Spoiler :
Vinland, discovered by Leif Eiriksson in 999 AD, was established as the westernmost Norse settlement by an expedition led by the intrepid vikings Thorfinn Karlsefni, accompanied by Leif's kinfolk Thorvald and Freydis, and financed by the Greenlandic merchants Helgi and Finnbogi. The colony got off to a rocky start, as the settlers factionalized amongst themselves, leading to the foundation of several peripheral settlements. Ultimately, while some of these small settlements failed, the bulk were able to hold out through the first few difficult winters. Deft diplomacy prevented all-out war with the indigenous Mikmaq and Beothuk peoples, allowing for a wary co-existence to take place.
All this time, the Christianization of Scandinavia was in full swing. As had often been the case in the past, the ne'er do wells and misfits of the Norse world traveled west. A steady trickle of settlers reinforced the settlements in Vinland proper (Nova Scotia), as well as the outlying settlements in Kjalarnes, Hóp and Bjarney (Newfoundland). A particularly large influx from Iceland pushed Vinland's population up the thousands, as pagans who were displeased with the decision of the lawspeaker of the Althing to adopt Christianity (banishing the reverence of the Aesir to private worship) departed the land en masse.
Partly in response to these influxes, Vinland maintained a pagan majority, thought it was too distant and insignificant to permit or warrant major action against it by either the throne of Norway or the Catholic Church. Vinland traded with Europe through the intermediary of Greenland, but as the medieval warm period came to its end, times became harder in the western Norse realms, causing trade and communications to significantly slow down. Vinland became impoverished by the declining productivity of their land and a lack of demand for high-priced wood. Meanwhile, the conditions in Greenland steadily worsened for two centuries, ensuring that the already-reduced contact would strangled to nothingness. Vinland disappeared from regular correspondence in the late 1100s, shortly thereafter followed by their sister colony Greenland.
In Greenland, the slow but inevitable worsening of conditions saw farming give way to pastoralism, and what little remained of the forests froze and shriveled away. A slow-motion unwraveling of Norse civilization could be seen as the land became uninhabitable for cows by 1200, goats by 1250, and sheep by 1300. By 1400, agriculture was all but impossible, and the Greenlanders were a deeply impoverished and terminally dependent colony, reliant on outside shipments for food and wood, and beset by invading skraelings of the Dorset and Thule cultures. The colony fell quiet, and would not see a return of permanent European settlement for centuries.
Meanwhile in Vinland, though the conditions had worsened, they were nowhere near as severe. Vinland operated as a collection of loosely-affiliated petty kingdoms, achieving occasional periods of greater regional unity before lapsing back into division. In this period, from the 1100s to 1300s, Vinlandic settlement expanded into Straumsey (Prince Edward Island) and Einfoetingjaland (New Brunswick). Traders traveled up the Mikilfloi (Saint Lawrence), and far down the eastern coast of North America. The native skraelings became increasingly integrated in the affairs of the Norse, ultimately taking up the worship of the Aesir as well.
Low-level warfare and political disunity would not come to an end until the rise of the Tordenskjolds, the petty Kings of Hóp, who first united the kingdoms of Bjarneyan (Newfoundland)in 1382, before establishing suzerainty over Vinland proper in 1388. Though the center of power had shifted suddenly and abruptly northeastward, Harald Tordenskjold paid due respect to the power and influence of the senior colony, opting to declare his new realm the Kingdom of Vinland.
Harald was a state-builder, and a hale, long-lived man, who passed away at age 80 in 1430. His son, Hrane, would inherit a small, but well organized and established Kingdom. He would earn his sobriquet 'the Bloody', in his brutal war against Begamonit Shediac, the Mikmaq Chieftain of Kesvik. Sten Herja was the right hand of Hrane throughout his twenty year reign, and proved to be a competent military leader.
Herja would prove to be a critical asset for the Kingdom, as Hrane died unexpectedly in 1450, to be succeeded by his son Kjartan. Kjartan directed his general against further skraeling tribes, where Vinland met success after success. However, Vinland nearly overreached, becoming bogged down in one war against the Lenape, and their powerful allies in the Iroquois confederacy. Cree members of this coalition crossed the narrow Kjalarsund, and fought a campaign on Bjarneyan, compelling Kjartan to end the war in something that was not an absolute victory. However, the war was by no means a crippling defeat, though Vinland would hesitate to launch another campaign against organized skraelings for generations to come. As part of the peace treaty, both the Iroquois and Lenape leaders pledged to respect and revere the Aesir alongside their own gods, and Kjartan was still able to hold on to some of his earlier territorial gains.
1480 saw the first direct contact between Vinland and Europe in three centuries, in the form of a Portuguese expedition. The reappearance of Christian Europeans prompted the now-wizened Kjartan to action. He contacted his old rivals, the Iroquois, and established an alliance with his new co-religionists, and began to intensify Vinland's activities down the eastern coast. The swelling population of Vinland began, for the first time in centuries, to establish new colonies at the old trading sites, in a move to protect their long-held trading monopoly against foreign encroachment.
Kjartan, known as 'The Old' by the end of his reign, passed away in 1503, leaving the throne to his second son, Mats. Kjartan had taken the diverse conquests of his blood-spackled and General Herja, and turned them into a coherent, if geographically dispersed, realm.
Mats was highly interested in Europe, and commissioned a diplomat and explorer Dan Gyldenpalm, to properly re-establish contact with the old world. During his reign, English ships also began appearing off of Vinland's coast, causing much curiosity and concern. He maintained the alliances of his father, and strove to further the interests of Vinland's growing merchant apparatus. Recognizing the islands far to his south as a massive potential source of income that was rapidly being consumed by Portugal, King Mats dispatched an expedition to Gritharstathur (Cuba), although his claim was not recognized by Portugal, who contested the eastern third of the island. Erring on the side of caution, and unsure of the Portuguese capacity for warmaking, Mats Tordenskjold did not attempt to immediately eject the Portuguese, but instead fortified his own side of Gritharstathur, and redirected his attentions elsewhere...
