Norse Greenland - History Forum ~ All Empires

Have you read any of the various Sagas?

yet ever so entertaining

Originally posted by Van_Möck

I just finished reading a book about the vikings in which the situation in greenland was also mentioned. Unfortunately it is wirtten in german...

Warum war dass unglücklich?

Originally posted by Van_Möck

But it seems the lack of wood on the comparably warm eastern coast took its toll on the
settlers, since most of their buildings and ships etc. were made of wood. The best source
was wood from, I think, siberia which was washed ashore.

Driftwood was important and Greenland seemed to have been forested circa AD 1000 -- at least the bits that weren't covered by glaciers.

Originally posted by Van_Möck

They even found some clothing in the style of the fashion of paris, and since this was not
washed ashore ( Shocked

), they obviously maintained some connection to Europe.
As far as I remember they traded products from whale- and sealhunt in exchange for wood and other things.

Jarred Diamond discusses this in one chapter in his book, Collapse (leider war das auf Englisch gescrieben). Deforestation seemed to have been a problem. The Norse used wood for building and fuel. Their society running out of wood might be akin to ours running out of oil.

Originally posted by Van_Möck

Over the centuries the effects of inbreeding left the settlers quite literally crippeled, and the climate changed and became colder.

I read older accounts that said this but the skeletons that have been examined at Brattahlid and Herjolfnes show pretty good looking corpses -- no evidence of sickness. In fact, we have evidence of gene flow with Iceland in the marriage that took place in 1409 at Hvalsey.

Originally posted by Van_Möck

Two houndred years later a german merchant couldnt find any settlers anymore.

Yes, Johann Grünlander. I think he was there around 1540 which would be about 130 years after the marriage at Hvalsey. But John Greenlander claims there was a dead Norseman there and a well worn knife which he took. But Greenlander's claims have never been fully verified.

Kirsten Seaver thinks slavers from Bristol carried off just enough of the women and children to cause the population to totally collapse circa 1500.

The reports of Hans Egede (the Dane who arrived in 1721) of Inuit legends about battles between the Norse and the Inuit seem pure legend. It is worth noting that almost EVERY Inuit settlement is on the exact spot of an earlier Norse settlement and yet there seem to be no Norse words in the Inuit vocabulary or Norse behaviours in their culture. This may indicate that the Inuit moved into already abandoned Norse settlements without every having any actual contact with the the Norse.