We’ve always suspected this for some time, as the MWP ended, they became isolated by the change in weather patterns as the climate turned colder. Nice to see it in a peer reviewed publication finally.
From Wiley-Blackwell
Did climate change cause Greenland’s ancient Viking community to collapse?
Our changing climate usually appears to be a very modern problem, yet new research from Greenland published in Boreas, suggests that the AD 1350 collapse of a centuries old colony established by Viking settlers may have been caused by declining temperatures and a rise in sea-ice. The authors suggest the collapse of the Greenland Norse presents a historical example of a society which failed to adapt to climate change.
The research, led by Dr Sofia Ribeiro from the University of Copenhagen, currently at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, focused on Disko Bay in Western Greenland and used a marine sediment record to reconstruct climate change over the last 1500 years.
Events which occurred during this time frame included the arrival of Norse settlers, led by Eric the Red in AD 985. After establishing a colony known as the Western Settlement the Norse traveled north to Disko Bay, a prime hunting ground for walruses and seals.
“Our study indicates that at the time the Norse arrived in West Greenland, climate conditions were relatively mild and were favorable to the settlers” said Ribeiro. “However, in AD 1350 the settlement collapsed, the cause of which has long been debated.”
The marine perspective of the research is especially relevant as the Norse inhabited inner fjord areas. The team’s research compared robust air temperature reconstructions based on ice-core data with their own marine record. The results underline the regional complexity of climate patterns in the study area, which may vary from ice core reconstructions, and are strongly controlled by the fluctuating influence of “warm” Atlantic waters entrained by the West Greenland Current.
“Our study shows a major shift towards cooler conditions and extensive sea-ice which coincides with the estimated time for the collapse of the Western Settlement in AD 1350,” said Dr Ribeiro. “The Norse were proud of being Europeans, farmers and Christians, and never adopted the hunting and survival techniques of the Inuit, so these temperature shifts would have caused significant problems for the colonists and their livestock.”
Agricultural difficulties are believed to have forced the Norse to rely on marine resources, yet the increase in sea-ice, the team suggests, would have had a major impact on species such as migratory seals, while blocking trade routes.
“We cannot attribute the end of the Norse civilisation to a single factor, but there is enough evidence to suggest that climate change played a major role in determining its collapse,” concluded Ribeiro. “Harsh climate conditions made farming and cattle production increasingly difficult and the extensive sea-ice prevented navigation and trading with Europe.”
“There is perhaps an important lesson to learn from the Norse collapse and that is a lesson of adaptation, of being able to adjust our values and life-style when times change. That is an important challenge we face today as a society.”
Climate variability in West Greenland during the past 1500 years: evidence from a high-resolution marine palynological record from Disko Bay
Ribeiro, S., Moros, M., Ellegaard, M. & Kuijpers, A. 2011: Climate variability in West Greenland during the past 1500 years: evidence from a high-resolution marine palynological record from Disko Bay. Boreas, 10.1111/j.1502-3885.2011.00216.x. ISSN 0300-9483.
Here we document late-Holocene climate variability in West Greenland as inferred from a marine sediment record from the outer Disko Bay. Organic-walled dinoflagellate cysts and other palynomorphs were used to reconstruct environmental changes in the area through the last c. 1500 years at 30–40 years resolution. Sea ice cover and primary productivity were identified as the two main factors driving dinoflagellate cyst community changes through time. Our data provide evidence for an opposite climate trend in West Greenland relative to the NE Atlantic region from c. AD 500 to 1050. For the same period, sea-surface temperatures in Disko Bay are out-of-phase with Greenland ice-core reconstructed temperatures and marine proxy data from South and East Greenland. This is probably governed by an NAO-type pattern, which results in warmer sea-surface conditions with less extensive sea ice in the area for the later part of the Dark Ages cold period (c. AD 500 to 750) and cooler conditions with extensive sea ice inferred for the first part of the Medieval Climate Anomaly (MCA) (c. AD 750 to 1050). After c. AD 1050, the marine climate in Disko Bay becomes in-phase with trends described for the NE Atlantic, reflected in the warmer interval for the remainder of the MCA (c. AD 1050–1250), followed by cooling towards the onset of the Little Ice Age at c. AD 1400. The inferred scenario of climate deterioration and extensive sea ice is concomitant with the collapse of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland at c. AD 1350.
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Supporting info:
Table S1: Raw counts of charcoal, foraminiferal linings, dinoflagellate cyst taxa, and other palynomorphs from the Disco Bay sediment core.
Please note: Wiley-Blackwell is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting materials supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing material) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.
| Filename | Format | Size | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| BOR_216_sm_supplinfo-s1.pdf |
An interesting take on the disappearance of the Norse in Greenland is presented in V. Stefansson’s book “Greenland” (1942) pp. 164-165. Describing F. Nansen’s arguments, he says:
“During the latter part of the historical period the Church of Rome complained frequently about the apostasy of the Greenlanders. One part of this apostasy, Nansen suggests, may have been intermarriage with the heathen Eskimos. Such blending of the racial strains would promote that Eskimoization of the culture which is shown by the considerable percentage of bones of game animals in the late middens.”
He goes on to further argue his and Nansen’s thesis with too many points to deal with here.
If you would like to read the reports from the archives of the Vatican about pre-Columbian voyages and settlements in the new world, they are printed in National Geographic Mag. July 31,1894 pp. 197-234.
The decline of the Vikings in Greenland was covered very well in “Collapse” by Jared Diamond.
Sometimes Mother Nature deals you a Mount Vesuvius or a St Helens or a year without a summer, etc., and there’s just no way to change your mind. I detect a rather large wad of spit being directed at religion here; seems there’s always someone blameing some god for everything. Remember sports fans, we were kicked out of Eden because we wouldn’t play by the rules. All else is human history. (No, I’m not a bible thumper, now I’m just an ‘observer’ on this rock;-)
PS: Ref. Greenland land/sea ice buildup, have a funny feeling that there’s a lot to this that we haven’t figured out yet. FYI see –
http://i43.tinypic.com/1zoanbc.jpg
John in NZ and Douglas dc,
“….but religion plays a very big part. And religion is also a big part of the environmental movement.” (John in NZ, June 20, 2011 at 9:49 pm)
True, until recently, it was nearly impossible to separate religion from culture, as every aspect of life was permeated with ritual and myth. Even now, we are beginning to see that the lines between the “secular” and the “religious” spheres is quite blurry, thanks to the fact that we have expanded our definitions beyond surface appearances, self-definitions and institutions. I note that you too, John NZ, appear to have expanded the definition with your comment on the environmental movement, if I understand it correctly.
The “mystery” of the Scandinavian settlements captivated me back in university days, o so many, many years ago, and I spent a good amount of time reading up on it. If only my memory was better, but I’ll try. To take us back to the original issue we started off with, my point was that it would be highly unusual for the Scandinavian settlers to have rejected the viable technologies and methods used by the Dorset Inu due to what, under the circumstances, would have been shallow religious differences. Most religions are fairly flexible, allowing for quick adjustments. Even the least flexible ones find ways to accomodate differences and to rationalize and incorporate as their own vital changes when practical demands require this. This is the reason why all major religions are syncretistic, i.e., a blend between the previousor neighbouring religions and the new one.
Cultural preferences and behaviours are another matter, as I argued above, since they involve entrenched and a much wider range of behaviours. In the case of theScandinavians, the Dorset culture Inu were also affected by the global cooling and were just trickling south along Greenland’s western coast. Their first introduction to the Europeans would have been near the second settlement, north along the coast, at the hunting grounds by Disko Bay. It is unlikely that the Europeans would have been able to establish good relations with a few small bands of Inu tentatively migrating south. The situation was hardly comparable to other European-Aboriginal contacts where a few Europeans interacted with settled, tribal cultures. I don’t think such lopsided interactions such as this one, where established European agriculturalists met a small number of band-level hunters, can be very conducive to an interchange of technologies. I don’t recall what the Greenland settlement records say on this, but I have no doubt that such contact would have involved mistrust and even violenence. Historical records and anthropological studies seem to support these assumptions.
I strongly suspect, then, that the Viking colonies might have picked up a few crucial skills and technologies to allow them to stay longer. Abandoning their European woollen clothing for the much more efficient seal skin outfits of the Inu would have been one such advantage. In the long term, though, all that would have bought is a little extra time, and a few more lives saved, as its inconceivable that the Vikings would have been able to abandon their increasingly unsustainable farming and sheep-herding economy to embrace a pristine nomadic hunter-gatherer subsistence strategy. There are very, very few examples of such things happening anywhere in the world.
Diamond didn’t cover anything “well”. He was on a quest too, and his “results” as biased as any.
People are not dumb, idiotic or suicidal. Whatever happened to the Vikings, and at Rapa Nui, was not a matter of consumerism.
‘OK…and what exactly? It’s been warmer. It’s been cooler. How does that negate any of the science that shows that excessive CO2 from our activities is cause changes in the earth atmosphere?’ Moderate Republican
To be fair to MR, his or her question is almost reasonable enough and non-contentious. Significant climate changes in the past do not nor necessarily negate the AGW proposition with respect to the late 20th C warming or the recession of arctic ice. All they demonstrate is that there are natural processes which can cause climate changes of similar magnitude to that experienced in the modern era. This would suggest that the simple forcing models of climate change are incomplete but then I do not think that either side in the debate would argue about that. A better formulation of MR’s question is as follows: ‘OK…and what exactly? It’s been warmer. It’s been cooler. How does that negate the proposition that CO2 from our activities is causing changes in the earth atmosphere?’ That’s much better but of course the answer is simple: it doesn’t.
Jane Smiley’s book “The Greenlanders” was published in 1988. I read it around that time and thoroughly enjoyed it.
“Set in the fourteenth century in Europe’s most farflung outpost, a land of glittering fjords, blasting winds, sun-warmed meadows, and high, dark mountains, The Greenlanders is the story of one family–proud landowner Asgeir Gunnarsson; his daughter Margret, whose willful independence leads her into passionate adultery and exile; and his son Gunnar, whose quest for knowledge is at the compelling center of this unforgettable book. Jane Smiley takes us into this world of farmers, priests, and lawspeakers, of hunts and feasts and long-standing feuds, and by an act of literary magic, makes a remote time, place, and people not only real but dear to us.”
It’s a far better read than Jared Diamond. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Greenlanders-Jane-Smiley/dp/044991089X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1308673667&sr=1-1
“There is perhaps an important lesson to learn from the Norse collapse and that is a lesson of adaptation, of being able to adjust our values and life-style when times change. That is an important challenge we face today as a society.”
Warm is good, cold is bad is one lesson here, so why all the bad news about a warming planet.
“During the latter part of the historical period the Church of Rome complained frequently about the apostasy of the Greenlanders. One part of this apostasy, Nansen suggests, may have been intermarriage with the heathen Eskimos. Such blending of the racial strains would promote that Eskimoization of the culture which is shown by the considerable percentage of bones of game animals in the late middens.” (a reader,
June 21, 2011 at 7:48 am
Without having read Nansen’s thesis, I’ll go out on a limb and say that apostasy is one thing, intermarriage another. Apostasy does not necessarily involve adoption of other beliefs and usually involves disagreements over theological technicalities and practical or financial issues such as tithing, property rights and other Church fees.
Intermarriage, by itself, did not present a theological problem to the Church if the non-Christian partner converted as she (most likely a she) would have had to in order to live in one of the settlements to be at least marginally accepted. It is probable that a few intermarriages occured, most likely between lonely Viking hunters and Inu women in the hunting grounds around the Western Settlement, but again, given the small number of Inu, the infrequent contacts between them and the Vikings and lack of any evidence, an “Eskimoization of the culture” is highly unlikely. The presence of game animals in the middens is hardly evidence and doesn’t support that thesis; the Vikings hunted, like all agrarians with an opportunity to do so, and the cooling off, which undoubtedly affected the quallity and range of pasture lands for their sheep, cattle and ponies, would have encouraged an increase in hunting and fishing activities.
DesertYote says:
June 21, 2011 at 7:35 am
If I had been asked 30 years ago why the Vikings Greenland colony failed, I would have answered climate change and failure to adapt. So what exactly does this new study add that previous studies didn’t cover?
Well they got paid for ‘Stating the obvious’ 😉
As the climate grew colder, the northern (‘western’) colony became less viable, and at the same time the Black Death hit Iceland, freeing up homesteads that Greenlendings had legal inheritance claims to, so many moved back to Iceland at that time. Fishermen out of Bristol, England, when they didn’t get a good catch on the Grand Banks, would then sail to the “East” Colony to take slaves. The Greenlendings told them that the West colony reverted to paganism (there is no evidence of this) so the fishermen/slavers were sent up there, where no one lived anymore. The last Greenland Norse appear to have passed away around 1453, not that long before Columbus.
The 1362 expedition was in response to the rumor that the West Colony had reverted to paganism, but of course they weren’t there anymore. It appears that they then sailed south into Hudson’s Bay (consider a magnetic compass and and translators with the Algonquian speaking of large bodies of water to the south and a great river) seeking a way home, avoiding the ice.
It is curious that the Norse who converted many Dorset and intermarried with them, did not adopt any of their cultural artifacts for dealing with the ice. Norse trade goods are found in the remains of Dorest camps throughout Baffin Island and other eastern parts of northern Canada. However, the lure of better farmland in Iceland, and the blood-thirstiness of the newly arriving Inuit may have simply made returning to Iceland a much more attractive prospect. You mustn’t think of the Norse in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries as Vikings. They were very much medieval Europeans at this point in time.
The Kensington Runestone has been shown to be written in the Bohuslansk dialect of the period, and the weathering of the inscription is not remotely consistant with a nineteenth century forgery. The forgery theory is old and has been disproven, however the idea of Europeans in America that far back is not PC.
It -is- impossible to separate religion from culture. Privileging materialistic ontology and epistemology to those not limited by naturalism is simply the logical fallacy of special pleading.
Correction: The main Inu culture interacting with the Norse would have been the Thule, rather than the Dorset. Apologies to both.
Wil says:
June 20, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Moderate Republican
You do realize approximately 96% of all CO2 is natural in origin. In other words NOT man made what so ever. Now, keeping in mind both China and India (both the largest CO2 culprits on the planet)
Wil,
Clubbing india and China together is quite uninformed.
China produces about 22% of worldwide CO2 emissions
India produces about 5.25% of CO2
US produces about 20% of CO2
I am not sure what activity india is a culprit in
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions
http://uk.nanoq.gl/Emner/News/News_from_Government/2011/05/Greenland_denounces_Greenpeace_actions.aspx
Peter Kovachev
Nansen’s and Stefansson’s theory of “amalgamation” of the Norse is based on very old sources, for instance:
“A direct statement that Eskimos and whites fraternized is found in Bishop Gisli Oddsson’s annals for 1342. ‘ The inhabitants of Greenland voluntarily abandoned the true faith and the Christian religion, having already abandoned all good customs and true virtues, and amalgamated themselves with the people of America.’ ”
Nansen in his study “In Northern Mists” argues that race conciousness was not an issue to the Norse at that time and the races would have freely mixed, the Eskimo not being particularly warlike. Apparently even in later Greenland after Hans Egede, it was not unusual for white women to marry Eskimo men.
I believe both Stefansson and Nansen’s books are on google books. Or were as I haven’t looked lately. The chapter X “The Decline and Disappearance of the Colony” , has translations of old sources and reviews of arguments popular in 1942 and before. Modern DNA tests may have eliminated the amalgamation theory; I’ve not researched that.
Re:
Steve Schaper says: June 21, 2011 at 9:56 am
Intera lia: – “It is curious that the Norse who converted many Dorset and intermarried with them, did not adopt any of their cultural artifacts for dealing with the ice.”
One possibility, which I advance only tentatively, is that the Dorset women – who married Norse men – may simply not have known the detail of the manufacture of the cultural artifacts discussed – if their manufacture had been – culturally or religiously or practically – a purely-male occupation/exercise/task.
A suggestion only, but not unknown in this still-complex world.
Re: TFN Johnson @ur momisugly 12:26.
Actually, Jared Diamond was even lousier than that. His account of Easter Island totally ignores slave traders ‘harvesting’ the Islanders decade after decade. Buffoon!
Wil says:
June 20, 2011 at 5:31 pm
Moderate Republican
You do realize approximately 96% of all CO2 is natural in origin.
With the greatest respect, surely that can’t be right.
Looking at the graph on wikipedia’s page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide_in_Earth's_atmosphere the CO2 level in 1960 was approx 315ppm/v, and is currently arround 385/390 ppm. That’s an increase of around 20%, and my understanding is that much if not all of that increase is human-caused; and that’s only since 1960. Pre-industrial levels are believed to be around 280ppm/v, which puts the increase at around 35% or so.
Not that I currently believe the hype that more CO2 is necessarily a bad thing, but let’s not misrepresent things.
Boy – you guys are really touchy….
My point – which many of you repeatedly make elsewhere here is that it has been warmer and colder in the past. So unless you want to conflict your statements elsewhere here let’s just take that as a given for now.
My point is that it is misleading to present this study as evidence of anything that life was hard for the Vikings?
Oh – and if you now insist on scientific notations on everything – which I personally think would be great – you should really step up and walk the walk…..
Railing on me for not providing valid science citations and then refusing to provide scientific of your own assertions kinda looks bad. Almost like the science doesn’t support your positions, but we can dig into that going forward….
Moderate Republican says:
“Boy – you guys are really touchy….”
No, just setting you straight for the umpteenth time. Try to let this sink in, if you can: many Viking graves and settlements are still under permafrost. They are being routinely discovered as the permafrost line recedes. Simple logic tells us that the Vikings farmed during warmer times than present, then the LIA froze them out. Now with the natural, cyclical emergence from the LIA, the permafrost is receding and their remains are being found again.
Run along to Skeptical Pseudo-Science now, maybe you can get some more easy to debunk talking points, like the nonsense claim that the LIA and MWP only happened in Greenland. Or that the Vikings buried their dead and farmed in permafrost.
I miss the pre-lunatic WUWT discussions, where science was discussed reasonably without the intrusion of true believers from the Cult of CAGW. Since they opened the asylums I guess those rational days are in the past.
Like I said – you guys sure get worked up easily.
Smokey says @ur momisugly June 21, 2011 at 4:23 pm natural, cyclical emergence from the LIA’ and “where science was discussed reasonably”
As said above the rate of change seems different now. Maybe, given James Sexton and other’s request for citations, you can provide the citation that proves your assertion that what we’re seeing is a “natural, cyclical emergence from the LIA’?
That would be a case “where science was discussed reasonably” no? Seems more reasonable that saying things like “lunatic” and “cult” and “asylums” eh?
MR,
Even arch-alarmist Phil Jones admitted that the same trend has happened repeatedly: click
All this has been discussed in detail here over the past few years. It’s tedious educating a noob. Please start reading the WUWT archives, so we don’t have to constantly bring you up to speed on the facts of the matter. A keyword is all you need.
Smokey says @ur momisugly June 21, 2011 at 5:04 pm “All this has been discussed in detail here over the past few years. It’s tedious educating a noob. ”
So sorry that providing scientific citations in a conversation about science is “tedious”. That chart clearly shows the current warming at a starting point, higher different peak and duration – so that your assertion that it is “cyclical” is not supported by your citation.
Moderate Republican says:
June 21, 2011 at 4:45 pm
As said above the rate of change seems different now
==================================================
That’s because it’s slowed down……
Temps jumped .6 degrees from 1700-1800
Temps fell .6 degrees in only 1/2 century from 1400-1450
Temps jumped .5 degree in 50 years from 1200-1250
etc etc
What we are seeing is a slow down……..
….and no temp rise for over a decade
There is no “rate of change” to be different, sometimes it’s fast, sometimes slow…..
It we could start these graphs and measurements a thousand years ago, instead of conveniently right after the LIA…..we would not even be having this conversation
These bozos act like life was just wonderful when CO2 was 280………..
http://www.drroyspencer.com/library/pics/2000-years-of-global-temperature.jpg