What if?
What if the descendants of the Vikings who settled Greenland and went on to reach North America around the end of the first millennium were still there today?
What if the Vikings had enjoyed a five hundred year head start on Columbus in the New World? Would the Santa Maria have arrived to the south of an eastern seaboard dotted with centuries old settlements and towns hosting devotees to Odin and Thor?
What if the Vikings' descendants had gone on to become dominant just as the United States of America has in our own world? A millennium after reaching Greenland, Vinland and Markland would we still have had two world wars? What might the world look like? Where might the political and religious divides be drawn?
Welcome to the New World.
The United States of Vinland (The Markland Trilogy): The Landing
Following the turn of the first millennium the Vikings are expanding beyond northern Europe by way of axe and trade. Their spreading influence and settlements, founded by warriors, farmers and merchants, can not only be found in the far flung corners of the continent, but also across the Atlantic, beyond the stepping stones of the Faroe Islands and Iceland, as they establish themselves in the newly discovered lands in the west.
In Europe growing influence brings wealth, and together they fire contests of power, as the Viking Age of adventuring free spirits gives way to a world of rising kings. At the same time a strengthening tide of missionaries proclaiming an alien faith can be found in the Norse homelands. The agents of the White Christ, often in alliance with the new monarchs, have opened divisions between themselves and those who still revere the old ways, such tensions lead to war and bloodshed, yet the new powers are ascendant.
In this time of turmoil a young man has a vision.
Eskil, orphaned in war, but now a man, is leading his followers to found a settlement in the west dedicated to Odin and Asgard's gods. There he will build a new realm, and after tests, adventures and trials, he will leave a legacy that will grow to be the strongest nation the world has ever seen.
Welcome to Norse America.
The Landing is the first book in The United States of Vinland series and is an alternate history that tells the sagas of the establishment of the first Markland halls.