Greenland Vikings

This is a picture of Hvalsey Church, a Norse ruin from a settlement in Greenland that was abandoned in the 1400s. Scientists and historians have recently amended their ideas about what caused the collapse of this culture.

In the late 900s, some Vikings from Iceland migrated to Greenland, setting up small communities that lasted about 400 years. Archaeologists estimate that up to 3,000 of these Norse peoples lived in this cold and remote island, but abandoned the area, leaving it occupied only by the longer-lasting Inuit.

The older theories were accusatory — the Norse had stubbornly resisted accommodating to the cooling weather patterns that hit the northern hemisphere starting after 1250 CE. They had kept deforesting and relying on cattle and agricultural production when the climate conditions worsened.

However, scientists forming the North Atlantic Biocultural Association (NABO) have arrived at a different conclusion. These Nordic peoples *did* adapt to the changing climate, but their efforts were not enough. Analysis of the settlers’ bones has shown a ratio of carbon and nitrogen isotopes reflecting an increasing reliance on marine life versus domesticated land mammals in the Greenland Norse diet. Also, they were replanting forests instead of eliminating them. Finally, they transformed their economy to rely on ivory trade (walrus tusks, mainly) rather than farming.

However, in the end the cold was too much for them. Some signs of hunger appear in the bone record, but many of the settlers moved back to Iceland or other larger Norse communities as the walrus market failed (due to competition from Russia and an increased availability of African elephant tusk ivory).

Scientists are scrambling to assess the archaeological record in the face of a new climate disaster — the melting permafrost is quickly destroying much of the remaining unexcavated sites.