| Legend has it that the Viking Erik
the Red sailed to Greenland around 985 A.D., while in temporary
exile from his Iceland home for homicide. He returned to Iceland
with fabulous tales of pastures and a valuable wild animals
in a land he named Greenland. Twenty-five boats with some 500
people are said to have returned with him, eventually building
two settlements on the big island. The exact details are lost
to history, but the outlines of this story has been proven true
by archeologists this century who have excavated Viking remains
at two sites on Greenland's west coast.
There were about 2,500 inhabitants in Greenland's two Viking
outposts. For more than 400 years they lived primarily on
meat and milk from sheep, goats, and cows. For wood and iron
implements, they traded polar bear and caribou skins and walrus
hides and tusks. They launched at least one expedition to
North America, landing in modern-day Newfoundland and setting
up a short-lived colony. However, for a variety of reasons,
probably including the devastation of the Plague in Europe
and a waning interest in Greenland's luxury products, the
settlements lost touch with the old country.
The last known record of the Greenland Vikings was in 1408,
when a traveler reported a wedding there. Several centuries
later, in 1721, Hans Egede, a Norwegian-born missionary sought
out the colonies. To his surprise, they were gone, a mystery
that remains unsolved to this day. Researchers and history
buffs have offered many possible explanations for the disappearance
of the Greenland Vikings, including raids by Inuit or European
pirates, assimilation into Inuit communities and starvation.
Many modern archeologists believe that climate change played
a role. Recent studies of ice cores from Greenland show that
the 15th century, when the colonies probably died out, was
a period of climate deterioration across the Atlantic. But
these researchers say their explanation must be more nuanced
than simply that it got cold and they died. For starters,
that wouldn't explain why the Inuit survived these lean years.
Research on the Viking settlements in Greenland and Iceland
has never been a pressing priority in archeology. They were
not complex societies like the Incas or Mayas of the Americas.
They weren't the founders of civilization like the Sumerians
of Mesopotamia. But in recent years scientists have discovered
many interesting things about the people who colonized this
remote and inhospitable part of the world. The Vikings of
Greenland appear to have been laid low by a marginal climate
that went sour. The Vikings of Iceland appear to have harvested
some resources, such as bird eggs, in a way that was sustainable
for centuries, while other resources, such as trees, were
squandered. Some researchers say the challenges the Atlantic
Vikings faced and the decisions they made could hold important
lessons for modern society.
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