FIRST EUROPEANS: 3/4: American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America by Martyn Whittock (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 29 July 2024
⏱️ 14 minutes
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Summary
https://www.amazon.com/American-Vikings-Sailed-Imaginations-America/dp/1639365354
The geographical reach of the Norse was extraordinary. For centuries medieval sagas, first recorded in Iceland, claimed that Vikings reached North America around the year 1000. This book explores that claim, separating fact from fiction and myth from mischief, to assess the enduring legacy of this claim in America. The search for “American Vikings” connects a vast range of different areas; from the latest archaeological evidence for their actual settlement in North America to the myth-making of nineteenth-century Scandinavian pioneers in the Midwest; and from ancient adventurers to the political ideologies in the twenty-first century. It is a journey from the high seas of a millennium ago to the swirling waters and dark undercurrents of the online world of today.
1904
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ah, she's brilliant. Miss, I finally got plans out the group chat. We get it. Four votes for a festival, |
| 0:06.0 | three for a city break. It's hard to adhere to everyone's needs. There's Betty with her oversized tent, |
| 0:10.7 | Sarah and her six foot eight boyfriend. |
| 0:13.1 | All right. |
| 0:14.0 | Roger Junior and his dog, Roger Senior. |
| 0:16.8 | And don't get us started on Mel. |
| 0:19.4 | But, like a marriage counselor, she's the one keeping things together. |
| 0:22.6 | All aboard Miss, I finally got plans out the group chat. Keep everyone's plans alive when you travel |
| 0:27.4 | with us. P. and Dau Ferris, there is another way. |
| 0:30.2 | I'm John Batchew with Martin Wittick. His new book is American Vikings, how the North sailed into the lands and imaginations of America. |
| 0:37.0 | The books to depend upon are Eric the Red Saga in the 13th century and Saga of Greenlanders in the 14th century. |
| 0:44.7 | And boy are they dramatic. |
| 0:46.4 | Martin is this wonderful to speak of the drama presented. |
| 0:51.8 | Men and women, a Lady Macbeth figure, you've mentioned her, Freitas, daughter of |
| 0:56.0 | Eric the Red. And then the men come and go, but there are not enough women for them. |
| 1:02.2 | More tension. |
| 1:03.6 | They are looking, however, always for new lands. |
| 1:07.2 | They're looking for timber that goes back to Greenland |
| 1:09.8 | because timber is in short supply in Greenland. And we come to a place that has been identified |
| 1:16.2 | over these last two centuries as a possible outpost, a base for Ereichsen and his crew. |
| 1:26.0 | Laws Almeadow, where is that, Martin? |
| 1:29.0 | Loves on meadow is in Newfoundland, in northern Newfoundland, and excavations there in the 1960s have |
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