Norse Greenland, the five centuries between the discovery of Greenland by Viking explorers in the 10th century and the end of the colony they founded some time in the 15th century, has always been an interest of mine. The idea of an earlier crossing of the Atlantic Ocean, one predating Christopher Columbus, has long interested alternate historians. In Norse Greenland, you not only have an example of a European society established on the other side of the Atlantic, you have one that explored deeply into the continent, with Vinland stretching along the shores of the Gulf of St. Lawrence--my home territory, really. The question then, inevitably, arises: Why did Norse Greenland disappear? Chris Mooney's
widely syndicated Washington Post article suggests that the changing climate was not the cause.
Climate change has often been cited as key element to this story -- the basic notion being that the Vikings colonized Greenland in an era dubbed the "Medieval Warm Period," which ran roughly from 950 to 1250, but then were forced to abandon their Greenland settlements as temperatures became harsher in the "Little Ice Age," from about 1300 to 1850.
Yet in a new study published Friday in Science Advances, researchers raise doubts about whether the so-called Medieval Warm Period was really so warm in southern Greenland or nearby Baffin Island -- suggesting that the tale of the Vikings colonizing but then abandoning Greenland due to climatic changes may be too simplistic. Their evidence? New geological data on the extent of glaciers in the region at the time, finding that during the era when the Norse occupied the area, glaciers were almost as far advanced as they were during the subsequent Little Ice Age.
"This study suggests that while the Vikings may have left Iceland when it was relatively warm, they arrived in the Baffin Bay region, and it was relatively cool," said Nicolás Young, a professor at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory at Columbia University and lead author of the study, which was conducted with three colleagues from Columbia and the University at Buffalo. "So for their initial settlement, and the first few centuries when they were there, they persisted and thrived somewhat during a relatively cool climate. And so it's sort of a stretch to say that a cool climate is what drove them out of the region, when they demonstrated that they could be somewhat successful during a cool climate."
[. . .]
The researchers conclude that during the time of the Norse settlements, at least in this region around Baffin Bay and the Labrador Sea, the climate was pretty cool. Granted, conditions may have been warmer in Europe at the time, but the gist is that the so-called "Medieval Warm Period" was, at best, rather inconsistent and regionally varied. That's a conclusion that other studies have also supported -- with some researchers now calling it the "Medieval Climate Anomaly" to try to avoid any confusion, much less the incorrect idea that it was a uniform warm period such as the one in which we currently live.
"There's certainly strong evidence in Europe that that was a real thing," said Young of the "Medieval Warm Period." "But it's certainly not a global event, it was patchy, with quite a bit of variability."
The new consensus that seems to be emerging, based on the lack of evidence for any catastrophic end--no massacres by Inuit or European pirates, no mass graves, no radical shift in the environment, nothing of the kind--seems to be that Norse Greenland met a quiet end, as a marginal settlement in marginal territory contracted. The Western Settlement may have emptied into the warmer Eastern Settlement, and Greenland as a whole empty to kindred Iceland or even further beyond. A Vinland that was as distant from Greenland as Norway while lacking any of the human or natural resources needed by Greenlanders just was not an option, not in the 15th century and not at any previous time.
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