Personal Encounter. Medieval exploration was a personal encounter between two cultures. Both explorer and explored peoples might be changed; rarely was neither affected. Most often in this period and later, explorers, when they brought settlers with them, superimposed their home way of life on the new environment, if not on its people.

Misfits. The Viking society was altered astonishingly little by Atlantic Island exploration. The Viking Landnamabok (Book of Settlements), based on a work predating 1189, established the official documentation of colonization in Iceland. Subsequent Viking colonies generally imitated the formal Scandinavian institutions of authority, especially in their social and religious respects, without modifying the system particularly to suit the needs of the colonial economy. In the case of Greenland, native hunting and fishing exploitation techniques never took hold among the Vikings, however crucial it was to independent survival on the...