‘The alternative history of Iceland’ podcast: ‘What if Vikings had colonized North America?’
There is little arguing with the maxim attributed to Oscar Wilde that Icelanders are the smartest people in the world, they found America but had the good sense to lose it again. Wisely or not, how exactly did Icelanders manage to misplace a whole continent? Did they do it on purpose? Why didn’t Icelanders settle in North America as later Europeans were to do? What if a religious war in Iceland in the year 1000 had induced them to do just that?
What if Icelanders had settled in North America during the Viking Age? What if Iceland was wiped out by a volcano and the survivors moved to Denmark? What if Iceland had been occupied by the Nazis instead of the Allies? What if the Nordic Countries had united? And what if the economic collapse had been averted? Listen to historians Valur Gunnarsson and Jón Trausti Sigurðarson talk about Icelandic history as it happened and what could have been. Produced by Sindri Freyr Steinsson.
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