Your country's greatest achievment

[Caliga]

edit- checking up Iceland does have a weird alternative I; Í. But still....would this have been totally prevailant at the time? And with old texts can you be sure of such subtle differences in letters?
Spelling was rarely the most consistant of things way back then.

The main problem with this interpretation is found if you actually read the Vinland Sagas.

It plainly states (paraphrasing) that "He called this area Vinland BECAUSE GRAPES CAN BE FOUND THERE."

I'm not sure why someone would name a place "Meadow-land" because grapes grow there. 

[Crazy_Ivan80]

That's a matter of opinion, son.

Well it was for Burgundy

probably was for the whole of Europe as a continued and consolidated Burgundy might just as well have kept the French and Germans separated.
Oh well, we'll never know.
for Belgium it's probably the fact that it actually exists.

[Caliga]

probably was for the whole of Europe as a continued and consolidated Burgundy might just as well have kept the French and Germans separated.

Why would we have wanted that?

[Valmy]

Oh, right.  I don't know much about these conflicts but I can't imagine the Turks had a strong presence in the Indian Ocean... did they?

Well you have to understand the situation:  The Turks were the rulers of the Arabs and they were the dominant traders in the Indian Ocean.  Most of the fighting was done by the Egyptians since the Turks were not really sailors but essentially it was Portugal versus the Muslim world and the Portuguese won...though to be fair the Ottomans were starting to get the upper hand before Suleiman died.  The defeats to the Portuguese were a major embarrasment to the Ottomans, it is one of only two defeats the Turks suffered between the Battle of Ankara and Lepanto.

So...the Turks had a strong presence only if you consider being the dominant power in the Indian Ocean a strong presence.

[Viking]

The Vin=Pleasant suggestion seems a bit strange to me. I included it above because I can't disprove it and I haven't seen anything authoritative debunking of it. This whole issue comes down to the grape issue. In the text of The Greenlander Saga two slaves sent out to scout the surroundings come back with grapes. But do remember that Thorfinn Karlsefni (the leader of the settlement expedition) was Icelandic and had never been to europe and had never seen a grape in his life. Now there are not now nor have ever been grapes on Newfoundland. For this reason three explanations have been suggested.

1. That Vinland was actually much further south.
2. That the grape story was made up to explain why Vinland was called Vinland and not something else. Remember in the Saga Leifur Eiriksson finds and names Markland, Helluland and Vinland without exploring inland. Suggesting an etymological root other than grape. The Chronology seems a bit backwards, but this is consistent with a retelling hundreds of years later (the earliest version is from the 14th century iirc). This is where an older but no longer used (in icelandic) word for pleasant or comfortable has been suggested as the root.
3. That the slaves found berries which could be used to make wine, just like they found in Scandinavia and Iceland


Archaeologists have found and excavated a norse site in Vinland. Furthermore that site is consistent with the Sagas. Most historians view (3) as the most plausible and it is quite likely that the names were given AFTER the settlement failed.

The Vin=Pleasant hypothesis cannot be ruled out, but it is only needed if you think that Icelanders of the 11th century could tell the difference between blueberries and wineberries.

[PDH]

Maybe they made Manischewitz.

[Caliga]

Argument #1 is also supported by the fact that butternuts were unearthed in the Vinland middens and IIRC do not (and did not even then) grow further north than the St. Lawrence region of Canada.

What is this Vin=Pleasant stuff of which you speak?  I thought "Vin" either meant "meadow" or "grapes". 

[Grey Fox]

Thanks to Caliga this thread is actually interesting.

Thank you, Biscuit man.

[Caliga]

Maybe they made Manischewitz.

Actually isn't Manischewitz made from Concord grapes?  Those would be the sort of grapes they found, if indeed they found them.

[Caliga]

Thanks to Caliga this thread is actually interesting.

Thank you, Biscuit man.

I am the heart and soul of Languish.  KNEEL BEFORE CAL!

[Josquius]

1. That Vinland was actually much further south.
2. That the grape story was made up to explain why Vinland was called Vinland and not something else. Remember in the Saga Leifur Eiriksson finds and names Markland, Helluland and Vinland without exploring inland. Suggesting an etymological root other than grape. The Chronology seems a bit backwards, but this is consistent with a retelling hundreds of years later (the earliest version is from the 14th century iirc). This is where an older but no longer used (in icelandic) word for pleasant or comfortable has been suggested as the root.
3. That the slaves found berries which could be used to make wine, just like they found in Scandinavia and Iceland

How about 4; the Erikson marketing department at work again :p

[lustindarkness]

Faking the moon landing has been our greatest technological achievement. Hollywood our greatest cultural one. 

[Caliga]

How about 4; the Erikson marketing department at work again :p

Just because his dad was a liar, con artist, and habitual murderer is no reason to distrust poor Leif.

[Viking]

What about this I've heard that vin means meadow?

Viking can clarify, but IIRC this has been disproven.

vin, pronounced "VINN" - meadow/pasture
vin, pronounced "VINE" - wine

The latter is written with an accent over the 'i', and maybe different characters in runic... I dunno.

I think the "meadow" thing was something Samuel Eliot Morison threw into the mix because for some reason he was desperate to prove that Vinland did not exist and was trying everything he could think of to shoot down any arguments to the contrary.

I dunno about old west Norse but in Swedish a long and a short i are written the same. The decision on which one to use is just based on grammar rules that I can't remember.

Weird that it'd be used as a anti-argument. To me it sounds like a argument in favour of it- there's no wine so either there were berries or good farm land.

edit- checking up Iceland does have a weird alternative I; Í. But still....would this have been totally prevailant at the time? And with old texts can you be sure of such subtle differences in letters?
Spelling was rarely the most consistant of things way back then.

We have the I (as in "Bitch") and Í (as in "Beach"). We call it "Vínland" in modern Icelandic, literally "Land of Wine". But that doesn't mean that this is why the place got it's name. It may have been named for something else and then the imposed etymology changes the word. West Norse is very very close to modern Icelandic, but there are many differences. The fact that Icelandic uses 14 vowels is not a reason against Vin=Pleasant.

[Martinus]

Faking the moon landing has been our greatest technological achievement. Hollywood our greatest cultural one. 

It only doubles cultural output of one city. Hardly the greatest achievement.