1. US History - Icelandic Vikings Reach America (1000) — Transcript

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1. 0:00All right, let's start with our first
2. 0:02historic event which is the Icelandic
3. 0:04Vikings reaching America around the year
4. 0:061000. For this event, we'll discuss four
5. 0:08different things. Firstly, um some
6. 0:11basics, so who, when, where, what, why,
7. 0:13and so on. Secondly, uh how we know
8. 0:16this. Thirdly, how do we know that it's
9. 0:18real? And then finally, we'll talk a
10. 0:20little bit more about the influence that
11. 0:22the Vikings have on today's society. All
12. 0:25right, starting at the beginning, who,
13. 0:27when, where, and so on and so on. So,
14. 0:30uh, you can see in this map that
15. 0:34Icelandic Vikings, um, under the
16. 0:36leadership of a guy called Life Ericson,
17. 0:38whose name you can see right here,
18. 0:40traveled, uh, from Iceland underneath
19. 0:42Greenland, uh, to the North American
20. 0:45continent, not specifically America, but
21. 0:47North America for sure. Um, they
22. 0:50traveled there on these raggedy looking
23. 0:53wooden boats called long ships. Uh, I
24. 0:55don't know how this is not a boat that I
25. 0:58would like to be caught on for trans
26. 1:00oceanianic travel. It doesn't even have
27. 1:03like a roof on top of it, but they
28. 1:05managed to do it nonetheless. Um, they
29. 1:08got there and then founded a town they
30. 1:10called Finland, which today is in a
31. 1:13place that we know as Antso in New
32. 1:16Foundland, Canada. Um, however, back
33. 1:19then they called it Vinland. Um, what
34. 1:22can we learn from that name? Well, vin
35. 1:24is an old Norse word for vine. Um, this
36. 1:29would be a grape vine and reank in
37. 1:32Dutch. Uh, why is that significant? It
38. 1:34isn't really, except for the fact that,
39. 1:36um, it tells us something about the
40. 1:38location of Finland. Uh, vines only grow
41. 1:40in very, very fertile land. So, wherever
42. 1:43Finland was, if we wanted to find it, um
43. 1:46it was in an area that um where farming
44. 1:51worked really well because of the
45. 1:52fertile soil. Okay, so that was part
46. 1:54one. Part two, uh is how do we know all
47. 1:57of this? So, we are not Icelandic
48. 2:00Vikings. It is no longer the year 1000.
49. 2:02How come we know that at some point um a
50. 2:05Icelandic Viking managed to travel
51. 2:07across the ocean and founded some town
52. 2:09called Finland? uh well because the
53. 2:11Icelandic wrote about it quite
54. 2:13extensively in their sagas. So you know
55. 2:16uh the word saga I think in Dutch you
56. 2:18studied mitten and sag and so myths and
57. 2:21sagas. Uh the Icelandic have a long
58. 2:24tradition of writing down stories that
59. 2:25capture their history. One of these
60. 2:28sagas is um known as the Vinland saga.
61. 2:32Uh what you can see here is a version of
62. 2:34that in manga. We have that at school
63. 2:37should you be interested in it. So they
64. 2:38wrote about it. Um, up until the 1960s
65. 2:42that was kind of all we had. They wrote
66. 2:44about it. Did it actually happen? Is it
67. 2:46just people making up stories or not?
68. 2:49Um, but in uh in I think 1966 people
69. 2:52discovered this Vinland the way you see
70. 2:54it in uh this picture. Did we know for
71. 2:58sure that it was that? Not necessarily.
72. 3:01Uh that would come later. Um,
73. 3:05that brings me to the third part of this
74. 3:08uh event, which is how do we know that
75. 3:10what you're looking at in this picture
76. 3:12is actually the same place as the
77. 3:14Vikings referred to as Vinland. Uh, we
78. 3:16do know that now because scientists
79. 3:19managed to carbon date the wood um to
80. 3:21the year 121. So, this wood, whatever it
81. 3:26is, um, it fits in terms of time frame.
82. 3:29It has been there for a really long
83. 3:30time. Um, and again that was kind of all
84. 3:33we had until 2023 when uh they did uh
85. 3:38detailed work on this wood and
86. 3:42discovered that um
87. 3:46it has to be attributed to Vikings
88. 3:48because it shows evidence of cutting and
89. 3:50slicing. So these lines that you see
90. 3:51there, um that means that this wood was
91. 3:55or had to be uh sliced with a blade of
92. 3:58metal. Uh and metal would be the key to
93. 4:00everything here because it's a material
94. 4:02that's simply not produced by an
95. 4:04indigenous population. So whoever put
96. 4:06that wood there was not indigenous to uh
97. 4:09the North American continent. Um then
98. 4:12finally, we've gotten to uh point four,
99. 4:15which is um what's the influence on
100. 4:17today? You can see this in a lot of
101. 4:20societies that whoever invaded them in
102. 4:23the past, if those people stayed for a
103. 4:25long time, you can still see the
104. 4:26influence of their culture today. For
105. 4:28example, here um the Romans invaded and
106. 4:32you can still see traces of that in for
107. 4:34example our language, in our
108. 4:35architecture, in our culture and so on.
109. 4:38Um Columbus's arrival, which is the next
110. 4:41event we'll be talking about, in the
111. 4:43Americas, also still has a huge
112. 4:45influence on today. If Columbus hadn't
113. 4:46landed, it would be a different world
114. 4:48altogether. In this case, for the
115. 4:50Icelandic Vikings, they don't really
116. 4:52have an influence on today because they
117. 4:54didn't stay very long. Uh they stayed
118. 4:56there for one maybe two generations, but
119. 4:59they never managed to make a life for
120. 5:01themselves um separately from um
121. 5:06Iceland. So after two generations or so
122. 5:08they just decided to go back and they
123. 5:11didn't really have any influence on the
124. 5:13native population or culture or language
125. 5:15or whatever beyond that. So this is
126. 5:18about it for Icelandic Vikings reach
127. 5:21America.