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THE LOST NORSE Archaeologists Have a New Answer to the Mystery of Greenland’S Norse, Who Thrived for Centuries and Then Vanished

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THE LOST NORSE Archaeologists Have a New Answer to the Mystery of Greenland’S Norse, Who Thrived for Centuries and Then Vanished FEATURES Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ on January 11, 2021 THE LOST NORSE Archaeologists have a new answer to the mystery of Greenland’s Norse, who thrived for centuries and then vanished By Eli Kintisch, in Tasilikulooq, in Greenland 696 11 NOVEMBER 2016 • VOL 354 ISSUE 6313 sciencemag.org SCIENCE Published by AAAS DA_1111NewsFeatures.indd 696 11/9/16 12:38 PM NEWS Hvalsey Church was the site of a 1408 wedding, IN 1976, a bushy-bearded Thomas the last record of Norse life in Greenland. McGovern, then 26, arrived for the first time on the grassy shore of a fjord in south- ings, so long cut off from all intercourse ern Greenland, eager to begin work on his with the more civilized world?” Egede Ph.D. in archaeology. The basic Norse time- wrote in an account of the journey. “Were line had already been established. In the they destroyed by an invasion of the na- ninth century, the advances in seafaring tives … [or] perished by the inclemency of technology that enabled Scandinavian Vi- the climate, and the sterility of the soil?” kings to raid northern and central Europe Archaeologists still wonder today. No also opened the way for the Norse, as they chapter of Arctic history is more mysteri- came to be known in their later, peaceful ous than the disappearance of these Norse incarnations, to journey west to Iceland. settlements sometime in the 15th century. If the unreliable Icelandic Sagas, written Theories for the colony’s failure have in- centuries later, are to be believed, an en- cluded everything from sinister Basque terprising Icelander named Erik the Red pirates to the Black Plague. But histori- led several ships to Greenland around ans have usually pinned most responsi- 985 C.E. The Norse eventually established bility on the Norse themselves, arguing two settlements, with hundreds of farms that they failed to adapt to a changing and more than 3000 settlers at their peak. climate. The Norse settled Greenland from But by 1400, the settlement on the island’s Downloaded from Iceland during a warm period around western coast had been abandoned, accord- 1000 C.E. But even as a chilly era called ing to radiocarbon dates, and by 1450 the the Little Ice Age set in, the story goes, inhabitants in the Eastern Settlement on they clung to raising livestock and church- the island’s southern tip were gone as well. building while squandering natural re- Data gathered in the 1980s by McGovern sources like soil and timber. Meanwhile, and others suggested that the colonies were http://science.sciencemag.org/ the seal-hunting, whale-eating Inuit sur- doomed by “fatal Norse conservatism in the vived in the very same environment. face of fluctuating resources,” as McGovern, Over the last decade, however, new ex- cavations across the North Atlantic have forced archaeologists to revise some of these The Arctic frontier long-held views. An international research Norse colonists established settlements in southern collective called the North Atlantic Bio- Greenland, often siting their farmsteads on fjords. cultural Organisation (NABO) has accumu- lated precise new data on ancient settle- ment patterns, diet, and landscape. The findings suggest that the Greenland Norse on January 11, 2021 Western Settlement focused less on livestock and more on trade, especially in walrus ivory, and that for food they relied more on the sea than on their pastures. There’s no doubt that climate Davis North Strait Greenland Atlantic stressed the colony, but the emerging narra- Ocean tive is not of an agricultural society short on food, but a hunting society short on labor and susceptible to catastrophes at sea and Narsarsuaq social unrest. Gardar Historian Poul Holm of Trinity College Eastern Settlement 0 100 200 in Dublin lauds the new picture, which re- veals that the Greenland Norse were “not a Labrador Sea Km civilization stuck in their ways.” To NABO n 1721, missionary Hans Egede sailed archaeologist George Hambrecht of the now at Hunter College in New York City, a ship called The Hope from Norway University of Maryland in College Park, wrote at the time. The Norse considered N E to Greenland, seeking Norse farmers “The new story is that they adapted but they themselves farmers, he and others thought, S AD whom Europeans hadn’t heard from failed anyway.” tending hay fields despite the short grow- ; M . A R C in 200 years in order to convert them Ironically, just as this new picture is ing season and bringing dairy cows and O D UR AN to Protestantism. He explored iceberg- emerging, climate change once again sheep from Iceland. A 13th century Nor- A O / B K A C dotted fjords that gave way to gentle threatens Norse settlements—or what’s left wegian royal treatise called The King’s N SI ) S A T valleys, and silver lakes that shim- of them. Organic artifacts like clothing and Mirror lauds Greenland’s suitability for A R E E T (D mered below the massive ice cap. But animal bones, preserved for centuries in farming: The sun has “sufficient strength, ; E P © NCE when he asked the Inuit hunters he met the deep freeze of the permafrost, are de- where the ground is free from ice, to warm ) IE O C T S O Iabout the Norse, they showed him crum- caying rapidly as rising temperatures thaw the soil so that the earth yields good and / H U P O ( bling stone church walls: the only rem- the soil. “It’s horrifying. Just at the time fragrant grass.” Y . S: J T I ) D nants of 500 years of occupation. “What we can do something with all this data, it Bone samples suggest that even small AP RE M C ( has been the fate of so many human be- is disappearing under our feet,” Holm says. farms kept a cow or two, a sign of status SCIENCE sciencemag.org 11 NOVEMBER 2016 • VOL 354 ISSUE 6313 697 Published by AAAS DA_1111NewsFeatures.indd 697 11/9/16 12:38 PM In the 10th and 11th centuries, the Norse crossed the stormy Atlantic to Greenland in vessels resembling this ninth century Viking ship found in Norway. Downloaded from http://science.sciencemag.org/ on January 11, 2021 Published by AAAS DA_1111NewsFeatures.indd 698 11/9/16 12:38 PM NEWS | FEATURES back in Norway, and written records men- house. A brown button the size of a nickel removed from its skull, presumably with tion dairy products including cheese, milk, emerges on the metal sieve. “They found a metal tool. The find suggests that the and a yogurt called skyr as essential parts one more of those buttons,” says archaeo- early Icelandic Norse were “experienced of the diet. “There were no activities more logist Brita Hope of the University Museum in handling walrus ivory,” NABO members central to Norse identity than farming,” of Bergen in Norway, smiling, when word wrote in a 2015 paper; it follows that the archaeologist William Fitzhugh of the makes it back to the farmhouse the nine- Greenlanders were, too. Although histori- Smithsonian Institution’s National Mu- member team uses as a headquarters for ans long assumed that the Norse settled seum of Natural History (NMNH) in Wash- the monthlong dig. “We could make a coat,” Iceland and Greenland in search of new ington, D.C., wrote in 2000. a student jokes. farmland, some researchers have recently Geographer Jared Diamond of the Uni- But the function of the button matters a suggested that the hunt for ivory instead versity of California, Los Angeles, popu- lot less than what it’s made of: walrus tooth. drove the settlement of both islands. Wal- larized this view in his 2005 bestseller, Several walrus face bones have also turned rus in Iceland were steadily extirpated af- Collapse. The Norse “damaged their up at the farm, suggesting that the inhab- ter the Norse arrived there, likely hunted , environment” as they had done in Iceland, itants hunted in the communal Disko Bay out by the settlers. ET. AL Diamond asserted, based on analyses of expedition, says excavation leader Konrad The high value that medieval Europe dust that suggested erosion caused by fell- Smiarowski of the City University of New placed on walrus ivory would have pro- ing trees, agriculture, and turf cutting. York in New York City. These finds and vided plenty of incentive to pursue it in While foolishly building churches with others point to ivory—a product of Green- Greenland. Craftsmen used ivory in luxury costly bronze bells, Diamond said, Green- land’s environment—as a linchpin of the ornaments and apparel, and in objects like 2012 land’s Norse “refused to learn” Arctic hunt- Norse economy. the famous Lewis chess set, discovered in Downloaded from ET AL. ing techniques from the Inuit, who hunted One NABO dig in Reykjavik, for exam- Scotland in 1831. In 1327, an 802-kilogram seals and fish year-round. He noted grisly ple, yielded a tusk, radiocarbon dated to parcel of Greenland tusks was worth a evidence of calamity at a few sites in the about 900 C.E., which had been expertly small fortune—the equivalent of roughly Western Settlement: bones of pet dogs with cut marks on them, suggesting hun- ger; and the remains of insects that feast Fighting the big chill http://science.sciencemag.org/ on corpses, suggesting too few survivors Environmental data show that Greenland’s climate worsened during the Norse colonization. In response, to bury their loved ones. “Every one of the Norse turned from their struggling farms to the sea for food before finally abandoning their settlements.
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