Climate and Greenland's Vikings

[Patrick Waterson]

A recent study suggests that changing climate was not responsible for the disappearance of the Viking settlement in Greenland.

Read all about it here and see what you think.

[Swampster]

Since the settlements were from the end of the 10 the century and the moraine showed that the glaciers "had neared or reached their later maximum Little Ice Age positions between 975 and 1275" the max cold period could have coincided with the period of settlement or could have been 300 years later. It could easily match with the lake sediment readings of a cold period starting c.1160.

[Patrick Waterson]

Could well be: c.1160-c.1360 is still quite a long period through which to struggle to plough the frozen fields, so if there is anything to this study one might wonder about the Black Death as the main agent in removing Greenland's Vikings.  It would probably have hit them c.1350.

[Dangun]

I struggle to believe that the coming and going of an additional 1 degree or so during the medieval warm period was the deciding factor in such a small population over such a short period of time.

Many generations would have come and gone with little significant change to the frozen-ness of the land. The time scales of climactic change and human decision making are too different. Resource depletion, plague, opportunity costs, the instability of small populations, all seem better explanations.

[willb]

While one degree may be the average for the whole planet, individual areas will vary more than that during different parts of the year.   Where I live there are many orchards with fruit and nut trees.   Those with cherry trees have been having problems due to the local winters not being cold enough for the trees to set enough fruit for the past few years.   Cherry trees require at least 90 days of 45 degrees Fahrenheit or less to properly set fruit.  Some of the farmers have started to replace their cherry trees with other fruit trees.   Also the local crab fishing season is currently under postponement due to a toxic algae bloom created by warmer ocean temperatures.  If the growing season for crops in Greenland was reduced by a significant amount of time due to colder weather so that crops would not ripen there would not have been enough food to support the population.  Whether or not that was the what happened would need to be verified by collecting enough data.

[Patrick Waterson]

Small but significant changes in temperature might cross a viability threshold for certain crops.  However my understanding is that the Greenland community were traders to a significant degree, which could indicate that they imported at least as much food as they grew - at least they would have had that recourse, whether they customarily did or not.

One would also imagine that in a primarily coastal settlement they would be busy fishermen.  I am not sure how fish populations respond to cooler temperatures, but judging from previous centuries' accounts of Arctic fish stocks before trawling and drifting became mechanised and adding in various Russian explorer accounts of frozen Siberian rivers packed with a carpet of fish under the ice, one is led to conclude that a colder climate did them no harm at all.

Resource depletion, plague, opportunity costs, the instability of small populations, all seem better explanations.

I am more inclined towards this kind of explanation.  The idea that a potentially and traditionally ship-mobile population would sit in place and starve is a little baffling, even if one assumes a degree of religion-induced passivity which does not seem to have been characteristic of the general culture.

[Erpingham]

I am more inclined towards this kind of explanation.  The idea that a potentially and traditionally ship-mobile population would sit in place and starve is a little baffling, even if one assumes a degree of religion-induced passivity which does not seem to have been characteristic of the general culture.

There is, if I recall, no evidence that everybody just died.  It is possible that the settlement finally evacuated itself, unrecorded, after a period of decline and maybe slow migration, caused by the multiple issues listed.

[Dangun]

I don't know what the current thoughts are on deforestation in Greenland, but its connection with construction and ship-building could have been decisive.

There is also the poor cultural and technological fit of the immigrants, and the failure to adapt and go "local", because the colder northern edge of Greenland was inhabited earlier, and for longer, although probably less densely.

[Patrick Waterson]

This article nicely lays out what was known on the subject 15 years ago (I have been unable to find anything more recent with the same broad scope).

The prevailing theory back then, presumably with a flavour of the Franklin expedition, centred on lack of adaptability leading to extinction at a time of changing climate.  The latest findings, if one may call them that, suggest that the climate might have been much the same form the start of the settlement, which would remove lack of adaptability as a primary reason for the community's decline and demise.

One may note the emphasis in the Archaeology Online article (linked above) on external influences, but it is also of interest that the fly population, which seems to have been indissolubly linked to the human occupation, shut off suddenly around 1350 (give or take the usual radiocarbon dating caveats).  Although the Black Death apparently did not reach Iceland until 1402, The Greenland settlement does appear to have traded directly with Europe and may thus have been in line for an early outbreak soon after the plague appeared in France and England.

There is, if I recall, no evidence that everybody just died.

This in itself may not be conclusive: if the social order, such as it was, broke down when the Black Death arrived (assuming it did) then bodies could have ended up anywhere and everywhere.  With a dearth of ecclesiastical leadership and a traditionally loose Norse legal system it is unlikely that the population would have steadfastly remained in place conscientiously burying the victims in the normal way, or even been sufficiently organised to bury them in an abnormal way (plague pits or similar).  The tale of the 1540's ship finding a single Norseman's corpse face-down on the beach of a fjord suggests that society had atomised and the survivors had become fragmented.

Hence the Black Death remains my favoured explanation.  It ticks quite a few boxes, looks about right time-wise and the absence of mass graves is not an insuperable objection.  If nothing else, it could have taken a society with accumulating underlying problems, including those of climate and resources, over the edge.