The foggy isle of Widland is a decisive crosspoint in the history of the world. It's the spot where the hemispheres first came together. For the first century of its recorded history, the island represented the uttermost west - the furthest limit of the Nordic world. After that it became the center of an expanding Nordic sphere of activity. From Widland, Norse culture began to spread, changing the continent forever.
Etymology[]
The Norse who first settled Widland were mainly interested in a source of wood, so scarce in both Greenland and Iceland. Therefore they called the island Viðrland, Wood-land. The consonants began to shift under the influence of Englesk in subsequent generations. English people, including both Dano-Norse warriors and skilled underlings of Anglo-Saxon extraction, made up a large portion of the Nordic people who settled on the island, and they left their mark on the local dialect. A large wave of English pagan exiles arrived early in the Twelfth Century, cementing the influence of English language and culture in the far west.
First Generations[]
 Ethelred the Pious |
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Viking Ships had spotted lands southwest of Greenland in the decades prior to the first settlement in 1032. That year, a crew from England, the Faroe Islands, and Iceland went out in search of trees for building and repairing ships. They found a land with a milder climate than Greenland and abundant fish. They built a camp and began to occupy it seasonally. In 1039 a palisade was built around it, indicating the start of permanent habitation.
A trickle of settlers followed over the next century. Some minor chieftains, especially from England, sailed west seeking new opportunities to gain wealth or power. Shipbuilders were at work by the late 1000s, specializing in long-distance vessels that could sail to Iceland and back. As in the early history of Iceland and most of that of Greenland, the small settlements had no political organization beyond the individual chieftain and his retainers. Feuds erupted, which scattered the Norse across different parts of the island as people put distance between themselves and their enemies.
Relations with the Beothuk people were generally poor. The Norse were used to raiding and harassing the inhabitants of the lands they explored. In Widland there was no market for slaves, as there was in the Viking East, but many Beothuk still found themselves victims to the depredations of the newcomers. By 1100, the northern peninsula of Widland, and parts of the northern coast, were largely under Norse control.
Flight of the Pagans[]
In the early 1100s, events in Rome had a cascading effect that would cause great changes on the other side of the ocean. Emperor William II, energetic ruler of the Western Roman Empire, made a play to increase his influence over the other kingdoms of western Christendom. With his encouragement, the Pope began to assert power over the bishops of northwestern Europe. This provoked a reaction from both the northern kings and the local clergy and sparked a movement where national churches began to assert their autonomy from Rome.
The upshot of all this was an ever-closer identification of church with state throughout the West. In England, King Woldemar III sought to enhance his royal power by simultaneously increasing his influence over the church, and persecuting England's remaining pagans. He suppressed pagan temples and priests in the far north and Ostangeln, the two parts of England that remained pagan strongholds. Pagan practices continued, largely underground, but the religion's institutional base in England was broken.
By this time, the Nordic pagan world was shrinking fast. Scandinavia was essentially converted already, as were the Norse-Gael kingdoms of Ireland and even much of the territory of the Jarl of Orkney, Europe's last Norse pagan ruler. Widland, by contrast, seemed a place where possibilities were wide-open for a pagan nobleman and his dependents. Settlers began to arrive in larger numbers than ever before. New fortifications appeared around the island's coast. Local Beothuk clans entered into tributary relationships with these new lords, or else they fled to the interior or crossed over to the mainland.
The Flight of the Pagans greatly changed Widlandic culture and political organization. The English exiles were coming from a settled country of farms and towns. They brought crops, livestock, and an English legal tradition. By 1150, they had begun to draw boundaries between the territories of the principal settlements, and the leading chieftains were calling themselves kings.
The migration also confirmed Widland as a pagan country. Previously, the country had been a mix of Christians and pagans, with a few Muslims from Nawar and Iceland thrown in, all in a mostly easy coexistence. But the English exiles brought a sharp resentment of the monotheistic faiths and no respect for their buildings or adherents. When feuds erupted on the island, churches were often the first targets. However, the island would never be completely free of other faiths. Shipbuilding remained a key industry, and this meant interaction with the rest of the Nordic world; and this world was becoming increasingly Christian. Christian and Muslim traders continued to visit Widland. So did some missionaries. Converts were few, but their travels and writings made the island known to a wider world.