“There is a strong link between the Late Middle Ages and the American Frontier!”
And if there isn’t already a book describing this then you owe us one.. I really enjoyed your description of the Saami people in New Sweden on another thread. That long forgotten colonial tribe certainly appears to explain the Christmas iconography of the United States.
I grew up in Virginia but that was a long time ago. If there was a Virginia Room in Arlington I didn’t learn of it. I have a few ancestors leading back to Jamestown’s environs, including some Huguenots and one fellow named Robert Lee, but I don’t know much about them other than their names.
You probably realize most books about the discovery of America and its subsequent settlement focus mostly on "The AGE OF DISCOVERY" and describe events in terms of nation states.
I believe I just outlined the existence of a "family" ~ kind of extended but still a "family" that did the discovery, opened up the frontier, and continued development of the Americas as the progenitor of "the cutting edge" ~ the guys who reclaimed the land ~ they're still there working away in Brazil for example.
The Sa'ami play several parts in this as well ~
(1) I got a lot of relatives (one example),
(2) They developed a hull shape and hull construction design for a boat that could travel well in Northern Scandinavian rivers AND in the Arctic Ocean. This became the basis of the design scaled up and used by the Vikings to begin their long distance raids and the discovery of the North Atlantic (Faroes, Iceland, Greenland, America).
(3)Spreading of Sa'ami culture to Europe, then to other parts. This includes skis ~ no small thing. Canada wouldn't really exit without them.
(4) The Sa'ami and the Southern Ocean whale trade ~ recall the existence of that X-Factor in the Iriquois, Cherokee and other Algonkian Indians? Remember "Moby Dick"? Tashtego, and maybe two of the other harpooners fit the description of the North American Branch. Melville couldn't know at that time, but he does note the man's tribe is a remnant and very adept at the chore of harpooning.
I was always entranced with the brief discussions of the elaborate tattoos ~ which you see sometimes if you encounter a Chippewa or Ojibway on a hot day in the Western Plains and he's on his motorcycle ~ although many Sioux follow the same custom. Christianity has been suppressing this sort of thing though.
A final note on this ~ one day I found a Church of the First Born that'd been established in Rhode Island ~ which was my first clue that I'd found out something about whalers possibly no one else had noticed. Shortly after I found another Church of the First Born in Brownsville, TX ~ which dates from the beginning of Spanish settlement of what is now South Texas. Again, a whale station ~ and finally references to such a place somewhere in Argentina or maybe Chile, in the earliest times. A title rises up out of the murk somewhere "The Sa'ami of the Spanish Main" ~ which probably has too few factoids to do as a serious work of history, but may be sufficient for someone else some day to do as a novel. Maybe the writer could explain to us something of the origin of white whales