EU Members : Your view on the UK leaving

[IndiraLightfoot]

We would all be speaking Danish (since the "Swedish" vikings were mostly about eastward trade), for starters!

 

And my gut feeling tells me that what came to be the British Isles, Ireland, and Germany in the early 1800s would have been more or less Denmark. The same goes for the Netherlands and perhaps a substantial chunk of France as well.

 

Imagine a commonwealth based on the Danish monarchy. Everybody would be dealing in their crowns currency, and they would surely have been very successful globally - given their fantastic seamanship. We'd be drooling over smørrebrød all day (those special sandwiches are delicious).

 

Well, a very huge island still is Danish IIRC: Greenland.

Edited June 20, 2016 by IndiraLightfoot

[Nonek]

Perhaps the colony in Greenland might not have failed given such an alternate history, and the USA might have emerged in an entirely different fashion. The United States of Vinland?

 

Edit: Good Lord! Imagine how terrible the pirates and privateers would have been in the Age of Sail if Britain were bolstered by the Dutch and Scandinavians. Canute's claim would have been no boast.

Edited June 20, 2016 by Nonek

[IndiraLightfoot]

I've always wondered what would have happened if that Leif Eriksson had made that beachhead of his last. If it had grown, oh my!

The same goes for that Greenland colony, but the environment was certainly against them:

An interesting excerpt from here: http://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/

"Of the first 24 boatloads of land-hungry settlers who set out from Iceland in the summer of 986 to colonize new territory explored several years earlier by the vagabond and outlaw, Erik the Red, only 14 made it, the others having been forced back to port or lost at sea. Yet more brave souls, drawn by the promise of a better life for themselves, soon followed. Under the leadership of the red-faced, red-bearded Erik (who had given the island its attractive name, the better to lure settlers there), the colonists developed a little Europe of their own just a few hundred miles from North America, a full 500 years before Columbus set foot on the continent. They established dairy and sheep farms throughout the unglaciated areas of the south and built churches, a monastery, a nunnery, and a cathedral boasting an imported bronze bell and greenish tinted glass windows.

The Greenlanders prospered. From the number of farms in both colonies, whose 400 or so stone ruins still dot the landscape, archaeologists guess that the population may have risen to a peak of about 5,000. Trading with Norway, under whose rule they eventually came, the Greenlanders exchanged live falcons, polar bear skins, narwahl tusks, and walrus ivory and hides for timber, iron, tools, and other essentials, as well luxuries such as raisins, nuts, and wine."

"As the Greenlanders' isolation from Europe grew, they found themselves victims of a steadily deteriorating environment. Their farmland, exploited to the full, had lost fertility. Erosion followed severe reductions in ground cover. The cutting of dwarf willows and alders for fuel and for the production of charcoal to use in the smelting of bog iron, which yielded soft, inferior metal, deprived the soil of its anchor of roots. Pollen analysis shows a dramatic decline in these species during the Viking years. In addition, livestock probably consumed any regenerating scrub. Overgrazing, trampling, and scuffing by the Norsemen's sheep, goats and cattle, the core of the island's livelihood, left the land debased.

Greenland's climate began to change as well; the summers grew shorter and progressively cooler, limiting the time cattle could be kept outdoors and increasing the need for winter fodder. During the worst years, when rains would have been heaviest, the hay crop would barely have been adequate to see the penned animals through the coldest days. Over the decades the drop in temperature seems to have had an effect on the design of the Greenlanders' houses."

Edited June 20, 2016 by IndiraLightfoot

[JadedWolf]

Considering the closest language to how they spoke in those days is current day Icelandic, my tongue is quite happy that the above never happened.

[Gorth]

and they would surely have been very successful globally - given their fantastic seamanship.

I know the Brits love singing "Britannia rule the waves...", but truth is, it's Denmark who does it these days. Show me a harbour where you can't find Maesrk ships and containers

[IndiraLightfoot]

And those Maersk ships are really something to fear too - I mean, they are humongous.