What Happened to the Vikings in Greenland?

In 982, Erik the Red was exiled from Iceland, so he went to explore Greenland (Norlund15). This led to the founding of two settlements, the West Settlement and the East Settlement: the East Settlement is actually on the west coast of Greenland, just past Cape Farewell, the southernmost tip of Greenland and the West Settlement is about 180 miles farther north up the coast (Norlund 22). Ships sailing to Greenland from Norway took a week or more, and the voyage was dangerous – the records mention many shipwrecks, and many years when no ships made it to Greenland (Diamond 240). In 1410, a ship sailed away from Greenland’s Eastern Settlement and this “was to be the last visit of Icelanders to Greenland’s Norse settlements” (Norlund 141). Nothing was ever heard from the Greenland Norse again. Did they abandon Greenland? Did they assimilate with the Inuit? Did they simply die off?

During his explorations, Erik the Red found two areas that would be suitable for farming similar to the farms in Iceland – both the Western Settlement and the Eastern Settlement were at the head of fjords that went deep into the coastline of Greenland. The heads of these fjords were protected from icebergs, salt-spray and the fierce winds of the outer coast, and have flatter areas suitable for pastures (Diamond 212). Greenland was settled by the Norse during the period known as the Medieval Warm Period, which lasted from 950 to 1250, and which was followed by the Little Ice Age, which lasted from approximately 1300 to 1850 (Mooney). The two settlements in Greenland were south of Iceland and on comparable latitudes to Bergen and Trondheim in Norway, but unlike them, the climate of Greenland is influenced by the West

Greenland Current flowing down from the Arctic, not the Gulf Stream coming from the south (Diamond 212), so the climate of Greenland was cooler.

The Medieval Warm Period meant that:

[t]hey arrived at a time of relatively mild climate, when hay production was sufficient in most years, when the sea lanes to Europe were free of ice, when there were no Native Americans anywhere near the Norse settlements or hunting grounds. (Diamond 248).

The climate is similar today, where the mean summer temperatures in Greenland are around 42 degrees Fahrenheit on the coasts and 50 degrees inland (Diamond 212). The favorable climate conditions of the late tenth century lasted until the Little Ice Age began around 1300, at which point the North Atlantic climate became cooler and more variable (Diamond 219). Although there is some argument about whether the Medieval Warm Period really affected Greenland (Mooney), the Little Ice Age increased the amount of summer drift ice between Greenland, Iceland and Norway so that by 1420, ship communication had ended between the Norse Greenlanders and the rest of the world (Diamond 219).

Life for the Norse settlers was based on raising domestic livestock and hunting wild animals – the primary domestic animals were dairy cattle, sheep, and goats (Diamond 222). These animals were used mainly for milking, and their milk was turned into cheese, butter, and a yogurt-like drink called skyr (Diamond 224). To keep the livestock alive, especially the cows, hay had to be grown to feed them through the winter, several tons of hay per cow, so if there was a bad crop one year, then there was the possibility of the animals starving and then of not having enough animals to breed back the herd before the next winter (Diamond 254). Colder conditions naturally affected the growing season and the amount of hay that could be produced, making it harder to grow enough hay for the herds to survive the winter.

The wild animals they hunted were caribou and harbor seal (for meat); walrus and narwhals (for their ivory tusks), and polar bears (for their skins) (Norlund 97-98). Walrus ivory was an important trade item, Iceland was the only source of ivory at the time: “a rare, highly- prized product which induced the merchants of the civilized countries to risk the difficulties of the voyage (Norlund 99)”. For some reason, the Greenland Norse did not include fish in their diets (Diamond 229)

Another factor for the Norse Greenlanders was the Inuit, who began moving into northwestern Greenland about 1200 and began to move south along the coast (Diamond 257). This was a problem for the Norse because the presence of the Inuit restricted their movements – the Norse preferred the more sheltered heads of the fjords while the Inuit would take the outer parts of the fjords, nearer the sea (Norlund 137). This inhibited the Norse Greenlanders’ ability to hunt seals or go to the northern hunting grounds to hunt walrus.

Surprisingly, the Norse annals have only three brief references to the Inuit, all of which end violently (Diamond 261). In the second reference, the Inuit are accused of having a role in the destruction of the Western Settlement (which occurred around 1360), and the third is an attack by the Inuit on a farm in the Eastern Settlement where 18 men were killed, and two boys and a woman were captured (Diamond 261). There is no evidence, either archeological or written, of the Norse trading with the Inuit, nor is there any skeletal or genetic evidence of intermarriage (Diamond 263).

When the Norse arrived in Greenland, they burned down trees to make pastures for their livestock, then cut down more trees to use for lumber and firewood (Diamond 248). To get more wood to build houses, make barrels to store food, or to build boats, the Greenland Norse had to either hope for a cargo of lumber from Norway, driftwood from Siberia, or voyage to the

Vinland coast (Diamond 249). Firewood was essential not only for heating and cooking, but also because in the summer the milk buckets had to be cleaned by scalding twice a day (Diamond 250). Wood was also essential for making charcoal so that iron (either local bog iron or ingots from Norway) could be worked to make or repair tools such as: “axe heads, scythes, knives, sheep shears, ships’ rivets, carpenters’ planes, awls to punch holes, and gimlets to bore holes” (Diamond 251). “[T]here is no evidence that the Greenland Norse after the first few generations had steel weapons or steel armor anymore…Instead, they fought with bows, arrows, and lances, just as did the Inuit (Diamond 252)”. Naturally, this reduced any weapon advantage the Greenland Norse had over the Inuit.

In 1261, the Norse Greenlanders had agreed to become part of Norway and in return the Norwegian king agreed to send regular ships to Greenland (Norlund 26-27). In fact, trade with Greenland was made a royal monopoly and therefore it was illegal for private ships to go to Greenland (Diamond 270), though periodically ships were blown off course and made it there, the last of which was the ship mentioned in the first paragraph of this essay.

What happened to the Greenland Norse? The last royal trading ship was in 1368 (Diamond 270). It was unlikely that they could have sailed away, as one of the reasons they joined Norway in 1261 was that “the time was long past when the Greenland farmers themselves had ships large enough to cross the Atlantic (Norlund 26)”. The last record we have of them was the ship that sailed away from Greenland in 1410. There is no record of the Greenland Norse arriving elsewhere after abandoning or evacuating the East Settlement.

As discussed above, the Norse Greenlanders’ relationship with the Inuit was not a friendly one. In 1721, a Norwegian Lutheran missionary went to Greenland to find the East Settlement and discovered the ruins of both the Western and the Eastern Settlements. The Inuit

told him orally transmitted stories of alternating periods of friendship and fighting between the two peoples (Diamond 271). As noted above, there is no evidence of intermarriage between the two groups, so it can be concluded that the Greenland Norse did not join the Inuit.

No one knows exactly when the Eastern Settlement vanished, but between 1400 and 1420 the North Atlantic became colder and stormier and there are no more records of ship traffic to Greenland (Diamond 270). In 1921, the Commission for Scientific Research in Greenland conducted excavations and exhumations in the churchyard at Herjolfsnes, one of the important ports of the Eastern Settlement (Norlund 105-106). A radiocarbon date of 1435 from a woman’s dress tells us that some people at least survived that long (Diamond 270). However, the examination of the skeletons showed deformities as a result of chronic malnutrition (short stature, constricted pelvis, curvature of the spine, etc.) and inbreeding (as a result of being isolated) (Norlund 150). The average life span of the bodies they examined was short, half did not live past 30 and the infant mortality rate was high (Norlund 148).

The most likely answer to the question of what happened to the Greenland Norse is that they simply died out – possibly as a result of starvation as a result of a cooler climate, or possibly because they were so inbred that the women had skeletal deformities (as noted above) that reduced their ability to successfully bear children. Probably, it was a mixture of the two causes. Cut off from the outside world, lacking timber to build ships to take them away or go get help, and having a chancy relationship with their Inuit, the Greenland Norse were stuck where they were and died out as a result.

Works Cited

Diamond, Jared. Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed. New York: Penguin Books Ltd. ©2005.

Norlund, Poul. Viking Settlers in Greenland: and their descendans during five hundred years. London: Cambridge University Press, 1936. Translated from the Danish by W.E. Calvert Reprinted 1971in New York by Kraus Reprint Co.