POTUS TRUMP AIMS TO ACQUIRE GREENLAND FOR HEMISPHERE DEFENSE. 1/4: American Vikings: How the Norse Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America by Martyn Whittock (Author)
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.6 • 2.7K Ratings
🗓️ 6 April 2025
⏱️ 11 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.
1777 WIKHEMINA SHIPWRECK GREENLAND
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS, I on the World. I'm John Batchel. It is the late 8th century in Europe, and a new phenomenon |
| 0:08.1 | sweeps over what is now the United Kingdom in Ireland, which is something that we think of as |
| 0:14.3 | Vikings more properly, they're Norsemen. They came to murder. They came to steal. They came to wipe out whatever was there. In England's case, it was the Anglo-Saxons left over from the exit of the Romans. And they came to stay eventually. And then they became restless. A new book, American Vikings, How the North Sailed into the Lands and Imaginations of America. |
| 0:41.0 | Martin Whittock is the author. I congratulate him, and we begin immediately with the economics of Vikings |
| 0:48.7 | and the meaning of the word Vikings, and what propelled men and women, to quote the Iliad, their dark boats, |
| 1:01.2 | their shallow boats, what propelled them to sail west and west and west into what becomes |
| 1:07.6 | the new world? |
| 1:09.3 | Martin, congratulations and good evening. |
| 1:11.4 | I ask the first question that everybody needs to understand. |
| 1:14.8 | What does Viking mean? |
| 1:16.4 | Where does it come from? |
| 1:17.4 | Good evening to you. |
| 1:19.1 | Good evening. |
| 1:19.8 | Thank you for having me on the show. |
| 1:21.9 | Well, Viking is more something that you did than what you were, |
| 1:32.2 | although today it's become the label of choice to describe Scandinavians in the so-called Viking Age. And I do explain this in the book that the snappy |
| 1:38.6 | title American Vikings should actually probably be better to be phrased as North American Norse, but it doesn't |
| 1:47.1 | quite have the same impact. And today it's become a label of choice by which we use to |
| 1:53.8 | describe the entire phenomenon, the entire society of Scandinavia, between the 8th century and about |
| 1:59.2 | 1,100. But Viking itself was something more that |
| 2:02.6 | you did. There are various debates as to where the word actually comes from itself. Some think |
| 2:07.9 | it's related to an area of Norway. Some have linked it to areas of later Iceland showing this |
... |
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