Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish? (2017)(smithsonianmag.com)
smithsonianmag.com
Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish? (2017)
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/
33 comments
It's amazing that people in Iceland knew people in Greenland and people in Greenland almost definitely knew about North America, but somehow most people in Europe had no idea that North America existed.
People must have been so much more comfortable feeling vaguely curious, but not ever satisfying that curiousity.
People must have been so much more comfortable feeling vaguely curious, but not ever satisfying that curiousity.
Even if they were curious his would that be realized?
You couldn’t just book a ticket and hotel room.
It cost a lot of money so the only way to do it was via setting up a company to try and make profit on the endeavor. Only few people could manage that.
It’d be like asking years hence, the Americans had been to the moon, why wasn’t anyone else curious about the moon, why hadn’t others put people on the moon?
You couldn’t just book a ticket and hotel room.
It cost a lot of money so the only way to do it was via setting up a company to try and make profit on the endeavor. Only few people could manage that.
It’d be like asking years hence, the Americans had been to the moon, why wasn’t anyone else curious about the moon, why hadn’t others put people on the moon?
> It’d be like asking years hence, the Americans had been to the moon, why wasn’t anyone else curious about the moon, why hadn’t others put people on the moon?
I'm asking that question now. Even for Americans, the majority never had a moon landing in their lifetime. And with each passing day, it gets a little bit easier to believe the whole thing was a hoax. Hollywood can deepfake better moon footage than the historical record these days.
I'm asking that question now. Even for Americans, the majority never had a moon landing in their lifetime. And with each passing day, it gets a little bit easier to believe the whole thing was a hoax. Hollywood can deepfake better moon footage than the historical record these days.
I suspect the knowledge was restricted to the working classes. I suspect that the noble classes didn’t really care about how Norese Greenlanders got their lumber, or how North Europeans got the fish they traded with. They’d much rather know where the Chinese get their silk, where the South Asians get their spices, or where the West Africans get their gold from.
Since the resources coming from the North Atlantic were not that valuable, the knowledge of the lands and culture there stayed with the people who worked it.
Since the resources coming from the North Atlantic were not that valuable, the knowledge of the lands and culture there stayed with the people who worked it.
But there's evidence that there was a substantial Greenland walrus-ivory trade in the 1300s.
"The high value that medieval Europe placed on walrus ivory would have provided plenty of incentive to pursue it in Greenland. Craftsmen used ivory in luxury ornaments and apparel, and in objects like the famous Lewis chess set, discovered in Scotland in 1831. In 1327, an 802-kilogram parcel of Greenland tusks was worth a small fortune—the equivalent of roughly 780 cows or 60 tons of dried fish...."
(2016: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/why-did-greenland-s-...)
"The high value that medieval Europe placed on walrus ivory would have provided plenty of incentive to pursue it in Greenland. Craftsmen used ivory in luxury ornaments and apparel, and in objects like the famous Lewis chess set, discovered in Scotland in 1831. In 1327, an 802-kilogram parcel of Greenland tusks was worth a small fortune—the equivalent of roughly 780 cows or 60 tons of dried fish...."
(2016: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2016/11/why-did-greenland-s-...)
True, but by the 1400s there was more plentiful ivory to be had from India and East Africa. On top of having to compete for market share with the east trade, the Norse also had to compete with the more technologically advanced Inuit for hunting grounds in west Greenland.
I’m guessing the European noble class didn’t really have to care about ivory from the North Atlantic when they knew they could have cheaper and more plentiful Ivory from the East.
I’m guessing the European noble class didn’t really have to care about ivory from the North Atlantic when they knew they could have cheaper and more plentiful Ivory from the East.
You can imagine that there were likely many curious people that died pursuing their curiosity.
As I recall from 1491, the fisherman had enough trade as far as New England (by the 1600's) that the Pilgrims found a translator who already spoke English.
They didn't dwell on that in American History class.
They didn't dwell on that in American History class.
The translator actually had been enslaved by Europeans twice and knew English on account of having lived in England.
See https://www.biography.com/political-figure/squanto for verification.
See https://www.biography.com/political-figure/squanto for verification.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Banks_of_Newfoundland
I am imagining all these old salts in the pub rolling their eyes at the aristocratic "explorers"
I am imagining all these old salts in the pub rolling their eyes at the aristocratic "explorers"
Is the bit about Cabot saying that French and Portuguese fisherman started fishing there in earnest by 1502?
There is a book called "1491" by Charles C. Mann which the parent commenter is probably referring to.
Are you implying something?
Interesting tale about a Columbus voyage to Ireland. Have any info on that?
If you’re into this kind of thing, check out The Fall Of Civilizations podcast — it’s great and also has an episode on this topic.
https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/03/26/episode-4-...
https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/03/26/episode-4-...
or just turn on the TV ;)
That is such a narrow reply.
What channel? Is that channel being shown in my current TV cable package? What country? How accurate is the show?
I think it was a joke about the name of the podcast
My reading of the article is that it happened, as they say, "slowly and then all at once."
Not dissimilar from the hollowing out of rural America today. People keep on going, assuming that things will either stay stable or turn around at some point. Meanwhile everything keeps on at roughly the same trajectory of the people hanging on getting older and older, and the young people moving on to greener pastures.
And then one day you realize that there isn't really anything left.
Not dissimilar from the hollowing out of rural America today. People keep on going, assuming that things will either stay stable or turn around at some point. Meanwhile everything keeps on at roughly the same trajectory of the people hanging on getting older and older, and the young people moving on to greener pastures.
And then one day you realize that there isn't really anything left.
This subject is discussed in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.[1]
Some topics that the article didn't mention is that:
a) Norse in Greenland continued internal infighting losing (in such a small population) able men due to duels and revenge killing
b) They had been spending much of the efforts during short summer on costly expeditions to aquire walrus-tusk ivory instead of obtaining timber and other necessities.
c) The upper class had been directing most resources into vanity projects like large cathedral and exchanging walrus-tusk ivory for luxury imports like wine, fine clothes etc..
It is still beyond me why living in Greenland by the sea they had refused to eat fish.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose...
Some topics that the article didn't mention is that:
a) Norse in Greenland continued internal infighting losing (in such a small population) able men due to duels and revenge killing
b) They had been spending much of the efforts during short summer on costly expeditions to aquire walrus-tusk ivory instead of obtaining timber and other necessities.
c) The upper class had been directing most resources into vanity projects like large cathedral and exchanging walrus-tusk ivory for luxury imports like wine, fine clothes etc..
It is still beyond me why living in Greenland by the sea they had refused to eat fish.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose...
_Collapse_ and its author Jared Diamond get a mention in the article. This article adds a couple of factors to Diamond's. In 21st-century lingo the added factors were
-- Globalization: Elephant ivory from Africa, newly available, crowded out walrus-tusk ivory from the market. And Greenland's ivory sales were reduced in the wake of the plague. (Ivory was their foreign-exchange product.)
--Climate fluctuations, decades-long.
It's cool to learn a little more above the lived experience of those people. I imagine they argued with each other all the time about whether to spend their efforts getting stuff they could SELL or stuff they could USE. Figuring that out is hard enough for us, and we have perfect information about markets compared to them. Imagine how hard it must have been for them.
According to Diamond the Norse outposts in Greenland lasted five hundred years. That's a hundred years longer ago than the first English settlers clawed a foothold around Massachusetts Bay. A lot can happen in five hundred years! I suspect saying "it was this - " or "it was that - made them collapse" leads to gross oversimplification.
-- Globalization: Elephant ivory from Africa, newly available, crowded out walrus-tusk ivory from the market. And Greenland's ivory sales were reduced in the wake of the plague. (Ivory was their foreign-exchange product.)
--Climate fluctuations, decades-long.
It's cool to learn a little more above the lived experience of those people. I imagine they argued with each other all the time about whether to spend their efforts getting stuff they could SELL or stuff they could USE. Figuring that out is hard enough for us, and we have perfect information about markets compared to them. Imagine how hard it must have been for them.
According to Diamond the Norse outposts in Greenland lasted five hundred years. That's a hundred years longer ago than the first English settlers clawed a foothold around Massachusetts Bay. A lot can happen in five hundred years! I suspect saying "it was this - " or "it was that - made them collapse" leads to gross oversimplification.
They actually did change their diet to fish. Toward the end of the colony, the diet was predominantly seafood, and dramatically different from the diet of the early colonists:
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e392/f5fc6683acf7c1f05df7b3...
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e392/f5fc6683acf7c1f05df7b3...
It's quite a bit of a stretch to call anyone from after the 11th century a viking. But for some reason the epithet often gets bandied about when talking of the Norse in Greenland.
Sexier name for sure.
We do still call the age before the current Nordic states were established the age of Vikings in Sweden.
The whole notion of Vikings being stupid and naive sounds very old fashioned. The whole idea that short seasons and snow would scare off any people from the Nordic countries is bullshit. Nuuk is at 64 degrees north, roughly similar to Reykjavík, Trondheim or the southern point of the northern third of Sweden. Which had been inhabited for much longer. The climate is slightly better in Scandinavia that far north, but Greenland would surely have been similar.
The whole notion of Vikings being stupid and naive sounds very old fashioned. The whole idea that short seasons and snow would scare off any people from the Nordic countries is bullshit. Nuuk is at 64 degrees north, roughly similar to Reykjavík, Trondheim or the southern point of the northern third of Sweden. Which had been inhabited for much longer. The climate is slightly better in Scandinavia that far north, but Greenland would surely have been similar.
I wonder how the Vikings kept warm during winter. It's mentioned in the article that there almost weren't any trees in Greenland and it must have been extremely cold there in winter.
There are other things you can burn: peat (probably not plentiful in Greenland), dried cow manure. Also, you wear furs and sleep under furs. Even my grandparents, living in a place with far more plentiful wood at a much later time in history, had stories of breaking the ice on the wash basin in the morning.
I lived in a place where I had to break the ice in the toilet in the morning. And that was in England.
I don't get it, they bash on diamonds book and then
are making the same points as he did
I don't see that they bashed on his book. They said that he followed the narrative accepted at the time which has since been disproven (or modified, anyway). Saying that he wrote approximately what historians at the time believed seems to be far from a harsh criticism. It may, perhaps, be a warning that the information has been superseded.
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I thought something named the Smithsonian magazine would be better than this yet here we are
I thought something named the Smithsonian magazine would be better than this yet here we are
Not too long after that, in 1477, Columbus went to Galway Ireland to ask fishermen about routes across the northern sea. These fishermen routinely visited Iceland, and knew about Greenland. Columbus also inspected a boat on which a couple had arrived in Galway from beyond Iceland, likely Greenland, and either viewed the bodies of the couple or met with them depending on how you read his Latin.