The original Viking settlers of Vinland were no strangers to war and often found it in their new war, either with the native Skraelings or (increasingly as time went on and their settlements) each other. With a more loose social structure than the feudal cultures to the south, a population which had a lot of veterans in their initial settlers and small populations it was only natural that their settlements in the new world would require that anyone that could bear arms against attack be prepared to do so, a fact which would continue to play through the better part of a millennia.





The basic system was called the Leidangr*, in which theoretically every free man who was technically required to keep weapons, train and serve if called upon. In practice most boys and a few girls (from families which held to the Revived Norse Faith) got a few combat lessons in childhood and adolescents and fair number of households kept a suit of arms and armor for use when the call to arms to serve in a small company led by a local Jarl (nobleman). The practice included a naval element at first, as each Jarl who could afford them had a longships and latter cogs, holks and galleys, though this element would decline at first as Viking territory pushed inland and from the 1500s onward as Kings began to field their own navies. Mostly Leidangr forces would be put under arms for a few months when on the offensive or when their kingdom was being attacked. The biggest exception of this was when Leidangr forces went about colonizing, marching out into unclaimed territory to kill, drive out or enthrall any natives and carve out new farmsteads and lay the foundations for new towns. Women and children would usually follow afterwards, though in a surprisingly large number of cases a decent number served alongside their brothers, fathers and other male fellows in the advancing ranks. The best few fighters would be retained full time as Huskarls. The same set up worked for small independent colonies of a few hundred Vikings to large kingdoms which eventually grew to have more than a million souls, even as other systems developed to complement it.





Needless to say as peasant soldiers Leidangr levies were hardly the best equipped forces. For several centuries simply having a helmet, shield and a spear or axe was deemed to be adequate for their purposes. But as the colonies got larger, cavalry became a bigger deal, smiths became more common, specialized armorers began to emerge and more of their native foes had learnt basic iron working or had access to weapons they either traded for or stole equipment standards had to go up, often subsidized by Jarls in various ways. At first padded cloth armor steadily became more common and by the 15th century some level of metal torso armor had become the norm for Leidangr soldiers. Usually this took the form of scale, lamellar or brigandines. Around this time crossbows became the prefered range weapon. Shields largely fell out of favor at this point for two handed melee weapons, most notably swordstaffs, though axes would remain a common fallback weapon. Basic handgonnes first appeared in the new world around 1491 and slowly became reasonably common. Matchlocks showed up in Norse America in 1662 but took some time to really take off. This fellow is from the Southern Kingdom of the Great Mouth (OTL southern Mississippi and Alabama) from 1700 and has a swordstaff and a brigandine codpiece to protect is sensitive masculine parts while wearing clothes suited to the warm southern climate.







While training standards became somewhat more formalized over seven centuries the system was still a fairly loose one with limited drilling or training at anything beyond a company level. When the first clashes between the Norse Kingdoms and the Japanese began, the effectiveness of Leidanger levies against Ashigaru and Samurai was shown to be wanting. Unless they outnumbered the Shogunate's armies by a considerable margin or were defending fortifications these peasants pressed into service generally fell to the more disciplined, better trained, better equipped and better organized Japanese forces. Though the first Shogunate offensive was repulsed through sheer numbers, this came at a considerable cost and forced the Norse Kingdoms to adapt. Part of which was the adoption of matchlock firearms on a much larger scale, but another part of it was fueling the decline of the Leidangr system.









*Several names would emerge for the system by various Norse Kingdoms in America, the majority of which stemmed from Leidangr.