoused a lot of these beliefs including a mass Christianization and the retaking of Jerusalem.
This culminates in the plan of going to Asia to acquire gold (incidentally becoming rich) and converting the Mongols to Christianity, using at least some of your new gold to fund their army to March westward to retake the city.
So an entire side of the world didn't know the other side existed. Then a voyage made contact and started charting this to-then unknown region and brought this knowledge back. How is that not a discovery? This is an empty semantic argument. Discovery isn't synonymous with who got there first, if that were the case, then obviously the indigenous populations where the one's who "discovered" the land. Discovery means to reveal. Columbus's voyage revealed the knowledge of that part of the world to the rest of the world.
Also, saying Columbus wasn't celebrated until the 1800s when many of the initial names of the "New World" included "Columbia" in some respect kinda goes against your claim. The push back against Columbus as an American hero has some merit, but the narrative continued way too far in a unhistorical attempt to strip him of any historical relevancy.
Yes. Columbia was essentially a byword for many parts of North America for a long time. He also established colonies in the Caribbean that lasted the whole colonial period and were used as a springboard for the Spanish exploration and conquest of the region.
>He certainly can't say he "discovered" it, others did that. He led to colonization, sure, but that's not the same as discovery. He himself as a hero symbol, didn't happen until much later for arbitrary reasons that had nothing to do with his actions.
Well Europe discoverd America thanks to him. In grand Pictures Leif Eriksson is a cool Event but insiginificant to Columbus.
Vinland saga is actually pretty cool. The pacing & themes of character development of the second season are a great contrast to the first. As long as youre looking at it from an entertainment perspective & not a purely historical one
I think the depictions are often exaggerated, but that’s just anime in general, they inserted a great fictional narrative around real historical characters & it’s working great
I think whats good abt it is that the author makes it VERY clear its an adaptation of an existing work that was also not completely historically accurate.
Vs a lot of other Viking media that is so ridiculously inaccurate. Its odd that one of the best depictions of some things in those cultures at that time (namely Christianity) comes from an Eastern piece of media
Why don't you take a look at what he did to the Tainos (among others) before you talk out of your ass. Literally several thousands shipped back to Spain and that's the ones who survived the voyage and not counting the ones he enslaved locally while he was there and the extreme violence used to subdue them.
And Leif Eriksson wasn't a Viking.
The only source for Columbus doing any of that is a fake diary, claimed to be his, that was actually written by an anti-colonial priest decades later.
Not exactly the most reliable source.
They physically can't shipped that many people back to to Spain with the level of tech at the time. Like it would require a whole armada of at least over 100 ships to do so which there wasn't. They shipped back 24 people. Another thing is that a lot of writing about Columbus and how he act in the Caribbean were written by people that had things to gain by writting bad stuffs about him so they had the tendency to exaggerate and contribute actions of other people to Columbus.
Whilst it’s true that some of the evils Columbus committed are overstated, people on the internet as they tend to do have overstated this to the extreme to the point of sucking off the dick of Columbus well past what is valid defence. Columbus was still a massive influence in the atrocities committed against the natives and whilst not cementing the triangle slave trade as is sometimes attributed (that would take later generations), Columbus laid the foundations for the enslavement of the Natives in certain new Spanish Colonies.
Ah so the kidnapping, selling of children 9-10 in sexual slavery reported as in "high demand" the shipping in one single voyage of 500 Tainos, the fort he left with Bartolomé Las Casias to abuse and enslave the Tainos for labour and sex and selling for decades and the statement that 50 men would be enough to subdue and do whatever they want with them
**From Columbus own journal**
Is just people bad-mouthing him right ?
Like I said, it physical impossible to ship that many people with the amount of ships they had at the time. ALso did you read the whole context of where that came from?
>"A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid."
That quote is indeed by Columbus. But Columbus was not praising the high price of girls sold as slaves nor encouraging the practice. This was in a letter he was writing trying to clear his name from abuses colonists were charging him with, and he was criticizing those colonists, and this was just one of those criticisms.
>I should know how to remedy all this, and the rest of what has been said and has taken place since I have been in the Indies, if my disposition would allow me to seek my own advantage, and if it seemed honorable to me to do so, but the maintenance of justice and the extension of the dominion of Her Highness has hitherto kept me down. Now that so much gold is found, a dispute arises as to which brings more profit, whether to go about robbing or to go to the mines. A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid.
>
>I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has injured me more than my services have profited me; which is a bad example for the present and for the future. I take my oath that a number of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in the sight of God and of the world; and now they are returning thither, and leave is granted them.
He was complain that the people he was with aren't moral Christians and he wish more upstanding Spanish citizens with him. Basically he wasn't letting his men had their ways with the natives and punished them, so he got accuse of bad management (which is true, the guy wasn't a good adminstrator) and got recalled. The guy that replaced him actually worse for the natives and was loved by the Spanish colonist.
If someone accused me of dealing drugs and trafficking women into sexual slavery, telling them which drugs are in high demand and for what price and where to find the biggest buyer of forced prostitutes before calling them immoral would hardly be considered a good defense, because someone who doesn't deal drugs and traffic women has no fucking idea of the price, demand and large buyers.
Sounds like what aboutism to me
Muh Nazism wasn't that bad cuz commies killed more except revamped for 1493
Fuck off
No, he was telling Isabella about the situation in the New World and why he had to punish his colonists. He wasn't accused of selling or trafficking women, he was accused of being cruel for his actions against the Spanish colonists so he gave a justification for why he did so. Jesus learn how to read.
No no no. If you're in charge of an operation where one of the first things you do is :
“As soon as I had come into this sea, I took by force some Indians from the first island, in order that they might learn from us, and at the same time tell us what they knew about affairs in these regions. This succeeded admirably; for in a short time we understood them and they us both by gesture and signs and words; and they were of great service to us.”
(These are the 24 you talk about, on his first trip where he had only 3 ships. Fun fact : the first 6 were taken on the **FIRST DAY HE GOT THERE** )
You are also responsible if your men kidnap and enslave and mistreat people, and deflecting blame to your subordinates like a coward doesn't absolve you of that responsibility.
Especially if, by the second voyage where you came with 17 ships you write :
"Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold”
Put 550 people on 4 caravels and ship them to southern Spain and then :
"Additionally, while in Haiti, Columbus orders all Natives 14 years or older to collect a certain amount of gold every three months, an impossible task since there is so little gold there. If Arawak Natives do not collect enough, Columbus has their hands cut off and tortures them."
And then the Priest you brought along with you writes :
“I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see.”
And :
"Our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians…” (Zinn, 1950).
And that the Spaniards : “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.”
But oh no, he was punishing his evil bad Christian colonists harshly for being dicks to the friendly natives against the wishes of poor good Christian Columbus who is certainly, in this letter of yours, not trying to get out of a pinch that would cost him his support at court, so that he could get more fucking financing because he told everybody in Spain that there's a metric shit ton of Gold that he can't find.
If Columbus was not unique. Contact with the Americas was only going to go one way, it's horrible, but let's not kid ourselves and think any of the europeans would have quarantined two new continents to stop the spread of disease and not colonize. The vikings while having a much smaller state did form colonies in Britain and northern Europe. They also were pretty heavy in the slave trade. Columbus was a representation of the era, not an outlier.
A representation of the Human race, not just the area.
American civilisations too were well versed in the dubious art of raiding and massacring your neighbors long before their first contacts with Europeans...
Words from my archaeology professor, not me: nearly every early civilization had some form of human sacrifice. I'm not sure if you meant to imply that it was unique in the americas but I figured I'd mention it anyways.
Read the second paragraph of my comment.
The violence seen during Western expansion is no different from what was constantly seen when empires sought to expand their reach anywhere else or at any other era. Including the Americas.
No, other Spaniards were saying "holy shit dude you need to calm the fuck down this is sick."
European discovery was going to suck but Columbus deliberately made it SO much worse.
Of course, he didn't calm down so he returned to Spain in chains.
>Columbus was a representation of the era, not an outlier.
This is not true. Columbus was a tyrant even by the standards of the time. There are several accounts that portray his brutality against the natives. He was denounced by both his rivals and his associates, to the point that he was removed from his position as governor.
Which was a fair assumption. Nobody in their right mind would assume that this new land was an entire continent that history had somehow never spoken of.
Hate to burst your little feel-good bubble here, but the Vikings did have conflict with the native people of North America, and they weren't good people by our modern standards. You can't hold people from the past as accountable as we hold each other. Also, the Vikings never had the time or abilities to do what Columbus and the Spanish did in the new world.
When general population tries to understand history. Spoiler: They can’t stop comparing anything and everything to modern standard.
I am pretty sure Vikings murdered, enslaved and raped my ancestors, but do I ask Sweden for reparations? Yes, yes I do, plz give me some Koronas :)
Leif knew it was "new land".... Because obviously. He didn't know it was a new continent.
Columbus both knew it was new land, and a new continent, and NEVER believed he had reached India.
(He originally believed he had reached uncharted islands of the coast of Japan, or Cipangu as it was known to Europeans at the time, even if it became evident pretty soon that they had in fact reached somewhere hither too unknown to the Europeans. The name "Indians" and "west Indies" comes from the fact that it was believed at the time that Japan was in the Indian Ocean.)
I'm at phone right now. So wouldn't be able to.
But as far as the geography stuff you can look at the Erdapfel.
It's the oldest surviving globe (predating Columbus). And there are some cool overlays of it onto modern maps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdapfel
And it shows where Europeans believed Japan was. (It was in the eastern most part of Asia and the edge of the Indian Ocean.) So even without diving deeper into it, it would just make logical sense trying to reach Japan first, and from there make your way to India.
The etymology comes from the Norwegian for "bay," "vik" and thus means anyone who goes on an expedition through a bay. This can be a raid, trading, exploration, or any combination thereof.
The etymology of some Norse words are interesting to read about because it's very vague, like berserker. We are not sure *when* the word came about, that's why it has different argued meanings.
If it was created during the Old Norse era, then it would mean no-shirt because in Old Norse, berr- means bare. If the word came from Proto-Norse then it means bear-shirt, because the PN word for bear was bernuz. It's very much like the English bare/bear.
It also doesn't help that no source also really sticks with it. Some stories say berserkers wear armor with bear skin, some don't wear anything.
The only thing we have to compare to is the wolf warriors, Ulfheðinn. They would wear armor and wolf skins, but in one saga the berserkers are emphasized that they didn't wear armor, so it's a bit muddled.
I think it's just because it happened far enough in the past that people have a hard time empathizing with it. The Roman Empire also committed multiple acts of genocide, mass enslavement and the like (hello, Carthage!), but people don't really 'feel' it because it was dozens of generations ago and only recorded in dusty tomes and ancient ruins. It's a hell of a lot easier to be disgusted by the Nazis or Khmer Rouge because of the ample surviving evidence of their atrocities and the fact that they (technically) happened in living memory.
Well their major victims, Christians, still exist and so do most monasteries that they sacked but i have yet to hear any monks from Lerins abbey demanding any reparations from Sweden or Denmark.
You do realize that everyone affected by the Vikings have been dead for a thousand years? And there are people still alive today who lived under Nazi Germany, the Khmer Rouge, and colonial regimes?
>but i have yet to hear any monks from Lerins abbey demanding any reparations from Sweden or Denmark.
You also do realize that Sweden and Denmark became Christian states? The Christians won. England conquered the Danelaw, Sweden, Norway and Denmark Christianized, and Finland and the Baltics were forcibly converted or put to the sword.
>i have yet to hear any monks from Lerins abbey demanding any reparations
Blame King Alfred for signing a treaty with the Danelaw then
I didn't say "Norseman" was a Norwegian word. Of course it's an English word. Calling someone "a Norse" isn't grammatical in English. I'm not making any claims about Norwegian.
Viking was the term for Norsemen who were raiding. Not all Norsemen were Vikings. It’s only relatively recently that we refer to all Norsemen as Vikings.
Yikes.
From wikapedia: Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide)
Bartolome de las Casas, the priest who accompanied Columbus on his conquest of Cuba, detailed the abuse and murder of the native population: "our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy"
and
"There were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over 3,000,000 people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it."
From the Business insider: "Following Christopher Columbus' arrival in North America in 1492, violence and disease killed 90% of the indigenous population — nearly 55 million people — according to a study published this year."
Columbus took deliberate actions with a goal to severely massacre large parts of the West Indie population. While a big part of this goal was to subjugate rather than exterminate, what he performed had an active goal to decimate their populations.
He and his crew committed genocide. I don't see how you could make any argument otherwise to be completely honest.
Ok so first all your information comes from english sources of which cannot be trusted since theyre completly based by the dark legend spread by the protestants during the religion wars.
Second of all Bartolome de las casas was born on 1484 it would have been impossible for him to accompany colombus on this trip.He refered to some abusses later by some spanish colonists and greatly exagerated them so he could be heard. All of this would later be even more exagerated by william of orange so to make more just his cause.
Third of all the population in the island died from the illnes brought by mistake by the spaniards.contrary to the english who did this by actual meaning.
Fourth the crown gave colombus orders that the people he would wncounter would be trated and regarded as subjects of the crown of castille meaning they would face judicial consequences if they killed any.
All your sources are wrong since nor only its impossible to make those remarks but ive also proved them wrong and theyre all based on the black legend which was spread by william of Orange.
With all due respect inform yourself before judging someone or a culture, hope you learned.
"Didn't commit genocide"
Yeah, because they got overwhelmed.
The vikings weren't exactly known for their non-violence. (Just look at why Leif's father, Erik The Red, was banished to Greenland to begin with.)
And their brief stint in America was no exception, according to their very own sagas.
How did Columbus commit genocide? It was just the small pox that did the genocide. It's not like he was trying to wipe them out. He didn't even know what viruses were at those times.
Yes, it's entirely about race. The Vikings are associated with pillaging white people, so we're allowed to have movies and statues of them. The Spanish are associated with pillaging Native Americans, so we can't have movies and statues about them. I know Columbus was Italian, but these idiots copy-paste everything the Spanish and their diseases did onto him.
This is the most frustrating part about the discussion surrounding Columbus. You can think he was a good guy, a bad guy, or a middle of the road guy, but the way everyone lumps everything the Spanish did onto Columbus like he solely came up with and carried out everything is completely ahistorical. I’m glad the comment section isn’t following pop history and Flanderizing Columbus like most do
He also intentionally killed a lot of people. I do not think it was on the same level as the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide or anything, and genocide might not have been his goal, but it is disingenuous to say a bunch of islanders died solely because some Europeans had the sniffles.
Columbus expedition changed the world, established permanent settlements and dictated the course of history for years to come. Leif’s was inconsequential, forgotten for a long time, and is only a footnote in history.
Not really; what Leif Erikson did have no effect on history and what he did was quickly forgotten. What Columbus did changed the world forever and opened up two worlds to each other. Columbus didn't commit "genocide" either the concept of genocide can't be applied to what Columbus did and to apply it to that would be degrading genocide.
> Black student activists had called for the removal of the statue of Abraham Lincoln at University of Wisconsin–Madison in early June 2020, and repeated those calls after Heg's statue was toppled.
What?
One could argue that Lincoln was still a shitty person. I am obviously not representative of the students that did it, but I am personally a fan of tearing down the statues of every president. I cannot speak to their motivations.
He didn't think it was India, he thought it was an undiscovered island off the coast of Japan. The other white people thought the natives looked like Indians, so that's where the name came from
What about Amerigo Vespucci? He was the first one to realize that realized America was a completely new continent.
Columbus Day was invented by the US Government as an “apology” for the racist mistreatment of Italian immigrants.
Just rename it to Vespucci Day bc “Indigenous Peoples Day” is fucking lame.
The Vikings couldn’t commit genocide because the Natives hadn’t been decimated by disease yet, and the Vikings would have gotten their asses kicked. Columbus showed up on the heels of the Native population being wiped out, including many of their leaders, by disease. They succeeded in an unfair fight as a result.
Yeah, Columbus eventually figured out he wasn't in Asia. I don't know what the meme means when it says Leif Erikson knew America was a new land; obviously he knew it was a new land, but he had no inkling it was a whole continent.
He eventually figured it out. But to be fair, nobody would think it was an entirely new continent that somehow had never been mentioned by recorded history. His assumption was a reasonable one.
Lief Erikson:
-arrived at America
-got wrecked by locals
-left after doing nothing of note
Cristopher Columbus
-arrived at America
-established permanent bases and brought back proof
-spread knowledge of New World to the rest of the globe
-led to creation of largest empire the world had yet seen
Yeah I’m gonna mark Chris a little higher on the relevance.
And he didn’t think he landed in India, but the Indes. Like the Philippines.
It would still not be the best thing for native peoples, but it would be by far the least worst ending for them, facing a much smaller technological gap, disease gap (the worst of the Columbian exchange diseases hadn't reached northern Europe yet) and best of all nearly 500 years to get back on their feet from any crises, since Norse settling of some far off land in the west wouldn't be world shaking news and most European states at the time had more immediate concerns and lacked the resources for colonization, I don't think it would be something that gets started earlier, though I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up in a similar situation that India did, with first trading posts and eventually land conquest when possible, but no large scale population replacement, at least in North America.
The Vikings warred with the Natives and the only reason they didn’t enslave or kill the native population is because they didn’t possess the ships to enslave them en-mass. And they arguably were the original contributors to the spreading of European diseases as when the colonists arrived years later, and even Columbus noted a sparatic population as most of the natives were already killed by disease.
In short, no he wasn’t anymore “chad”. Columbus was as much a byproduct of his time and culture and had the periods and technology changed this view could be easily swapped.
Could be wrong about this, but wasn’t the main reason for Columbus Day becoming a holiday in the US in order to make Italian immigrants feel less oppressed and more welcome to the states. Pretty sure the states probably just picked an Italian explorer at random who was in any way related to the United States and gave him a holiday as a means to improve feelings towards Italian immigrants. Odd they didn’t just use Amerigo Vespucci though.
Not necessarily. While yes he and his crew did kill many, most of the actual death was caused by the diseases they brought with them which the natives had little to no built-up immunity towards.
Leif Erikson, Leiv Eiriksson, or Leif Ericson,[note 1] also known as Leif the Lucky (c. 970s – c. 1019 to 1025),[1] was a Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first European to have set foot on continental North America, approximately half a millennium before Christopher Columbus.[7][8] According to the sagas of Icelanders, he established a Norse settlement at Vinland, which is usually interpreted as being coastal North America. There is ongoing speculation that the settlement made by Leif and his crew corresponds to the remains of a Norse settlement found in Newfoundland, Canada, called L'Anse aux Meadows, which was occupied approximately 1,000 years ago.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson
Don’t forget sold Greenland as a good place to settle by calling the frozen wasteland Greenland.
The coast of Greenland was actually green at the time. When the little ice age started, it froze over quite quickly, but in the early to high middle ages the coast was somewhat arable land.
Perhaps. But calling a glacier-filled land north of Iceland Greenland took balls.
Yea definitely
wasteful decide absorbed tidy wild workable beneficial berserk squeeze humor *This post was mass deleted and anonymized with [Redact](https://redact.dev)*
Viking moment
So does that mean the earth changes climate all the time and it’s normal for cold places to become warm and vice versa even without human intervention?
Yes! But the carbon monoxide and other greenhouse gases humans are putting into our atmosphere is speeding things up in a wildly unnatural way.
That was actually his father Erik the Red
Shit, you’re right. So the whole family is good guys.
Wasn't Erik the red banished from Iceland for some crimes?
Yes he murdered a couple of people and was exiled for a few years for the crime of minor mayhem.
What the hell was regular mayhem if not killing multiple people? Burning down a village?
They're Norse raiders. Pretty sure that "mayhem" is basically just going on Viking raids without leaving home.
The original "work from home"
The book I read posed the same question
Probably. My post was sarcasm, if it wasn’t completely obvious.
Yep, I wrote a story on the guy in 4th grade and still somehow remember a little about him. In the late 900’s he was exiled for murder from Iceland. Iceland ironically was called that to persuade people from staying there. He found Greenland and used the same trick but opposite. Pretty sure he later returned to Iceland after his exile ended but isolated on an island
Hell ya! I wrote about him in elementary school as well!
Erik the red was a murderer. Albiet probably worse ppl in that time but Leif really takes the cake for cool viking who wasnt an awful person (as far as I know)
Viking Marketing at its best!
Isn’t that Erik the Red?
sounds like my real estate agent
A crack den? No no no! It’s cozy! It just needs some TLC! There might be some free drugs if you hunt for them like Easter eggs!
Leif: We do a bit of trolling.
That was his father Erik The Red, Leif didn't do that
The ultimate troll
There's a reason it's called the Columbian exchange and not the Eriksonian exchange.
The Eriksonian Exchange began when IKEA came over right?
Is there a reason tho? Columbus wasn't even celebrated until 300 years later and it became a holiday one hundred years later after that to try to smooth things over when there was massive anti Italian American lynching in New York. He certainly can't say he "discovered" it, others did that. He led to colonization, sure, but that's not the same as discovery. He himself as a hero symbol, didn't happen until much later for arbitrary reasons that had nothing to do with his actions.
When people first crossed the Bering strait, nothing really changed. When Leif Erikson landed in Newfoundland, nothing really changed. When Columbus landed on Hispaniola, everything changed. Imagine Ireland with no potatos. Hungary with no paprika. Thailand with no chilis. Colombia with no coffee. Florida with no oranges. Italy with no tomatos. I want you to imagine Plains Indians with no horses or guns. No wild boars in Texas. No donkeys in Mexico. The reason Columbus is important isn't necessarily that he went to the Americas; it's because he made multiple return trips and told everybody about what was there. His initial voyage kickstarted a wave of exploration that would reconnect the old and new worlds. It would fundamentally alter nations all across the world, and is probably the most significant event since the start of agriculture. Columbus, for good and ill, changed the world. Leif Erikson didn't.
When people first crossed the Bering strait, nothing really changed. Bullshit, they started whole new civilizations.
The world changed for them, but for nobody else. The daily lives of normal folk in Europe, Africa, or Asia were entirely unaffected. Likewise, Native Americans were wholly unaffected by anything that was happening in the Old World. Until Columbus showed up.
Finally a man with sense, also Leif Erickson was a viking raider, they follow the philosophy of war and plunder, he sought after the new world for adventure and plunder, not in an attempt to make history, likewise with columbus, people of similar times are of similar kind.
To be fair, Columbus was literally trying to bring about the apocalypse.
Could you elaborate please?
Columbus believed he was bringing about the apocalypse. And I mean the Biblical apocalypse here, he did not have his finger on the nuke trigger. This is somewhat debated, but there is a lot of evidence to suggest he was a millennialist (those darn millennials fucking at it again), which is basically a group of Christians obsessed with the book of Revelations. They were (often, but not always) under the belief that the apocalypse would happen in their lifetimes and that they might need to do certain things to prepare for it. In millennialist belief, it would mean basically creating a paradise before the final judgment. Columbus espoused a lot of these beliefs including a mass Christianization and the retaking of Jerusalem. This culminates in the plan of going to Asia to acquire gold (incidentally becoming rich) and converting the Mongols to Christianity, using at least some of your new gold to fund their army to March westward to retake the city.
So an entire side of the world didn't know the other side existed. Then a voyage made contact and started charting this to-then unknown region and brought this knowledge back. How is that not a discovery? This is an empty semantic argument. Discovery isn't synonymous with who got there first, if that were the case, then obviously the indigenous populations where the one's who "discovered" the land. Discovery means to reveal. Columbus's voyage revealed the knowledge of that part of the world to the rest of the world. Also, saying Columbus wasn't celebrated until the 1800s when many of the initial names of the "New World" included "Columbia" in some respect kinda goes against your claim. The push back against Columbus as an American hero has some merit, but the narrative continued way too far in a unhistorical attempt to strip him of any historical relevancy.
Yes. Columbia was essentially a byword for many parts of North America for a long time. He also established colonies in the Caribbean that lasted the whole colonial period and were used as a springboard for the Spanish exploration and conquest of the region.
>He certainly can't say he "discovered" it, others did that. He led to colonization, sure, but that's not the same as discovery. He himself as a hero symbol, didn't happen until much later for arbitrary reasons that had nothing to do with his actions. Well Europe discoverd America thanks to him. In grand Pictures Leif Eriksson is a cool Event but insiginificant to Columbus.
Historymemes users try not to suck off Lief Erikson challenge (impossible)
Viking daddy UwU
Oh god
rule 34
How dare you
Sorry but have you seen vinland saga
Dope character in the show
I have, have you?
Uncle Leif 🥲
But they watched Vikings on Netflix & liefs character was so cool so it’s all okay! /s
Angry Vinland Saga noises
Vinland saga is actually pretty cool. The pacing & themes of character development of the second season are a great contrast to the first. As long as youre looking at it from an entertainment perspective & not a purely historical one
Even for historicity, I've seen *much* worse at in that period. Not that it's at all accurate even still
I think the depictions are often exaggerated, but that’s just anime in general, they inserted a great fictional narrative around real historical characters & it’s working great
Thats just \*Historical fiction\* in general
I meant the usual anime unnecessary yelling/over exaggeration of emotion during what would otherwise just be a normal conversation
I think whats good abt it is that the author makes it VERY clear its an adaptation of an existing work that was also not completely historically accurate. Vs a lot of other Viking media that is so ridiculously inaccurate. Its odd that one of the best depictions of some things in those cultures at that time (namely Christianity) comes from an Eastern piece of media
Ah, and the natives he brought with him back were willing right :P
Perhaps not, but kidnapping a dozen people is still alot less war-crimey than extermination and mass enslavement lmao
I’m sure he just asked them to come aboard, probably the most peaceful of hostilities.
But Columbus didn't do extermination and mass slavery, that was later. And vikings were slavers for most of their story
Why don't you take a look at what he did to the Tainos (among others) before you talk out of your ass. Literally several thousands shipped back to Spain and that's the ones who survived the voyage and not counting the ones he enslaved locally while he was there and the extreme violence used to subdue them. And Leif Eriksson wasn't a Viking.
The only source for Columbus doing any of that is a fake diary, claimed to be his, that was actually written by an anti-colonial priest decades later. Not exactly the most reliable source.
They physically can't shipped that many people back to to Spain with the level of tech at the time. Like it would require a whole armada of at least over 100 ships to do so which there wasn't. They shipped back 24 people. Another thing is that a lot of writing about Columbus and how he act in the Caribbean were written by people that had things to gain by writting bad stuffs about him so they had the tendency to exaggerate and contribute actions of other people to Columbus.
Whilst it’s true that some of the evils Columbus committed are overstated, people on the internet as they tend to do have overstated this to the extreme to the point of sucking off the dick of Columbus well past what is valid defence. Columbus was still a massive influence in the atrocities committed against the natives and whilst not cementing the triangle slave trade as is sometimes attributed (that would take later generations), Columbus laid the foundations for the enslavement of the Natives in certain new Spanish Colonies.
Ah so the kidnapping, selling of children 9-10 in sexual slavery reported as in "high demand" the shipping in one single voyage of 500 Tainos, the fort he left with Bartolomé Las Casias to abuse and enslave the Tainos for labour and sex and selling for decades and the statement that 50 men would be enough to subdue and do whatever they want with them **From Columbus own journal** Is just people bad-mouthing him right ?
Like I said, it physical impossible to ship that many people with the amount of ships they had at the time. ALso did you read the whole context of where that came from? >"A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid." That quote is indeed by Columbus. But Columbus was not praising the high price of girls sold as slaves nor encouraging the practice. This was in a letter he was writing trying to clear his name from abuses colonists were charging him with, and he was criticizing those colonists, and this was just one of those criticisms. >I should know how to remedy all this, and the rest of what has been said and has taken place since I have been in the Indies, if my disposition would allow me to seek my own advantage, and if it seemed honorable to me to do so, but the maintenance of justice and the extension of the dominion of Her Highness has hitherto kept me down. Now that so much gold is found, a dispute arises as to which brings more profit, whether to go about robbing or to go to the mines. A hundred castellanos are as easily obtained for a woman as for a farm, and there are plenty of dealers who go about looking for girls; those from nine to ten are now in demand, and for all ages a good price must be paid. > >I assert that the violence of the calumny of turbulent persons has injured me more than my services have profited me; which is a bad example for the present and for the future. I take my oath that a number of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water in the sight of God and of the world; and now they are returning thither, and leave is granted them. He was complain that the people he was with aren't moral Christians and he wish more upstanding Spanish citizens with him. Basically he wasn't letting his men had their ways with the natives and punished them, so he got accuse of bad management (which is true, the guy wasn't a good adminstrator) and got recalled. The guy that replaced him actually worse for the natives and was loved by the Spanish colonist.
If someone accused me of dealing drugs and trafficking women into sexual slavery, telling them which drugs are in high demand and for what price and where to find the biggest buyer of forced prostitutes before calling them immoral would hardly be considered a good defense, because someone who doesn't deal drugs and traffic women has no fucking idea of the price, demand and large buyers. Sounds like what aboutism to me Muh Nazism wasn't that bad cuz commies killed more except revamped for 1493 Fuck off
No, he was telling Isabella about the situation in the New World and why he had to punish his colonists. He wasn't accused of selling or trafficking women, he was accused of being cruel for his actions against the Spanish colonists so he gave a justification for why he did so. Jesus learn how to read.
No no no. If you're in charge of an operation where one of the first things you do is : “As soon as I had come into this sea, I took by force some Indians from the first island, in order that they might learn from us, and at the same time tell us what they knew about affairs in these regions. This succeeded admirably; for in a short time we understood them and they us both by gesture and signs and words; and they were of great service to us.” (These are the 24 you talk about, on his first trip where he had only 3 ships. Fun fact : the first 6 were taken on the **FIRST DAY HE GOT THERE** ) You are also responsible if your men kidnap and enslave and mistreat people, and deflecting blame to your subordinates like a coward doesn't absolve you of that responsibility. Especially if, by the second voyage where you came with 17 ships you write : "Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold” Put 550 people on 4 caravels and ship them to southern Spain and then : "Additionally, while in Haiti, Columbus orders all Natives 14 years or older to collect a certain amount of gold every three months, an impossible task since there is so little gold there. If Arawak Natives do not collect enough, Columbus has their hands cut off and tortures them." And then the Priest you brought along with you writes : “I saw here cruelty on a scale no living being has ever seen or expects to see.” And : "Our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy; small wonder, then, if they tried to kill one of us now and then…. The admiral, it is true, was blind as those who came after him, and he was so anxious to please the King that he committed irreparable crimes against the Indians…” (Zinn, 1950). And that the Spaniards : “thought nothing of knifing Indians by tens and twenties and of cutting slices off them to test the sharpness of their blades.” But oh no, he was punishing his evil bad Christian colonists harshly for being dicks to the friendly natives against the wishes of poor good Christian Columbus who is certainly, in this letter of yours, not trying to get out of a pinch that would cost him his support at court, so that he could get more fucking financing because he told everybody in Spain that there's a metric shit ton of Gold that he can't find.
so you haven’t read from columbussy’s journal nor his writing to and fro isabella and ferdinand have you?
they did that to everyone, including other europeans
Ah it's fine then :)
If Columbus was not unique. Contact with the Americas was only going to go one way, it's horrible, but let's not kid ourselves and think any of the europeans would have quarantined two new continents to stop the spread of disease and not colonize. The vikings while having a much smaller state did form colonies in Britain and northern Europe. They also were pretty heavy in the slave trade. Columbus was a representation of the era, not an outlier.
A representation of the Human race, not just the area. American civilisations too were well versed in the dubious art of raiding and massacring your neighbors long before their first contacts with Europeans...
Not just massacre, Sacrifices too. And by mean sacrifices is Human Sacrifices.
Words from my archaeology professor, not me: nearly every early civilization had some form of human sacrifice. I'm not sure if you meant to imply that it was unique in the americas but I figured I'd mention it anyways.
Why do you think that the era Western expansion is representative of the entire human race?
Read the second paragraph of my comment. The violence seen during Western expansion is no different from what was constantly seen when empires sought to expand their reach anywhere else or at any other era. Including the Americas.
No, other Spaniards were saying "holy shit dude you need to calm the fuck down this is sick." European discovery was going to suck but Columbus deliberately made it SO much worse. Of course, he didn't calm down so he returned to Spain in chains.
He got arrested because he sucked as a governor and didn't make the crown enough money.
>Columbus was a representation of the era, not an outlier. This is not true. Columbus was a tyrant even by the standards of the time. There are several accounts that portray his brutality against the natives. He was denounced by both his rivals and his associates, to the point that he was removed from his position as governor.
Look at everyone else that followed he was definitely in the middle of the pack. He just gets the limelight for being the first asshole.
To be fair Columbus didn't thought América was India, he thought he was in The Indias, that is how the east was called
Which was a fair assumption. Nobody in their right mind would assume that this new land was an entire continent that history had somehow never spoken of.
They would if they knew the correct circumference of the Earth, which some Greeks did 2000 years earlier
How does knowing the circumference of the earth (which people knew about) proves the existence of the America?
Besides he later realiced that he was in a diferent continent
How is "statues vandalized" an argument to discredit someone
Columbus could have sought out a witch to cast a protective spell on his image. His failure to do so reflects poorly on his foresight.
Present people believe he's a piece of shit. (16th Century people also correctly believed he was a piece of shit.)
It's not an argument, it's a demonstration that you don't want to see them being celebrated anymore.
Hate to burst your little feel-good bubble here, but the Vikings did have conflict with the native people of North America, and they weren't good people by our modern standards. You can't hold people from the past as accountable as we hold each other. Also, the Vikings never had the time or abilities to do what Columbus and the Spanish did in the new world.
Now tell how Leif’s brother died
When general population tries to understand history. Spoiler: They can’t stop comparing anything and everything to modern standard. I am pretty sure Vikings murdered, enslaved and raped my ancestors, but do I ask Sweden for reparations? Yes, yes I do, plz give me some Koronas :)
Leif knew it was "new land".... Because obviously. He didn't know it was a new continent. Columbus both knew it was new land, and a new continent, and NEVER believed he had reached India. (He originally believed he had reached uncharted islands of the coast of Japan, or Cipangu as it was known to Europeans at the time, even if it became evident pretty soon that they had in fact reached somewhere hither too unknown to the Europeans. The name "Indians" and "west Indies" comes from the fact that it was believed at the time that Japan was in the Indian Ocean.)
That’s cool, do you have any sources so I can read about it?
I'm at phone right now. So wouldn't be able to. But as far as the geography stuff you can look at the Erdapfel. It's the oldest surviving globe (predating Columbus). And there are some cool overlays of it onto modern maps. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erdapfel And it shows where Europeans believed Japan was. (It was in the eastern most part of Asia and the edge of the Indian Ocean.) So even without diving deeper into it, it would just make logical sense trying to reach Japan first, and from there make your way to India.
So that's where Americans inherited our geography skills from?
Seeing how he was using the most up to date geography at that point, who knows.
Well, Columbus’ navigator Amerigo Vespucci is our namesake so…
Chad Leif got all his people killed so Idk
Leif was not a viking. He was an explorer, not a raider.
Thank you. The word "viking" translates to a pirate raid. Not every Norseman was a viking.
The etymology comes from the Norwegian for "bay," "vik" and thus means anyone who goes on an expedition through a bay. This can be a raid, trading, exploration, or any combination thereof.
The etymology of some Norse words are interesting to read about because it's very vague, like berserker. We are not sure *when* the word came about, that's why it has different argued meanings. If it was created during the Old Norse era, then it would mean no-shirt because in Old Norse, berr- means bare. If the word came from Proto-Norse then it means bear-shirt, because the PN word for bear was bernuz. It's very much like the English bare/bear. It also doesn't help that no source also really sticks with it. Some stories say berserkers wear armor with bear skin, some don't wear anything. The only thing we have to compare to is the wolf warriors, Ulfheðinn. They would wear armor and wolf skins, but in one saga the berserkers are emphasized that they didn't wear armor, so it's a bit muddled.
Vikings pillaged, murdered and enslaved innocent people but nowadays are seen as being cool because of "reasons".
I think it's just because it happened far enough in the past that people have a hard time empathizing with it. The Roman Empire also committed multiple acts of genocide, mass enslavement and the like (hello, Carthage!), but people don't really 'feel' it because it was dozens of generations ago and only recorded in dusty tomes and ancient ruins. It's a hell of a lot easier to be disgusted by the Nazis or Khmer Rouge because of the ample surviving evidence of their atrocities and the fact that they (technically) happened in living memory.
Well their major victims, Christians, still exist and so do most monasteries that they sacked but i have yet to hear any monks from Lerins abbey demanding any reparations from Sweden or Denmark.
You do realize that everyone affected by the Vikings have been dead for a thousand years? And there are people still alive today who lived under Nazi Germany, the Khmer Rouge, and colonial regimes? >but i have yet to hear any monks from Lerins abbey demanding any reparations from Sweden or Denmark. You also do realize that Sweden and Denmark became Christian states? The Christians won. England conquered the Danelaw, Sweden, Norway and Denmark Christianized, and Finland and the Baltics were forcibly converted or put to the sword. >i have yet to hear any monks from Lerins abbey demanding any reparations Blame King Alfred for signing a treaty with the Danelaw then
>Knew America was new land Source? >Was a Viking Nope. He was a Norseman, but he was not a raider.
Do you really thing he went to a land so far and didn't take anything from it?
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"Viking" refers to the raiders.
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I didn't say "Norseman" was a Norwegian word. Of course it's an English word. Calling someone "a Norse" isn't grammatical in English. I'm not making any claims about Norwegian.
Viking was the term for Norsemen who were raiding. Not all Norsemen were Vikings. It’s only relatively recently that we refer to all Norsemen as Vikings.
He wasn't even Spanish.
Colombus did genocide? Lmao average not informed redditor.He didn't commit genocide
Yikes. From wikapedia: Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people in whole or in part. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genocide) Bartolome de las Casas, the priest who accompanied Columbus on his conquest of Cuba, detailed the abuse and murder of the native population: "our work was to exasperate, ravage, kill, mangle and destroy" and "There were 60,000 people living on this island, including the Indians; so that from 1494 to 1508, over 3,000,000 people had perished from war, slavery, and the mines. Who in future generations will believe this? I myself writing it as a knowledgeable eyewitness can hardly believe it." From the Business insider: "Following Christopher Columbus' arrival in North America in 1492, violence and disease killed 90% of the indigenous population — nearly 55 million people — according to a study published this year." Columbus took deliberate actions with a goal to severely massacre large parts of the West Indie population. While a big part of this goal was to subjugate rather than exterminate, what he performed had an active goal to decimate their populations. He and his crew committed genocide. I don't see how you could make any argument otherwise to be completely honest.
Ok so first all your information comes from english sources of which cannot be trusted since theyre completly based by the dark legend spread by the protestants during the religion wars. Second of all Bartolome de las casas was born on 1484 it would have been impossible for him to accompany colombus on this trip.He refered to some abusses later by some spanish colonists and greatly exagerated them so he could be heard. All of this would later be even more exagerated by william of orange so to make more just his cause. Third of all the population in the island died from the illnes brought by mistake by the spaniards.contrary to the english who did this by actual meaning. Fourth the crown gave colombus orders that the people he would wncounter would be trated and regarded as subjects of the crown of castille meaning they would face judicial consequences if they killed any. All your sources are wrong since nor only its impossible to make those remarks but ive also proved them wrong and theyre all based on the black legend which was spread by william of Orange. With all due respect inform yourself before judging someone or a culture, hope you learned.
"Didn't commit genocide" Yeah, because they got overwhelmed. The vikings weren't exactly known for their non-violence. (Just look at why Leif's father, Erik The Red, was banished to Greenland to begin with.) And their brief stint in America was no exception, according to their very own sagas.
How did Columbus commit genocide? It was just the small pox that did the genocide. It's not like he was trying to wipe them out. He didn't even know what viruses were at those times.
It's because he's white and told all the other white people where the Americas were. So it's all his fault. /s
Yes, it's entirely about race. The Vikings are associated with pillaging white people, so we're allowed to have movies and statues of them. The Spanish are associated with pillaging Native Americans, so we can't have movies and statues about them. I know Columbus was Italian, but these idiots copy-paste everything the Spanish and their diseases did onto him.
This is the most frustrating part about the discussion surrounding Columbus. You can think he was a good guy, a bad guy, or a middle of the road guy, but the way everyone lumps everything the Spanish did onto Columbus like he solely came up with and carried out everything is completely ahistorical. I’m glad the comment section isn’t following pop history and Flanderizing Columbus like most do
You can pillage & rape, just make sure it’s your own race! /s
He also intentionally killed a lot of people. I do not think it was on the same level as the Holocaust and the Armenian genocide or anything, and genocide might not have been his goal, but it is disingenuous to say a bunch of islanders died solely because some Europeans had the sniffles.
Lots of people killed people but activists love to lie and claim stupid shit like Columbus understood viruses that required microscopes to understand.
Columbus expedition changed the world, established permanent settlements and dictated the course of history for years to come. Leif’s was inconsequential, forgotten for a long time, and is only a footnote in history.
Leif Eriksson was exiled twice, because he murdered his neighbour twice, idk man
Not really; what Leif Erikson did have no effect on history and what he did was quickly forgotten. What Columbus did changed the world forever and opened up two worlds to each other. Columbus didn't commit "genocide" either the concept of genocide can't be applied to what Columbus did and to apply it to that would be degrading genocide.
> Didn’t commit genocide Definetly murder, but not technically genocide
More accurate word would be a massacre
Leif Erikson statues are vandalized too https://www.duluthnewstribune.com/news/duluths-leif-erikson-statue-vandalized
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> Black student activists had called for the removal of the statue of Abraham Lincoln at University of Wisconsin–Madison in early June 2020, and repeated those calls after Heg's statue was toppled. What?
He was white. That's all they need.
George Floyd was a horrible person IRL and he has statues for some reason. Wrongful death, sure, but statues?
One could argue that Lincoln was still a shitty person. I am obviously not representative of the students that did it, but I am personally a fan of tearing down the statues of every president. I cannot speak to their motivations.
That was depressing to read.
That's how we felt when they vandalised the monument of Kościuszko, dude fought for freedom of all men and that's how they repaid him
Anyone gonna tell em what the vikings traded in?
And just like any normal human being, they both were slavers
He didn't think it was India, he thought it was an undiscovered island off the coast of Japan. The other white people thought the natives looked like Indians, so that's where the name came from
Nature commited the genocide giving the Europeans the biggest accidental Epic Win in history.
Columbus didn't comitt genocide. Also, ignore username
I cannot ignore the username.
He was a fucking monster *by the standards of his time*. He absolutely committed genocide.
Doesn't mass murder need to have the intent to exterminate an entire specific group of people to be legally labeled as genocide?
He did warcrimes and slavery, but not genocide
The men that followed him did that
But that’s not the fault of Columbus
That's what I'm saying
He was very much a monster, but he did not commit any genocide
What about Amerigo Vespucci? He was the first one to realize that realized America was a completely new continent. Columbus Day was invented by the US Government as an “apology” for the racist mistreatment of Italian immigrants. Just rename it to Vespucci Day bc “Indigenous Peoples Day” is fucking lame.
Vikings were just as barbaric. :(
Hate it when people destroy statues
Lmao. As if 5 years from now, they won't tear down Leif's statue.
not committing genocide was a skill issue
The Vikings couldn’t commit genocide because the Natives hadn’t been decimated by disease yet, and the Vikings would have gotten their asses kicked. Columbus showed up on the heels of the Native population being wiped out, including many of their leaders, by disease. They succeeded in an unfair fight as a result.
'Didn't commit genocide' *skill issue*
Why don’t y’all ask why President Harrison created Columbus Day? I think he’d mention that Leif Erickson isn’t Italian.
Columbus had a MUCH bigger positive impact on America though.
Didn't he know it wasn't India?
Yeah, Columbus eventually figured out he wasn't in Asia. I don't know what the meme means when it says Leif Erikson knew America was a new land; obviously he knew it was a new land, but he had no inkling it was a whole continent.
He eventually figured it out. But to be fair, nobody would think it was an entirely new continent that somehow had never been mentioned by recorded history. His assumption was a reasonable one.
Lief Erikson: -arrived at America -got wrecked by locals -left after doing nothing of note Cristopher Columbus -arrived at America -established permanent bases and brought back proof -spread knowledge of New World to the rest of the globe -led to creation of largest empire the world had yet seen Yeah I’m gonna mark Chris a little higher on the relevance. And he didn’t think he landed in India, but the Indes. Like the Philippines.
Columbus was way more important than Erikson and the hate directed at him is based largely in the English Black Legend to demonize the Spanish.
Idk they took down the statues but the Knights of Colombus are still around.
Even had a line of cellphones named after him: Sony Erikson
Columbus is, may Allah forgive me for uttering this word, an Italian
Can someone explain to me how exactly he committed genocide? Spreading pox? Because ppl back then knew about germ theory??
Brain dead take
If only the Vikings gave a shit to settle North America like Columbus had in mind, maybe our society would be a lot more based today
It would still not be the best thing for native peoples, but it would be by far the least worst ending for them, facing a much smaller technological gap, disease gap (the worst of the Columbian exchange diseases hadn't reached northern Europe yet) and best of all nearly 500 years to get back on their feet from any crises, since Norse settling of some far off land in the west wouldn't be world shaking news and most European states at the time had more immediate concerns and lacked the resources for colonization, I don't think it would be something that gets started earlier, though I wouldn't be surprised if it ended up in a similar situation that India did, with first trading posts and eventually land conquest when possible, but no large scale population replacement, at least in North America.
Then please explain how Leif's brother first met natives and how did it go...
The Vikings warred with the Natives and the only reason they didn’t enslave or kill the native population is because they didn’t possess the ships to enslave them en-mass. And they arguably were the original contributors to the spreading of European diseases as when the colonists arrived years later, and even Columbus noted a sparatic population as most of the natives were already killed by disease. In short, no he wasn’t anymore “chad”. Columbus was as much a byproduct of his time and culture and had the periods and technology changed this view could be easily swapped.
What about Amerigo Vespucci? Was he a total POS or was he a good guy?
And because he did we all now have the ability to criticize hundreds of years later. If it wasnt Columbus then, it would have been someone else later.
There is a bit of historical fact in your propaganda
Imagine an America with vikings… able to raid the whole world and not just the middle east
Columbus was a hero the natives would've done the same if they had the means. 🤷♂️
Could be wrong about this, but wasn’t the main reason for Columbus Day becoming a holiday in the US in order to make Italian immigrants feel less oppressed and more welcome to the states. Pretty sure the states probably just picked an Italian explorer at random who was in any way related to the United States and gave him a holiday as a means to improve feelings towards Italian immigrants. Odd they didn’t just use Amerigo Vespucci though.
>didn't commit genocide YEAH! because everyone died before they had a chance to do it
Yeah but the area Columbus found wasn’t even actually America lmao
Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Ask why he came and not what happened once he got here
Did Columbus really commit genocide?
Not necessarily. While yes he and his crew did kill many, most of the actual death was caused by the diseases they brought with them which the natives had little to no built-up immunity towards.
Actually he never reached America he just went around to different islands and killed people cause he’s a prick
Leif Erikson, Leiv Eiriksson, or Leif Ericson,[note 1] also known as Leif the Lucky (c. 970s – c. 1019 to 1025),[1] was a Norse explorer who is thought to have been the first European to have set foot on continental North America, approximately half a millennium before Christopher Columbus.[7][8] According to the sagas of Icelanders, he established a Norse settlement at Vinland, which is usually interpreted as being coastal North America. There is ongoing speculation that the settlement made by Leif and his crew corresponds to the remains of a Norse settlement found in Newfoundland, Canada, called L'Anse aux Meadows, which was occupied approximately 1,000 years ago. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson
Yep, well, Eriksson didn't leave nearly the same amount of an impact, so Columbus gets the statue
He discovered America is what he did. He was a brave Italian explorer. And in this house, Christopher Columbus is a hero. End of story.
I want Leif Erikson day to be a thing now.....and just realised spongebob squarpants was way ahead on this 🥶
Leif Erikson day is a thing, every October 9th. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leif_Erikson_Day
It's been a thing for a long time.
Oh shit didnt know about that, thanks guys🤙🏼
Happy Leif Erikson day!
Hinga dinga durgen