Nick

The year is 900 AD. Three Viking longships returning from a successful raid on Ireland are blown off course. After weeks of sailing they eventually reach land. They set up camp and begin repairing their ships. One day they are confronted by a lot of strange people wearing feathers and jaguar skins and armed with razor sharp cricket bats. The Vikings, who match the Aztecs numerically, don armor, draw swords and form a shield wall...
Who wins?

Fluffybunny

The Aztes have the advantage of home ground and the Vikings would probably collapse from heat exhaustion!

Nick

Viking mercenaries did rather well when they fought for the Byzantines.

pinguin

You should make a difference between Norse and Vikings. The guys that came to the Americas were Norse, common folks, with not that much military training, that had quite a lot of problems with the locals... They hardly would have defeated Aztecs. Now, if the same Vikings that were fighting in Europe had moved to the Americas things may have been different.

May, because Spanish success was based on diplomacy as much as military power. These Norse would need a guy equivalent to Cortes, with his same political skills, to have a chance to succeed.

Jomsvikingr

The Vikings were common folk too, pinguin. Norse farmers and the like who went on a raid. So really, the people who came to the Americas were vikings.

The vikings would win, hands down.
The Aztecs had little armor and the weapon tech was just not as adavanced though that itsn't to say that the Macuahuitl wasn't a fearsome weapon. I just think that the Norse would of been better equiped with their steel swords, leather or chain armor, sheilds, and not to forget the somewhat fabled viking axe! All agaisnt the unarmored, less technologicaly advance Aztecs.

The Aztecs would probably win if there was an all out war, vikings would be too far away to come immediatly for reinforcements, but in just one pitched battle I would give it to the vikings hands down.

Wobomagonda

I'd love to see an aztec with wooden and rock tools fight a viking with metal armor, axe, sword, helmet, and reach advantage, and height advantage. Pretty sure it would be a slaughter, and the vikings would win, but you never know...the underdog has won before.

pinguin

Vikings had a change in Greenland and Newfoundland, and they ended up with arrows in theirs asses.

Wobomagonda

that was a small expedition of like 15 vikings, hardly constitutes a defeat.

Wobomagonda

That is like saying the Natives beat the Spanish because Columbus didn't conquer them with his crew of less than 500 men...it's an absurd notion.

pinguin

Curious. I never knew that only 15 Norse conquered Greenland...

The simply fact is that Norse failed were Inuits and Amerindians succeed.