Vikings on the Mississippi?

[Baz Dane]

"A group of volunteers cleaning up the shores of the Mississippi River near the biggest city in Tennessee, have stumbled across the remains of an ancient boat encrusted in mud. A team of acheologists from the University Of Tennessee that was rapidly called to the site, confirmed that the ship was most certainly a Viking knarr..."

http://worldnewsdailyreport.com/usa-viking-ship-discovered-near-mississipi-river/

[Harte]

You are not advancing the cause by posting satire from World News Daily, you know.

You only encourage the ignorant with this.

Harte

PS - I'm in Memphis.

[Rafterman]

Consider the source.

[Baz Dane]

And correct you both are...

World News Daily Report has a disclaimer saying it doesn’t publish real news stories and shouldn’t be taken seriously.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n3/876889-viking-ship-discovered-near-mississippi-river-in-memphis-tennessee-is-fake/

That's just stupid ... Making a serious looking site, even titled "World News Daily Report" but it's nothing but admitted lies.

Allowed in the name of freedom I guess. Damn!

[Harte]

Don't worry.

There are still serious news sites you can use.

Try The Onion! LOL

Harte

[Irna]

The actual Viking boat shown on the photograph is from Roskilde in Denmark: http://www.archeurope.com/index.php?page=roskilde-6

[The_Spartan]

are people actually taking the stuff on World News Daily as real fact????????

[Bennu]

Good thing you put a question mark after the title of this thread. You gotta watch out for those fake news sites.

[Gingitsune]

Let's try to salvage the topic...

Did Vikings made it to Mississippi?

First, a map of Vikings progression in Europe and North Atlantic:

in green, frequently raided areas with little to no settliement

in deep red, 8th century settlements

in bright red, 9th century settlements

in orange, 10th century settlements

in kaki, 11th century settlements

As we see, Northern Mississippi is about the same latitude as Northern Morocco, so no problem here. Temperature wise, North America's East coast down to Florida is colder than Africa at the same lattitude, but this fit the Vinkings' tastes better. We also see that they stay close to the ocean, unless we are talking about islands or penisulas. The only exception being the Rus' States were Vikings had strong support from the local population.

Below, a map of the route Vikings used to reach strategic place in Europe and Asia:

As we see, they used the river system to reach body of water across the continent, up to the Caspian Sea. The Mississippi River is a likely place to find Viking evidence, along with the East Coast.

It get's a bit tricky when we look at the numbers from Greenland. It seems at its peek, the settlement had between 2,000 and 10,000 inhabitants, the lower number being more probable, (maybe 4,000 to 5,000 realistically). They could hardly make a second Greenland, let alone a second Iceland worth of settlers. Also, they had only between 1000 to 1300 to do anything, past that Greenland is declining and the Little Ice Age coming slowly. So a few hundred of explorers/settlers is as much as they could afford at any time. If there were settlements in North America outside L'Anse-aux-Meadows, they must have been few and far between.

It also seems to be commercial outposts in Northern Canada, maybe up to half a dozen. They traded for walrus tusks and polar bear hides to cover Greenland expenses. Maybe there's something like that around Mississippi as well.

[kmt_sesh]

The actual Viking boat shown on the photograph is from Roskilde in Denmark: http://www.archeurop...page=roskilde-6

Excellent sleuthing, Irna. I was tempted to hunt down the source of that photo and you saved me the time and effort.

[+Hammerclaw]

The forum posts seem strangely similar to a lot of the ones here.