The Last Post Game!!!!

[Aggie]

Can't find a copy on the net of a nice cartoon with an American Indian and his son meeting an East Indian with his. Both boys point at the other father and say "Look, daddy, an Indian"

I'm amazed that the error has been carried this long.

Last _{at what point in time was it realized that North America wasn't India?} Post

[Swatopluk]

I think some relaized while Columbus was still alive. But it took centuries before the idea of a connection between the American NW and Japan/China within the moderate climate zone finally died. The Bering Strait was suspected long before it was discovered but thought to be far more to the South and close to Xipangu (Japan).

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[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Last _{how did the vikings call it?} Post

[Swatopluk]

They did not get that far. They believed in a land bridge from Vinland over Greenland to Northern Scandinavia. But since there later was sea trade with the White Sea area that imaginary land bridge must have been thought to be farther to the East still. Novaja Semlja would have been a candidate.
But they never sailed far enough North to find it. That was troll territory and there was no need. Vinland was primarily of interest because there was wood. When Greenland became isolated after Norway took control of Iceland, Vinland even became the only source of timber. We know of no Viking/Greenlander expeditions farther inland. There was simply no need but great risk.

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[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Ahhh but where exactly was Vinland?

Last _{or could it be Finland?} Post

[Swatopluk]

Labrador was definitely a part of it (with a Norse settlement found there). It may have stretched South to the Saint Lawrence River, but that is speculation with no archaeological proof (yet). The (in)famous Kensington Runestone is almost universally seen as a forgery.
As for Finland, the Vikings made no difference between Finns and Lapps (Sami) but clearly knew that they were different from the Skraelings (Inuit, American Indians). As far as I know Finns/Sami were even then believed to to be a people of practitioners of (usually evil) magic, a prejudice that stayed alive until quite recently (esp. among sailors). Northern Scandinavia became a victim of the witch craze with Sweden and Norway competing who could prosecute more and harder. By percentage it ranged as maybe the worst in the whole of Europe (low absolute numbers but in a very sparse population). In contrast to the rest of Europe males were high on the target list too. The target spectrum was Norse women and Finn/Sami men, the former typically for use of magic in seduction and/or revenge, the latter for what we now call shamanism. Politics played a pernicious role there. On the one hand it was aimed at the Sami who would not recognize the kings in the South as their rulers (why should they?), i.e. it was suppression of an unruly minority, on the other hand witch trials under the royal banner were a way to demonstrate sovereignty over disputed territories. So if a deputee of the Norwegian king would burn a witch somewhere this was also a claim that that place was Norway. As an answer the Swedes could try to do the same at the same place to 'defend' their own claims to that land. Ironically the most notorious witch burner in Northern Norway was a Scotsman (John Cunningham) who got the post of governor (and kept it for decades) because he was a personal friend/confidant of the king (who seems to have distrusted his own countrymen)

Last _{moving burning goalposts} Post

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

Last _{this is pre or post reformation?} Post

[Swatopluk]

Last _{this is pre or post reformation?} Post

Both. There was close to no difference between Protestants and Catholics as far as the witch craze was concerned.
Cunningham became governor of Finnmark province in 1619 and kept the job for 32 years before he retired to the South. He was just the most prolific witch burner but neither the first nor the last. The period of centrally organized state run witch trials lasted from  1593 to 1695 but this was the king taking over the already existing local business (whose victims were almost exclusively Norse females). The last trial ending in death (murder in prison shortly before the planned public execution) was in 1692. The court transcripts of this case are extremly valuable because the defendant, a Sami shaman, gave a detailed account of his religious beliefs and demonstrated the use of the runebomme (magic drum)*. It's about the only account that can be considered authentic. All other sources on Sami religion were either extremly biased (e.g. written by Christian clerics) or written centuries later when genuine traditions had been effectively exterminated (and are thus about as reliable as asking a neo-pagan about details of pagan religious practices in the early Middle Ages).
Religious prosecution of the Sami continued far into the 20th century and any expression of Sami culture was treated as devil worship (although burning at the stake got out of fashion, hefty fines and imprisonment took its place).

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*only extremly few examples have survived and some sketches. Since these drums were central to the Sami culture, churchmen made them a prime target of destruction (giving them to a museum would have undermined the whole purpose).

[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

They should've transformed them into offerings to the Wicker Man.

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[Swatopluk]

Whom do you mean exactly with they and them?

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[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

As a Christopher Lee fan I would imagine you've seen The Wicker Man.

Last _{that should make obvious who is who} Post

[Swatopluk]

Yes I have seen that but Wickermanning was a Slav and Celtic tradition not a Germanic or Sami one. If anyone could have brought that to the North it could have been only the missionaries (Saupreißn, irische!).

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[Sibling Zono (anon1mat0)]

The point was to wickermen christians.

Last _{but perhaps the Sami where more civilized than that} Post

[Swatopluk]

Not an expert there but I think there was a bit of a taboo against spilling blood (Sami religion being in the shamanist/animist tradition).
And only Christians seem to have come up with the idea that burning alive was a legitimate circumvention of that (while other cultures went for strangulation).

Last _{I wonder whether the electric chair would have been acceptable to those old inquisitors} Post

[Sibling DavidH]

I think it was more a case of using the spare population for fuel when they ran out of reindeer dung.