http://www.usnews.com/usnews/doubleissue/mysteries/columbus.htm

I have also long been annoyed by people who have a it-can’t-be-done attitude, who tend to dismiss amazing examples of human courage and tenacity as being “fiction.” Often they use science to do this, when science was never intended to be used that way.

For example: The word “Russia” came from the root “Rus.” Who were the Rus? The Rus were Vikings, who invaded that area and set up a kingdom, long ago. The invasion is interesting, for their long boats did not come up the Volga River from the sea. (After all, the Volga drains into the Caspian, which is landlocked.) Rather their ships came down the Volga.

How the heck does a fleet come down a river from the headwaters? Well, those crazy Vikings picked the entire fleet up and carried it overland from another river, that drained into the Baltic, to the Volga River.

How do we know this crazy deed isn’t just some fabricated saga invented by some boozing dude who glorifies Vikings? Apparently there is enough written history to verify that it happened.

However suppose some achademic demanded archeological evidence the Vikings had hauled an entire fleet overland. Could proof be provided? I doubt it. After a thousand years, the footprints people leave behind tend to fade away.

Why on earth would an achademic want to prove “it can’t be done?” I have no idea. Maybe it makes them feel better about never daring to leave their armchair. However when I see climate scientists prove there never was a MWP period, I feel I am seeing something I’ve seen before.

I have become resigned to the fact it is difficult to prove some things. There is a world of difference between what is humanly provable and what is humanly possible. However, while accepting that fact, I am never surprised when people ignore those who say “it can’t be done,” and do amazing things.

For example, when Mr. Watts started this website, I’ll bet there were those who said, “It can’t be done. You will never reach more than a handful of people.”

Pfff, forget these historians and their anecdotes. I’ve got a tree here that tells me Greenland was frozen then.

That’s not a tree. It’s just a hockey stick; a crappy, broken hockey stick. How many times do we have to break it!

just about the time Europeans were ‘discovering’ the Americas for what, they thought, was the first time.

I was watching a show on Viking in Minnesota a few weeks ago on the History Channel. One man said it was always believed that the Vikings were the first Europeans on the North American continent until about the middle 1880′s. The, he said, the Italians claimed credit by changing the story of Columbus’ journey.

The show went on to say that there was some connection between the Knights Templar, the Vikings, and Christopher Columbus. One man said the symbol on Nina was a Knights of Templar symbol and Columbus was really coming to America to carry on some unfinished mission of the Knights of the Templar.

Nina ship symbol :

http://www.johntoddjr.com/156%20Templar/images/04%20boat.jpg

Knights of Templar symbol :

http://www.knightstemplar-uk.co.uk/creditcard.JPG

Obviously Greenland was much farther south a few centuries ago. No other explanation is possible, a least none that I can imagine.

1000 years ago? Come come now John.

Imagine this : it was much warmer 1000 years ago.

It originated in China after crop failure due to bad climate after volcanism in the area.

It is interesting that Chinese soldiers and explorers from the Ming Dynasty may have been in Canada at the same time. It is believed that a Canadian Indian killed Lief Erikson’s brother in a skirmish on the Eastern coast of Canada. That Canadian Indian may have been a Ming soldier (anecdotal, from art work).

As I recall the hazy memories of 40+ years ago education: There was speculation that the Iroquois were at least partially of European decent. They made “long houses” in the boxy european style, and had somewhat European features. There was also, IIRC, a small tribe of blue eyed “indians” somewhere near Virginia coastline. Since the blue eyed gene evolved around the Baltic Sea and grades out in more or less linear proportion with distance from there, blue eyes in American Indians means somebody traveled… Finally, I once worked with a lady who announced she was headed off to a “tribal reunion”. I commented that her tribe had rather western features (she looked fairly European to me and had green eyes, a brown blue blend of genes…) Her reply was a “thank you” that I had not denigrated her claim to be Indian as so many others had, and recounted that her tribe had always had that “look” and it was fairly common in the East Coast tribes.

So, for my money, your answer is simple. They came to North America and after a few hundred years of intermarriage were the “European looking Indians” you see in the old pictures. When it became “unpopular” to be an indian, many simply chose to “pass” as white and blend in. I’ve also met a guy who looked very European. Stated he was 1/2 Danish and 1/2 pure indian (again from some eastern tribe who’s name I’ve forgotten) but that his mother had decided to ‘pass a white’ back in the 19teens because she could.

So my guess is that they are wandering around various parts of North America today…

“- After the bubonic plague in Norway and Iceland around 1400 there was lots of space left over, it wasn’t a problem to go back for these settlers. Those who went back, were the young. The kids went with them”

Absolutely fascinating. So when it was warm population boomed and folks moved out to the newly hospitable areas. When the cold and disease came back, the younger folks moved on again; but this time back to Norway. The older folks did what they usually do, stay to die in their familiar home where they expect to reach their natural end before it gets too bad; but encouraging their children on to a better life.

Simple. Elegant in its completeness. Perfectly rational. And pretty much the same as my family story (modulo the cold, snow, etc.). The lineage moves backward in time from coastal California, to Iowa, to England Ireland and Germany, then on to “somewhere viking” … with parents staying in their home, but young adults moving on “to a better life”. My son has been talking of Australia… My daughter is interested in Ireland…

I think I know what happened to the Vikings of Greenland. The same thing that happened to a lot of Vikings. They were just passing through, but slowly and generationally. The Viking Ship is a generational ship…

So, when I first heard of somebody trying to ‘get rid of the Mediaeval Warm Period’, I knew that we were in a space of propaganda and suppression of truth, rather than science. Thank you to WUWT and its contributors for broadening my understanding of these things so much.

I bought today’s Times (what you call the London Times); this is the one in which Lord Stern says we must all become vegetarians. That means the Global Warmists taking on the farmers of the developed world. Bring it on.

“The first European settlers in North America were Icelanders.”

Icelanders weren’t Norsemen?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norsemen

The wedding took place 16. September 1408 between Sigrid Bjørnsdatter and Thorsteinn Olafsson. The wedding was “successful”. Then there was silence for 450 years.

Carsten, correlation is not causeation, I suggest that 450 years of silence made the marriage sucessful.