The Alternative History of Iceland: What If Vikings Had Colonized North America?


Episode Artwork
1.0x
0% played 00:00 00:00
May 16 2023 66 mins  

Send us a text

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?

Hosted by historians and The Reykjavík Grapevine founders Valur Gunnarsson and Jón Trausti Sigurðarson