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Sounds like great concept.

It is amazing how they traveled so far in such treacheous seas in those small open ships.

The history of the Vikings was covered in a good PBS-TV series.

They conquered and looted much of Europe, even to the Mediterranean, and actually ended up replacing the useless leaders in what is now Russia and setting up organized commerce and government.

They did lead with their swords; aggression and ruthlessness was the key tactic. It worked well there.

The Vikings that settled Greenland seemed to not follow the native's in fishing and harvesting shellfish.

They brought cattle and pigs and farmed the land and built substantial stone churches.

If they had paid more attention to how the locals lived and survived successfully for countless years they would have done much better.

As the climate cooled rapidly their diets suffered and even their size got smaller.

They ended up keeping their animals inside their homes and eating them with none left to breed for more sustenance.

Finally those that did not leave Greenland for Iceland, Ireland, Scotland's Isles, or Denmark and Norway died.

Based on what I have read they did not get along well with the natives.

Cortez dazzled the Incas with his armor and firesticks and was looked upon as a living God before he looted and wiped out many of the Indians.

The Mayflower pilgrims worked well with the Indians who taught them to survive those first years after half died within 12 months.

But then there is that Roanoke community and those words carved into that tree......

Some say they traveled west into the mountains; there are unusual and different communities of people there that do not meet the area's norms.

But that is another tale for another time.

There is a wonderful book about the Roanoke Island mystery published several years ago... I just cannot remember the title nor the author... she was a descendent of the native tribes of that area and had a lot of insight into the culture there. IIRC, her thesis was that the colonists ended up going inland in search of copper, I believe, and that the colonists got wedged between the intrigue of Sir Walter Raleigh and his detractors, Walsingham, I believe. It's a GREAT read, even if you don't buy all her arguments. She approached it as a murder mystery.

FENRIS WOLF PRESS

"THE LEGEND OF THE CLOUD PEOPLE"

Gran Villaya, the city of "Cloud People", the largest pre-Columbian city of the Americas, was once inhabited by the Chachapoyas, legend says, a group of tall, blue-eyed blondes. Today the ancient city is shrouded by overgrowth in the high tropical rain forest of northern Peru, but just a millennium ago, it was still a grand metropolis of fortresses and farms that covered 100 square miles.

The Chachapoyas were conquered by the Incas in 1480. Spaniards reported it, the Incas reported it, and as you go deeper into the dense jungle, tall, blonde, blue-eyed people are still found. Up until very recently, some of these people still used mummy caves (like their Aryan-Egyptian relatives).

There are 10,000 stone structures, complex units of circular buildings. Stairways run up terraces for several hundred yards, and there are underground caverns and about 24,000 circular structures of cut limestone. Kirelap, a great elliptical fortress whose walls soar to 60 feet, and which is thought to have once reached 150 feet, defends Gran Villaya from the east.

From the west, the city and its agricultural terraces are guarded by a chain of fortifications. Local myths trace the Chachapoya culture to the 10th century BC.

The people there were architects, farmers, and engineers who built aqueducts, canals, bridges, and once were in contact with the seas. The archaeological discoveries of Gran Villaya have already located 43 lost cities high in the Andes.

Researchers have found roads built from huge stones leading down to the Amazon. There are few stones in the jungle, so they were likely transported there. Pizzaro, the Spanish conqueror of Peru, recording the persistence of white blood at that time, wrote that "The ruling class in the kingdom of Peru was fair-skinned with fair hair about the color of ripe wheat."

Anthropologists in 1971 discovered a tribe of white-skinned Indians in the depths of these jungles. English explorer Colonel P.H. Fawcett, wrote in 1924 of also finding remote South American tribes with blue eyes and auburn hair.