Norse Greenland offers us our most complex case of a
prehistoric collapse, the one of which we have the most information and the one
warranting the most extended discussion. All items in five-point framework in Jared
Diamonds' bestseller book "Collapse" are well documented from many
sources: environmental damage, climate change and especially a climate cooling,
loss of friendly contacts with Norway and Greenland's subsequent abandonment
from the mainland Europeans, rise of hostile contacts with indigenous Inuit and
possible Norse extermination and the political, economic, social and cultural
setting of the Greenland Norse which was characterized mainly with a fatal and exceptional
conservatism.
All the above aspects will be taken into consideration searching the most crucial
one. No doubt a combination of critical factors perplexed Norse survival to
such extent that was impossible for them to be secured furthermore. Nevertheless,
it seems that something still is hidden in the core of all the analysis been
already done. Cutting this Gordian knot will be the goal in this attempt to see
in the nucleus of the Norse presence in Greenland and its failure to energize
properly Norse's survival. The main focus will be on showing the flaws in the fundamental
framework that was already set up when Norse stepped out the first day on the
island and a probable disregard of the highest limit of their society structure
and function regarding the external circumstances and the threats that they had
to address so as to survive.
As known in scientists, locational analyses,
archeometirc dating, systematic sampling and recovery strategies,
computer-aided mapping and recording and a full spectrum of geo-and
bioarchaeological techniques have become standard tools of most North Atlantic
fieldworkers nowadays leading to productive international and interdisciplinary
research and finding through medieval archeology what no one knew before. But did Norse Greenlanders really do something
wrong or simply there was a pre-defined limit in space and time regarding their
existence in the certain environment no matter their will and reactions? Has modern
discipline covered equally and deep enough all probable roots for Norse destruction?
Which is missing piece from the Norse puzzle and should be more addressed by
social scientists in the future?
Norse settlements in the Greenland created a social "island
laboratory" for more almost half millennium between A.D.984 and sometime
in the 1400s. The reasons for their extinction still remain a mystery. Advanced
technology - from satellite imaginary to DNA studies and isotope analysis-
archaeologies and other scientists are using is leading them to come up nowadays
with many surprising new answers but many major questions still remain
unanswered. For the Vikings civilization that achieved with its sleek sailing
ships and expert knowledge of rivers and seas to journey to what are now 37 or
more countries, from Afghanistan to Canada, according to archeologist Neil
Price of Upsala University in Sweden, it is not clearly explained how they did
not succeed in retaining their outpost colony in Greenland which served as the
first link between the Old World with the New in the early Middle Ages. How and why the medieval farmers became
seafarers and how and why abandoned Greenland? Why in the same island Vikings
disappeared but the Inuit survived, proving that human survival in Greenland
was not impossible and the Viking's disappearance not inevitable? What is the main
conclusion derive from Vikings colonization in Greenland and failure to retain
their civilization there with no interruption till today apart the already ones
have been stated?
Three centuries before Norse decided to inhabit
Greenland, Scandinavia was wracked by turmoil, archeologist Neil Price of
Uppsala University in Sweden says. More than three dozen petty kingdoms arose
during this period, throwing up chains of hill forts and vying for power and territory.
In the midst of that times a catastrophe struck. A vast cloud of dust, likely blasted
into the atmosphere by a combination of cataclysm - comets or meteorites
smashing into Earth, as well as the eruption of at least one large
volcano-darkened the sun beginning in A.D.536, lowering temperatures in the Northern
Hemisphere for the next 14 years. The extended cold and darkness brought death
and ruin to Scandinavia. When summer at last returned to the north and populations
rebounded Scandinavia society assumed a new truculent form. A militirarized society arose with men and
women alike celebrating the virtues of warfare. A new technology began revolutionizing
Scandinavian seafaring in the seventh century. "I have never seen more
perfect physiques than theirs" observed Ahmad Ibn Fadlan, a 10th century
Arab soldier and diplomat from Baghdad. 'Every one of them carries an ax, a
sword and a dagger." Skilled carpenters begin constructing sleek,
wind-powered vessels capable of carrying bands of armed fighters further and
faster than ever before. They were definitely ready to conquer both Old and New
World to satisfy their desires.
Vikings en route they chanced upon 50 cultures and
traded avidly for luxuries. The Vikings, says archeologist Steve Ashby with the
University of York, had a taste for finer things foreign cultures, and some
elites took pleasure in owing and using these status symbols. "The top
men, they were dandies" says Ashby. " It's a society in which
conspicuous consumption is important". Viking leaders painted their eyes,
pulled on flashy colored clothing and donned heavy jewelry. This dress for
excess had a serious purpose: Each object told a story of foreign adventure, of
recklessness and courage rewarded. "Viking leaders couldn't be bashful
about what they achieved, if they wanted to maintain a power base," Ashby
says.
In A.D.982 a hot blooded Norwegian outlawed known as
Erik the Red sailed for Greenland where he spent three years exploring much of
the Greenland coast and discovered good pasture
land inside the deep fjords. On his return to Iceland after losing
another fight there he was impelled to lead a fleet of ships to settle the
newly explored land he shrewdly named "Greenland". By A.D.1000
virtually all the land suitable for farms in both Western and Eastern
Settlements had been occupied yielding an eventual total Norse population at
around 5000: about 1000 people at Western Settlement and 4000 at Eastern
Settlement. No doubt the real reason for the migration, was the exceedingly
fine grazing land they found deep in the fjords. Owing to the long hours of
summer daylight, the quality of vegetation was far better than it was at home
in Iceland, where the consequences of intensive grazing had already begun.
Unfortunately for many environment and human causes this flourishing grazing
land, Norse new homeland, become limited through centuries.
The history of the Arctic, including that of Greenland
is a history of people arriving, occupying large areas for many centuries and
then declining or disappearing or having to change their lifestyle over large
areas when climate changes bring changes in prey abundance. While the Arctic
has few prey species- notably reindeer, seals, whales and fish- those few
species are abundant. But if usual prey species dies out or moves away, there
may be no alternative prey for hunters.
"Life in Greenland is all about finding the good
patches of useful resources" according to Norwegian archeologist Christian
Keller. While 99% even today is indeed uninhabitable white or black, there are
long narrow fjords penetrate far inland, such that their heads are remote from
the cold ocean currents, icebergs, salt spray, and wind that suppress growth of
vegetation along Greenland's outer coast. West Greenland's climate is largely
controlled by mixtures of the warm, north-flowing Irminger current (an offshoot
of the North Atlantic Drift) with the colder, south-flowing East Greenland and Labrador
currents. The weather can be summed up in four words: cold, variable, windy and
foggy. Even today there are no roads connecting Greenland's main population
centers and boats are the main means of transportation, because the coast is so
deeply indented with branching fjords. Strong dry winds frequently blow down
from Greenland's ice cap, bringing draft ice from the North, blocking the
fjords with icebergs even during the summer and causing dense fogs. Wetter years
yield more growth of vegetation more hey to feed the sheep and more grass to
nourish the wild caribou. However, if too much rain falls during the hay
harvest season in August and September, hay yields decrease because the hay is
hard to dry. A cold summer is bad because it decreases hay growth; a long
winter is bad because it means that animals have to be kept indoors in barns for
more months and require more hay; and a summer with much drift ice comings down
from the north is bad because it results in dense summer fogs that are bad for
hay growth. Year-to year weather differences like those making life dicey for
modern Greenland sheep farmers. All the above seemed to happen in the Norse
colony producing subsequent consequences in human interactions that made life
unbearable.
The climate warmed up after the end of the last Ice
Age around 14,000 years ago. It hasn't remained boringly steady for the last
14,000 years: It has gotten colder for some periods then reverted to being
milder again. When the weather got very cold populations of migratory seal
species plummeted because of all the sea ice and the total catches by native Greenland
seal hunters declined. Changes in prey abundance may have contributed to the
first settlement by native Americans around 2500 B.C., their decline or disappearance
around 1500 B.C. their subsequent return, their decline again, and then their
complete abandonment of southern Greenland some time before the Norse arrived
around A.D. 980. Unfortunately for the Norse the warm climate at the time of their
arrival was simultaneously allowing Inuit people (alias Eskimos) to expand
quickly eastwards from Bering Strait across the Canadian Arctic to enter north
western Greenland from Canada A.D.1200- with big consequences for the Norse. Between
A.D.800 and 1300 ice cores tell us that the climate in Greenland was relatively
mild, similar to Greenland weather today or even slightly warmer. Those mild
centuries are termed the Medieval Warm Period. Around 1300, though, the climate
in North Atlantic began to get cooler and more variable from year to year
ushering a cold period termed Little Ace Age that lasted into the 1800s. That
was the trigger for Norse countdown as it was proved in later on.
The best-developed vegetation is confined to areas of
mild climate sheltered from salt spray in the long fjords of the Western and
Eastern Settlements on Greenland's southwest coast. There vegetation in areas
not grazed by livestock varies by location. At highest elevations where it is
cold and in the outer fjords near the sea the vegetation is dominated by sedges
with low nutritional value to grazing animals. Less hostile inland sites mostly
support a heath vegetation of dwarf shrubs. The best inland sites- i.e., ones
at low elevation, with good soil, protected from the wind, well watered, and
with a south-facing exposure that lets them receive much sunlight-with carry an
open woodland of dwarf birch and willows with some junipers and alders, mostly
less than 16 feet tall, in the very best sites with birches up to 30 feet tall.
Hay was produced in three types of fields. Most
productive would be so-called infields
near the main house, fenced to keep out the livestock manures to increase grass
growth. The second zone was the so-called outfields
and finally a Norway and Iceland system called shielings consisting of buildings in remote upland areas suitable
for producing hay and grazing animals during summer only. Shielings were a sophisticated method to help Norse farmers solve
the problem of Greenland's patchy and limited resources. A good medieval farm
site should meet the following criteria according with Jared Diamond: The site
should have a large area of flat or gently sloping lowlands (below 700ft above
sea level) to develop as a productive infield. Complementary but necessary would
be a large area of outfield at mid-elevations (up to 1300ft above sea level).
All of the best farms had south-facing exposures and a good supply of streams
was important. Systems of irrigation channels have been discovered around
several farms. Norse farming was quite advanced and included measures of
recourses preservation. It was a recipe for poverty to place your farm in,
near, or facing a glacial valley off of which come cold strong winds. Lastly if
possible farm should have been directly on a fjord with a good harbor for
transporting supplies in and out by boat.
The constrains on farming expansion in Greenland,
highlight the tendency of the overall farming system to foster interdependency,
and through time, they show an increase in collective reliance on better-situated
magnate farms. These factors coupled with topographic constrains of Greenland's
glaciated landscape limit the potential for either the maintenance or
intensification of domestic stock production through periods of climate
fluctuation and cooling. In any way Norse was
proven that they had the ability to develop and sustain a network
regarding land exploitation which probably could adjust according with the
times.
The ones most important animals to the Norse and the indigenous
Inuit were land sea mammals and birds, fish and marine invertebrates.
Greenland's sole native large terrestrial herbivore in the former Norse areas
is the caribou, which Lapps and other native peoples of the Eurasian continent
domesticated as reindeer but which the Norse and Inuit never did. Polar bears
and wolves were virtually confined in Greenland to areas north of the Norse
settlements. The most important marine mammals were seals of six different
species, differing in significance to the Norse and Inuit. The largest of these
species is the walrus. Various species of whales occur along the coast and were
successfully hunted by the Inuit but not by the Norse. Fish abounded in rivers,
lakes, and oceans, while shrimps and mussels were the most valuable edible
marine invertebrates.
Greenland subsistence was based on a combination of pastoralism (growing domestic
livestock) and hunting wild animals for meat. Greenland's settlers started out
with aspirations based on the mix of livestock maintained by prosperous
Norwegian chiefs: lots of cows and pigs, fewer sheep and still fewer goats,
plus some horses ducks and geese. Barnyard ducks and geese dropped out
immediately, pigs proved too destructive and unprofitable in lightly wooded
Greenland, where they rooted up the fragile vegetation and soil, horses were
kept as working animals as there was a Christian religious ban against eating
them and labor-intensive cows reduced in numbers through years without been
eliminated completely as they were considered as a status symbol. Numbers of
sheep plus goats started off barely equal to cow numbers and then rose with
time to as many as eight sheep or goats for every cow. Goats numbers reached
the sheep ones as goats could digest the tough twigs, shrubs and dwarf trees prevalent
in poor Greenland pastures. So Norse relatively quickly adjusted their
livestock to match the environment and their religious and social beliefs.
Meat was available from the livestock just at times of
culling, especially in autumn when farmers calculated how many animals they
would be able to feed through winter on the hay they had brought in the fall.
It took several tons of hay to maintain a cow, much less to maintain a sheep
throughout an average Greenland winter. Meat of wild animals, especially
caribou and seals, consumed to a far greater extent than in Norway or Iceland. Caribou
were hunted in the fall probably by bow or arrow in communal drives with dogs.
The three main seal species hunted were the common seal (alias harbor seal) in
the spring, the migratory harp seal and the hooded seal both arriving in Greenland
from Newfoundland around May. To hunt these migratory seals Norse established
seasonal bases on the outer fjords from any farm. Any failure of the seal
migration or from any obstacle (such as is ice in the fjords and along the
coast, or else hostile Inuit) that impeded their access to the migratory seals
may cause a starvation. At the time of Eastern Settlement founding has been
proved that seafood consumption was only 20% but rose to 80% during the later
years of Norse survival: presumably because their ability to produce hay to
feed wintering livestock had declined, and also because the increased human
population needed more food than the livestock could provide. In any case there
were alternatives for feeding especially in sea and coast.
Apart from the heavy resilience on seals and caribou
the Norse obtained minor amounts of wild meat from small mammals (especially hares),
seabirds, ptarmigans, swans, eider ducks, beds of mussels, and whales. All meat
not consumed immediately would have been dried in storage buildings called skemmur, built of uncemented stones for
the wind to whistle through and dry out the meat, and located on windy sites
like tops of ridges proving that there were methods not only to find food but
to preserve it as well.
Moreover and conspicuously, nearly absent from Norse
archeological sites are fish, even though the Greenland Norse were descended
from Norwegians and Icelanders who spent much time fishing and happily are
fish. Fish bones account for much less than 0.1% of animal bones recovered at
Greenland sites compared to 50 and 95% at most contemporary Iceland, northern
Norway and Shetland sites. This paucity of fish bones is incredible when one
considers how abundant fish are in Greenland and how saltwater fish (especially
haddock and cod) are by far the largest export of modern Greenland. Trout and
salmon-like char are so numerous in Greenland's rivers and lakes that can be
caught with bare hands! Even if the Norse didn't want to eat those easily
caught fishes themselves, they could at least have fed them to their dogs. Even
though Greenland's Norse originated from a fish- eating society, they may have
developed a taboo against eating fish. 'So this a non-maritime culture in the
edge of the sea. It's very strange" according to Paul Buckland, a
paleoecologist at the university of Sheffield in tyhe United Kingdom.
From their settlements the Norse undertook even
explorations and annual hunting trips northwards along the west coast, far
north of the Arctic Circle. But few knar (cargo vessels) and longships that
brought the original settlers and had potentially transatlantic range would be
likely to be available to the later Norse Greenlanders. Lack of standing
timber, shortage of iron fittings and simple poverty robbed Iceland of
ocean-going vessels as early as AD 1180. In the end any cold conditions by
around 1420 were tolerable or even beneficial for the Inuit who could hunt
ringed seals, but where bad news for the Norse who depended on growing hay for
their livestock. Indeed abundant sea food always existed in Greenland leaving
any starvation threat only explained by the inability or unwillingness of Norse
to reach it.
The Norse probably contacted Indian populations in
southern Labrador and Newfoundland, Dorset
Palaeoeskimos in northern Labradorn and Thule Eskimos in Greenland and
perhaps in the eastern Canadian Arctic. Patricia Sutherland, an adjunct
professor at Carleton University in Ottawa thinks that Viking seafarers from
Greenland voyaged to the Canadian Arctic to trade with indigenous hunters,
exchanging metal, knives and hones for thick-arctic fox furs and walrus
ivory-luxury goods for European markets. That was the first prolonged contact
between North American hunters and European farmers. In contrast to such later
temperate-zone contacts between North Americans and Europeans Greenland saw the
extinction of the Norse farmers and the survival and spread of Inuit hunters.
These occasional contacts involving both trade and
plundering probably occurred over a period of several centuries. The most
important result of contact between these groups was the prevention of European
colonization of the new World for a half a millennium. Greenlandic Eskimo
traditions, although dealing primarily with violent contacts between the
groups, also tell of trade and relatively amicable relations. Contacts should
have taken place more frequently than recorded in the Norse historical accounts
probably sporadic and opportunistic. Thule people were eager to trade ivory and
skins for small metal objects. In the end in a country chronically short of
hardwood and metal Eskimo hunting weapons were probably as efficient as Norse
weapons of war.
The fact that neither group appears to have adopted
any major cultural or technological elements suggests that contempt probably
outweighed respect in relations between the two populations. In any way friendlier
relations with the Inuit could have evolved into the sort of intercultural
trading that proved so profitable to the
Dutch in West Greenland by A.D. 1600. What is astonishing is though Norse and
Inuit faced the same environmental conditions and any other tangible threats
only the first led to extinction. As long as a clear clash between these two
civilizations has not been proved yet the reason for the Norse collapse should
be tracked somewhere else. Maybe in intangible areas of human activities.
Greenland society was totally "Eurocentric".
From Europe received material trade goods, but even more important were
non-material imports: identities as Christians and as Europeans. Regarding
material imports it took mediaeval sailing ships a week or more for a dangerous
voyage to Greenland from Norway. Hence the Greenlanders were visited by at most
a couple of European ships a year and sometimes one every few years. Greenland's
trade with Europe was mainly through the Norwegian ports of Bergen and
Trodheim. Much of the arriving cargo capacity was devoted to materials for
churches and luxurious fro the elite. Other material included three
necessities: iron, lumber for buildings and furniture and tar as a lubricant
and wood preservative. In exchange Greenland's exports were of low volume and
high value as skins of goats, cattle and seals, wool cloth and the most prized
ones derived from Arctic animals rare or absent in most Europe: walrus ivory
and hide, live polar bears or their hides, tusks of the narwhal (a small whale)
and live gyrfalcons (the worlds' largest falcon). Greenland's acceptance of Norwegian
sovereignty in 1261 was in return for the king's promise to dispatch two ships each
year. Thereafter Greenland's trade became a Norwegian monopoly difficult to
enforce Norwegian authority due to the distance. Moreover profits for merchants
came from now on providing large quantities of fish and fish oil to growing
urban markets in Europe, not distributing prestige items. Historical documents
indicate that sailing to Greenland become more infrequent at the end of the
1300s.
A century of virulent plague epidemics and war had
sapped the strength of Norway. In addition a transfer of trade to the Hanseatic
League meant the elimination of less profitable trading areas. The Norse
Greenland's most important exports-skins and ivory- were no longer in demand.
The same for homespun or exotic articles like falcons or polar bears that no
longer stimulated European trade. By around 1420 the Little Ice Age was in full
swing and the increased summer drift ice between the Greenland, Iceland and
Norway ended ship communication between the Greenland Norse and the outside
World.
Internal economy had to be change in order to sustain
Norse society existence. No external links and flow of goods in both ways meant
that Greenland transformed in a strict religious and social enclosure, a
"social monastery" that had to be governed and survive on its own and
by their leaders.
Greenland's marginality for raising livestock meant
that people had to develop a complex, integrated economy in order to make ends
meet. Although farming was the common denominator Norse were forced to adapt a
two-part economy-hunting/fishing and farming-in order to survive. That integration
involved both time and space: different activities scheduled at different
seasons, and different farms specialized in producing different things to share
with other farms. In May and early June was the crucial season of seal hunting,
when the migratory harp and hooded seals moved in herds along the outer fjords
and the resident common seals came out on beaches to give birth and were
easiest to catch. The summer months of June through August were an especially
busy season, when the livestock were brought out to pasture to graze, livestock
were yielding milk to turn into storable dairy products, some men set out in
boats for Labrador to cut timber, other boats headed north to hunt walruses,
and cargo boats arrived from Iceland or Europe for trading. August and early
September were hectic weeks of cutting, drying, and storing hay, just before
the weeks in September when the cows were led back to barns from pastures and
the sheep and goats were brought nearer to shelter. September and October were
the season of the caribou hunt, while the winter months from November to April
were a time to tend animals in barns and shelters, to weave, to build and
repair with wood, to process the tusks of walrus killed during the summer and
to pray that dairy products and dried meat for human food, the hay for animal
fodder, and the fuel for heating and cooking didn't run out before the winter's
end.
Besides the economic integration over time,
integration over space was also necessary, because not even the richest
Greenland farm was self sufficient in everything required to survive through
the year. That integration involved transfers between outer and inner fjords,
between upland and lowland farms, between Western and Eastern Settlement, and
between rich and poor farms. Integration of poorer and richer farms was
necessary because hay production and grass growth depend especially on a
combination of two factors: temperature and hours of sunlight. Because Western
Settlement lies 300 km its hay production was barely one-third that of Eastern
Settlement. However, Western Settlement was closer to the hunting grounds for
walruses and polar bears that were Greenland's chief export to Europe. Thus,
Western Settlement, although much smaller than the Easter Settlement was
crucial to the Norse economy. Church
tithes and taxes could be paid with walrus and narwhal tusk. We know of
a tithe of 653 kg of tusk that was sent to Europe in 1327.
Thus, Greenland society was characterized by much
interdependence and sharing, with seals and seabirds being transported inland,
caribou downhill, walrus tusks south, and livestock from richer to poorer
farms. The complexly integrated economy , based on raising livestock, hunting
on land and hunting in fjords enabled the Norse to survive in an environment
where no one of those components alone was sufficient for survival. On the
other hand that economy was vulnerable to failure of any of those components.
Many possible climatic events could raise the specter
of starvation: a short, cool, foggy summer, or wet August, that decreased hay
production; a long snowy winter that was hard on both livestock and caribou;
ice pile -up in the fjords, impeding access to the outer fjords during the May-June
sealing season; a change in the ocean temperatures, affecting fish populations
and hence the populations of fish -eating seals; a climate change far away in
Newfoundland, affecting harp and hooded seals on their breeding grounds. The Norse
could cope with one bad summer or bad winter that it followed by a series of
good years but a decade with several bad years or a summer with low hay
production followed by a long snowy winter in combination with a crash in seal
numbers or else anything impending spring access to the outer fjords was
dangerous to cope with, that was actually happened eventually at Western Settlement.
But in Greenland as elsewhere in the world where rich
and poor people are interdependent, rich and poor people didn't all end up with
the same average wealth. Somewhere there the main reason for the Norse should
be examined. No matter the resources, limited or not, could this type of
economy in a remote and unapproachable island could function properly anymore
so as to sustain a society?
Five adjectives, mutually somewhat contradictory characterize
Greenland Norse society: communal, violent, hierarchical and Eurocentic. Greenland's
population of about 5,000 lived on 250 farms with average of 20 people per
farm, organized in turn into communities centered on 14 main churches, with an
average of about 20 farms per church. Norse Greenland was a strongly communal
society, in which each person could not go off, make a living by himself or
herself, and hope to survive. Cooperation was essential for the spring seal
hunt, summer Nordrseta hunt, late summer hay harvest and autumn caribou hunt
and for building. Different Greenland locations produced different things, such
that people at different locations depended on each other for the things that
they did not producer.
Greenland politically was not organized as a state but
as a loose federation of chiefdoms operating under feudal conditions, with
neither money nor a market economy. A socially stratified, organized society bound
by duty and dependence in a wider hierarchical context. Still like Iceland,
Viking Greenland was a conservative society resistant to change and sticking to
old ways. While they succeeded in developing an economy that let them survive
there for many generations, they found that variations on that economy were
much likely to prove disastrous than advantageous. A tightly controlled
society, in which few chiefs of the richest farms could prevent anyone else
from doing something that seemed to threaten their interests- including anyone
experimenting with innovation that did not promise to help the chiefs could not
expect a prosperous future.
Greenland converted to Christianity around A.D.1000 at
the same time as the conversion of Iceland and the other Viking Atlantic
colonies. In A.D.1118 Norway king sent the first bishop to Greenland to be
followed by about nine others over the succeeding centuries. Without exception
were all born in Europe ant they looked to Europe for their models, preferred
beef over seal meat, and directed resources of Greenland society to the
Nordrseta hunt that enabled them to buy wine and vestments for themselves and
stained glass windows for their churches.
A big construction program of churches lunched for the first day and continued
to around A.D.1300. These big churches were all out of proportion to the size
of the tiny society that erected and supported them. A three-tiered hierarchy
whose first sites included the bishop's estate at Gadar in the eastern
Settlement and a few largest Eastern Settlement farms, a larger number of
relatively prosperous second-order church farms, above the majority of small to
medium sized secular farms.
Both secular and ecclesiastical elites have occupied
ecologically favored locations in the inner fjords, consumed a disproportionate
share of imported goods, and operated domestic economies significantly
different from the poorest Norse farmers. They profited from a system that made
elaborate religious ceremony and cattle-keeping marks and guarantors of status.
As decision-makers were resistant to change and disregard options of relocation
to outer fjords due to a possible loss of political and spiritual control and
considered innovation dangerous for their privileges. The same went for
adapting to rich fund of Inuit technology and expertise and not clinging
fatally to existing economic patterns. Having the means of imposing their
decision through retributive alms, loans of cattle and produce, and the
structure of rents and tithes would all tend to increase the dependence of
marginal farmers on wealthier patrons during periods of scarcity.
"Mystification" by ignoring an unfavorable
balance between effort and reward caused by the spread and indoctrination of an
ideology of hierarchy that provides justification for social inequities and
stress collective, class-specific duties and rewards over individual interests.
"Auto-mystification" could make thing even worse by determine badly
what administrators believe about causation and how react to data they collect
and interpret.
"We are Europeans" became more serious when
it led to stubbornly maintaining cows in Greenland's climate, diverting
manpower from the summer hay harvest to the Nordrseta hunt, refusing to adopt
useful features of Inuit technology and starving to death as a result. More
European than Europeans themselves especially politically they were culturally
hampered in making the drastic lifestyle changes that could have helped them
survive.
Norse Settlements countdown begun from the first day
the put their foot on the island. Although it seemed they were well-established
and accumulated gradually island specific reserves of what anthropologists call
Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK)
were unable to respond to the challenges. Their TEK that encompassed worldview
and accumulated knowledge of environmental variability, resource fluctuation,
the nature of interactive relationships and the temporal and spatial patterning
of these dynamics on the local scale, proved limited and inadequate for their
survival.
The real mystery is why they died out but why the
clung to such a poorly adapted economy for 5 centuries. They had the good luck
to discover a virgin landscape that had never been logged or grazed and that
were suitable for pasture. They arrived in 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 was European demand for their exports of walrus
ivory and when there were no native Americans anywhere
near the Norse settlements or hunting grounds. All those initial advantages
gradually turned against the Norse, in ways for which they bore some
responsibility. Norse failed to respond properly and brought an end to the
Norse Greenland colony.
Deforestation brought soil erosion and poverty in firewood. Norse continued to
burn willow and alder wood in their houses rejecting Inuit blubber choice for
heating and lightning of their dwellings. Deforestation also caused lack of iron making finally iron tools to be
reused and reshaped until worn down to stubs. With few iron tools available or
would have taken more time to harvest hay, butcher a carcass and shear sheep. There
is no evidence that the Greenland Norse after the first few generations had
steel weapons or steel armor anymore. For Vikings making weapons out of
whalebone musty have been the ultimate humiliation. By losing iron the Norse
lost their military advantage over the Inuit. They had to fought with bows,
arrows and lances just as did the Inuit.
Besides the lack of lumber, fuel and iron, following
soil and turf damage limited useful land. Estimates suggest that the loss of
only one-quarter of the total pasture area at Eastern and Western Settlement would
have sufficed to drop herd size below that minimum critical threshold. That
actually appears to have happened at Western Settlement and possibly at Eastern
Settlement as well. By 1361 a seafaring Norwegian priest, Ivar Bardarson and
his companion reported Greenland's Western Settlement eerily emptied.
"They found nobody, either Christians or heathens, only some wild cattle
and sheep". Bardarson's declaration seems to have come in a surprise,
which must mean that the communications between the two settlements had been
broken off for a long time. A 20-year series of cool summers was apparently
enough to trigger abandonment of one of the two major settlements, says Tom
McGovern, a zooarcheologist at the city University of New York.
Paleoclimatologist Lisa Barlow of University of Colorado measuring hydrogen
isotopes discovered four major isotopic excursions suggesting clusters of
chilly periods from 1308 to 1318, 1324 to 1329, 1343 to 1362 and 1380 to 1384.
The longest cold spell, beginning in
1343 correlated almost exactly with the abandonment of the Western Settlement. Before
the abandonment they had eaten all the dairy cattle - in violation of
traditional Norse law, butchered valuable dogs for food and even tried to eat
the cattle's hooves . According to Tom Amorosi, a zooarcheologist at CUNY
"searching for calories they've scaled down to a point where there's no
food left".
With full inner-fjords resource space, heavy
investment in ceremonial architecture, and strong linkages to distant and
increasingly disinterested European markets, Norse society in A.D.1330 showed a
dangerous lack of resilience in the face of waning extractive efficiency,
fluctuating resources and Inuit competition.
When existence in a crisis area becomes impossible
there only two solutions: either to abandon the area or to attempt to survive
at bare subsistence level. The fittest section of the Norse population - the younger
generation- would be the first to leave. It is not inconceivable that some of
the inhabitants chose to migrate to Eastern Settlements. Even a higher
emigration from the country whenever the opportunity arose was likely. A slow
and steady migration of the surplus population would perhaps become noticeable
later on. If this continued for a long time it was probably not worthy mention
in documents. And once the critical threshold had been passed it would not be
recorded either.
Residential stability would change to seasonal
mobility between hunting places in a cycle identical to that of the advancing
Inugssuk Eskimos with whom the Norse would have come in sharper competition.
The final consequence of this would have been a society which was driven away
from its European cultural roots an towards a hunting and gathering mode of
life; this would have been unacceptable. Nothing confirmed such a course of
action taken by the Norse.
From inspection of the Eastern Settlements it seems
that at some stage reached a population saturation point, beyond which further
building was impractical. Much of the
locational inflexibility and rising cost of marine resource exploitation that
hampered the Norse economy of the 1300s can be traced to decisions that made
domesticates (and thus pasturage) the primary criterion of site location. This
decision chained the Norse to the restricted ecological pockets that proved
deadly traps as seal migration and weather patterns fluctuated.
Church's elite in reaction fortified social
institutions by extensive church building. In the 1300s the situation in the
Eastern Settlement was such that he church as a institution was the largest,
and possibly the only, landowner of any significance. A feudalization of
society by slipping power and land from upper class farmers to the church was a
parallel phenomenon to the contemporaneous development in Europe.
Just what happened in Greenland continues to be the
subject of debate. There is no doubt that there has been a climate impact and
it can be significant in a place like North Atlantic where agricultural societies
cherished the European way of life and not adapting to the environment
according to William Fitzhugh, an Arctic archeologist at het National Museum of
natural History in Washington.
Violent stresses such as epidemics and pirate attacks
and even genetic degeneration have been suggested for Norse collapse but there
is nothing in the archeological records which supports such theories in any
way. None of the excavated ruins show signs of fleeing in panic, either from
attacks or epidemics. According to Jette Amenborg, a curator at the Danish
national Museum in Copenhagen, "The
settler seems to have taken all their precious items, including church bells,
away with them, leaving ordinary bulky items with them. I think they simply
decided to give up the area.". Instead of starvation she suggests that he
settlement was abandoned in part because of declining trade with Europe, which
left settlers isolated from their homeland.
A declining subsistence economy was the common
denominator in Norse extinction where the driving force behind their society
must have languished at some stage resulting in a stagnation which led to an
inevitable total decline. It is essential for the survival of every society
that a balance be achieved between the size of the population and the means of
livelihood. If the subsistence possibilities decrease a crisis situation
arises; if this imbalance cannot be compensated for by artificial means
(external support), the society collapse. The needed balance between animal
husbandry and hunting changed irretrievable. Norse operated with several
substantial alternatives which reduced their vulnerability to starvation but in
the end those weren't enough. To McGovern, ethnic purity triumphed at the
expense of biological survival. It seems that he Norse in Greenland remained
true to the laws and customs of their warmer homeland-and paid the final price for
it.
Their failure actually was due to an inability to anticipate
an unknown future, an inability to broaden their traditional ecological
knowledge (TEK) base and a case of being too specialized, too small, and too
isolated to be able to compete in the new proto-world system extending into the
North Atlantic in the early 15th century. The seeds off the 15th century
collapse were sown in the successful adaptations of the 13th and 14th centuries
which were effective in the short term by investing in fixed resources spaces
and social and material infrastructure and intensifying marine resource use but
at an apparent cost of reduced resilience in the face of the 15th century
conjectures.
The human dimension needs to be evaluated on seasonal
times-scale, and spatial resolutions extending from individual settlement sites
and land holdings to groups of settlements in regional landscapes, and trade
and socio-political relationships across continental scales. The Norse
Greenlanders were ultimately as much victims of conjunctures of global economic
change, regional political change, culture contact and major environmental
change as the victims of any individual threat. Norse Greenland may serve to
broaden the perspectives and knowledge base of modern planners seeking
sustainable futures in a contemporary world affected by rapid climate change
and the historical conjunctures of economic stress and culture conflict.
A brave civilization that settled Shetland, the
Orkneys, the Faroes, parts of northern Scotland, Iceland, parts of Greenland,
and penetrated arctic Canada while establishing a foothold in temperate North
America on its peak condemned finally to extinction due to its social model it
imposed from the start. In nowadays
terms, it seems that the Norse developed and tried to defend the North Korea
social communist model, in one of the most harassing environmentally areas of
the World completely cut off from the rest of an Old World that was changing in
that time and changes again nowadays as well.
The main conclusion and the missing piece in the
puzzle for Norse extinction is that discipline should focus more on the
feasibility, the limits and the appliance of "communal or communist"
social models in societies. While elite management in some circumstances may
lessen the impact of environmental fluctuation and enhance a culture's adaptive
response, the case of Norse Greenlander suggest that the reverse may also be
true. As Soviet Union, USA's short birth social experimental efforts and
Eastern Europe Cold War countries history have proved repeatedly this social
model is convicted in long term death without leaving always traces of the
reasons for its crimes apart people's starvation and social collapse.
Discipline has a new "ungrazed" field to search if wants to resolve
Norse social and environment lethal embrace in Greenland. A lethal and rigid
social model that hindered for half a century the establishment of a free new
World based on individual freedom and creativity which interestingly becomes
Old again nowadays.
References Cited
2017 March, National Geographic, Vikings
2012, Cultural adaptation, compounding vulnerabilities
and conjunctures in Norse Greenland, Andrew J. Dugmore, Thomas H. McGovern,
Orri Vesteinsson, Jette Arneborg, Richard Streeter and Christian Keller,
national Academy of Sciences.
2011, Collapse, Jared Diamond, Penguin Books
2007, Contact between native North Americans and the
Medieval Norse: A Review of the Evidence, Robert McGhee, American Antiquity.
2007, Norse Greenland Settlement: Reflections on
Climate Change, Trade, and the Contrasting fates or Human Settlements in the
North Atlantic Islands, University of Wisconsin Press
1997, Death in Norse Greenland, Heather Pringle,
American Association for the Advancement of Science.
1990, The Archeology of the Norse North Atlantic,
Thomas H. McGovern, Annual Reviews.
1986, The Decline of the Norse Settlements in
Greenland, Joel Berglund, University of Wisconsin Press
1985, Climate and History, T.M.L. Wigley, M.J.Ingram
and G.Farmer, Cambridge University Press
1984, Contact between Native North Americans and teh
Medieval Norse: A Review of the Evidence, Society for American Archeology.
1980, Cows, Harp Seals, and Churchbells: Adaptation
and extinction in Norse Greenland, Thomas H. McGovern, Springer
