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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.
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.
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.
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...
I've always found it interesting that there was mail service between Greenland and Iceland at least up until 1424. 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 e…
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.
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…
-- 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.
I've always found it interesting that there was mail service between Greenland and Iceland at least up until 1424. 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 e…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
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…
"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-...)
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…
https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/e392/f5fc6683acf7c1f05df7b3...