Why didn't 11th century Vikings bring disease to North America?

by stublemouse

North and Central American populations were devastated by diseases brought by 15th century Europeans.

Why didn't 11th century Vikings do the same? Were they less diseased in that time? Why?

y_sengaku

Sorry for the cut and paste from the similar question thread as OP posted today, as Why didn't Norse Explorers Introduce 'Old World' Diseases to Indigenous Americans?.

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While there is always more to be said on the topic, the basic outline that I summarized before in Were any diseases brought to America by the Vikings? is still valid (though a recent scientific article published since my linked post (Ledger, Girdland-Fink & Forbes 2019) suggests that the Norse people might sometimes take a visit in L'Anse aux Mewdows in course of the 11th century).

In short, the degree of contact between the Norse people and the indigenous people must have been very limited (if any), so it is not so unnatural to suppose that the pathogens that the Norse people had had did not transmitted to the indigenous people if they really met in the 11th century and later.

Additional References:

  • Kuitems, M., Wallace, B.L., Lindsay, C. et al. "Evidence for European presence in the Americas in ad 1021." Nature (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-021-03972-8
  • Ledger, Paul M., Linus Girdland-Flink, Véronique Forbes. "New horizons at L’Anse aux Meadows." Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Jul 2019, 116 (31) 15341-15343; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1907986116

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(Added): /u/anthropology_nerd also posted excellent answers to the following relevant question threads, from different point of view from mine: