Editing History of Greenland (section)

==Norse abandonment==
[[Image:Grtemp.png|400px|thumbnail|right|A graphical description of changes in temperature in Greenland from 500&nbsp;– 1990 based on analysis of the deep ice core from Greenland and some historical events. The annual temperature changes are shown vertical in ˚C. The numbers are to be read horizontal:<br />
1. From 700 to 750 people belonging to the Late Dorset Culture move into the area around Smith Sound, Ellesmere Island and Greenland north of Thule.<br />
2. Norse settlement of Iceland starts in the second half of the 9th century.<br />
3. Norse settlement of Greenland starts just before the year 1000.<br />
4. Thule Inuit move into northern Greenland in the 12th century.<br />
5. Late Dorset culture disappears from Greenland in the second half of the 13th century.<br />
6. The Western Settlement disappears in mid 14th century.<br />
7. In 1408 is the Marriage in Hvalsey, the last known written document on the Norse in Greenland.<br />
8. The Eastern Settlement disappears in mid 15th century.<br />
9. John Cabot is the first European in the post-Iceland era to visit Labrador - Newfoundland in 1497.<br />
10. "Little Ice Age" from c. 1600 to mid 18th century.<br />
11. The Norwegian priest Hans Egede arrives in Greenland in 1721.]]
There are many theories as to why the Norse settlements in Greenland collapsed after surviving for some 450–500 years (985 to 1450–1500). Among the factors that have been suggested as contributing to the demise of the Greenland colony are:<ref name=":0" /><ref>{{Cite news|url=http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/|title=Why Did Greenland's Vikings Vanish?|last=Folger|first=Tim|work=[[Smithsonian (magazine)|Smithsonian]]|access-date=2017-02-26}}</ref>
* Cumulative environmental damage
* Gradual climate change
* Conflicts with Inuit
* Loss of contact and support from European Norsemen
* Cultural conservatism and failure to adapt to an increasingly harsh natural environment
* Opening of opportunities elsewhere after [[black plague|plague]] had left many farmsteads abandoned in Iceland and Norway
* Declining value of [[walrus ivory]] in Europe (due to the influx of ivory from Russian walrus and African elephants), forcing hunters to overkill the walrus populations and endanger their own survival<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.cnn.com/2020/01/07/world/vikings-walrus-trnd/index.html|title=Vikings disappeared from Greenland due to over-hunting walrus, study suggests|first=Allen |last=Kim|website=CNN|date=7 January 2020 |access-date=2020-01-08}}</ref>

Numerous studies have tested these hypotheses and some have led to significant discoveries. In ''The Frozen Echo'', [[Kirsten Seaver]] contests some of the more generally accepted theories about the demise of the Greenland colony, and asserts that the colony, towards the end, was healthier than some scholars previously claimed. Seaver believes that the Greenlanders cannot have starved to death, but rather may have been wiped out by Inuit or unrecorded European attacks, or they may have abandoned the colony for Iceland or [[Vinland]]. However, the physical evidence from archeological studies of the ancient farm sites does not show evidence of attack.<ref>{{cite journal |last1=Booth |first1=Thomas J. |last2=Madgwick |first2=Richard |title=New evidence for diverse secondary burial practices in Iron Age Britain: A histological case study |journal=Journal of Archaeological Science |date=March 2016 |volume=67 |pages=14–24 |doi=10.1016/j.jas.2016.01.010 |bibcode=2016JArSc..67...14B }}</ref> The paucity of personal belongings at these sites is typical of North Atlantic Norse sites that were abandoned in an orderly fashion, with any useful items being deliberately removed; but to others it suggests a gradual but devastating impoverishment. [[Midden]]s at these sites do show an increasingly impoverished diet for humans and livestock. [[Else Roesdahl]] argues that declining ivory prices in Europe due to the influx of Russian and African ivory adversely affected the Norse settlements in Greenland, which depended largely on the export of walrus ivory to Europe.<ref name="Seaver 271–292">{{cite journal |last1=Seaver |first1=Kirsten A. |title=Desirable teeth: the medieval trade in Arctic and African ivory |journal=Journal of Global History |date=July 2009 |volume=4 |issue=2 |pages=271–292 |doi=10.1017/S1740022809003155 }}</ref>

According to Danielle Kurin and other authors, there is no convincing evidence that violence by the Inuit or anyone any other group led to the migration of Norse settlers, and that Norse society in Greenland seems to have slowly declined as climatic conditions worsened and the value of walrus ivory was reduced by African elephant ivory. The violent conflict theory has since been marginalised in favour of ecological theories.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Kurin |first1=Danielle Shawn |title=The Bioarchaeology of Disaster: How Catastrophes Change our Skeletons |date=2021 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-000-47898-3 |page=34}}</ref>{{sfn|Magnusson|2016|p=230}}<ref name="The Fate of Greenland's Vikings"/><ref>{{Cite book |last=Nedkvitne |first=Arnved |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Xs5wDwAAQBAJ&pg=PT14 |title=Norse Greenland: Viking Peasants in the Arctic |date=2018-10-11 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-351-25958-3 |pages=14 |quote=Hypotheses about ethnic conflicts based on written sources were now marginalised, but not abandoned.}}</ref> One scholar supporting the violent conflict theory is historian [[Arnved Nedkvitne]], who concludes in his work: "the hypothesis of an ethnic confrontation is today significantly better verified than the alternative hypothesis of an ecological crisis".<ref>{{Cite book |last=Nedkvitne |first=Arnved |title=Norse Greenland: Viking Peasants in the Arctic |publisher=Routledge |year=2018 |isbn=978-0815366294 |pages=368}}</ref>

Greenland was always colder in winter than Iceland and Norway, and its terrain less hospitable to agriculture. Erosion of the soil was a danger from the beginning, one that the Greenland settlements may not have recognised until it was too late. For an extended time, nonetheless, the relatively warm West Greenland current flowing northwards along the southwestern coast of Greenland made it feasible for the Norse to farm much as their relatives did in Iceland or northern Norway. [[Palynologist]]s' tests on pollen counts and fossilised plants prove that the Greenlanders must have struggled with [[soil erosion]] and [[deforestation]].<ref name="Diamond">{{harvnb|Diamond|2005|p=217,222}}</ref> A Norse farm in the [[Vatnahverfi (Norse Greenland)|Vatnahverfi]] district, excavated in the 1950s, had been buried in layers of drifting sand up to 10 feet deep. As the unsuitability of the land for agriculture became more and more patent, the Greenlanders resorted first to [[pastoralism]] and then to hunting for their food.<ref name="Diamond" /> But they never learned to use the hunting techniques of the Inuit, one being a farming culture, the other living on hunting in more northern areas with pack ice.<ref name="Diamond" />

To investigate the possibility of climatic cooling, scientists drilled into the Greenland ice cap to obtain [[ice core|core samples]], which suggested that the [[Medieval Warm Period]] had caused a relatively milder climate in Greenland, lasting from roughly 800 to 1200. However, from 1300 or so the climate began to cool. By 1420, the "[[Little Ice Age]]" had reached intense levels in Greenland.<ref>{{cite book |first=Thomas H. |last=McGovern |chapter=The Demise of Norse Greenland |title={{harvnb|Fitzhugh|Ward|2000|pp=327–339}} |year=2000 |pages=330}}</ref> [[Excavation (archaeology)|Excavations]] of middens from the Norse farms in both Greenland and Iceland show the shift from the bones of cows and pigs to those of sheep and goats. As the winters lengthened, and the springs and summers shortened, there must have been less and less time for Greenlanders to grow hay. A study of North Atlantic seasonal temperature variability showed a significant decrease in maximum summer temperatures beginning in the late 13th century to early 14th century—as much as 6-8&nbsp;°C lower than modern summer temperatures.<ref>{{cite journal |first1=William P. |last1=Patterson |first2=Kristin A. |last2=Dietrich |first3=Chris |last3=Holmden |first4=John T. |last4=Andrews |year=2010 |doi=10.1073/pnas.0902522107 |title=Two millennia of North Atlantic seasonality and implications for Norse colonies |journal=Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A. |volume=107 |issue=12 |pages=5306–10 |pmid=20212157 |pmc=2851789|bibcode=2010PNAS..107.5306P |doi-access=free}}</ref> The study also found that the lowest winter temperatures of the last 2,000 years occurred in the late 14th century and early 15th century. By the mid-14th-century deposits from a chieftain's farm showed a large number of cattle and [[caribou]] remains, whereas, a poorer farm only several kilometers away had no trace of domestic animal remains, only seal. Bone samples from Greenland Norse cemeteries confirm that the typical Greenlander diet had increased by this time from 20% sea animals to 80%.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Arneborg |first1=Jette |last2=Heinemeier |first2=Jan |last3=Lynnerup |first3=Niels |last4=Nielsen |first4=Henrik L. |last5=Rud |first5=Niels |last6=Sveinbjörnsdóttir |first6=Árný E. |date=1999 |title=Change of Diet of the Greenland Vikings Determined from Stable Carbon Isotope Analysis and 14C Dating of Their Bones |journal=Radiocarbon |volume=41 |issue=2 |pages=157–168 |doi=10.1017/S0033822200019512 |issn=0033-8222 |quote=The detailed chronology&nbsp;... reveals that the average diet of the Norse people changed from 20% marine to 80% marine during the approximately 500 years that the settlement lasted.|doi-access=free|bibcode=1999Radcb..41..157A }}</ref><ref>{{cite book |first1=Jette |last1=Arneborg |first2=Kirsten A. |last2=Seaver |chapter=From Vikings to Norseman |title={{harvnb|Fitzhugh|Ward|2000|pp=281–294}} |year=2000 |pages=290}}</ref>

The [[Thule people]] migrated south and finally came into contact with the Norse in the 12th century. There are limited sources showing the two cultures interacting; however, scholars know that the Norse referred to the Inuit (and Vinland natives) as [[skræling]]. The ''[[Icelandic Annals]]'' are among the few existing sources that confirm contact between the Norse and the Inuit. Archeological evidence seems to show that the two groups traded. There is evidence of Inuit goods at Norse sites, and Norse goods at Inuit sites.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Campbell |first1=Gordon |title=Norse America: The Story of a Founding Myth |date=2021 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-886155-3 |page=113 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pHEhEAAAQBAJ&dq=thule+sounds&pg=PA113 |quote=Norse goods have been found at Thule sites, and Thule goods have been found at Norse sites}}</ref> According to Magnus Magnusson, relations between Inuit and Norse settlers were mostly positive and the two groups had a "deep friendship".<ref>{{cite book |last1=Magnusson |first1=Magnus |title=The Vikings |date=6 October 2016 |publisher=The History Press |isbn=978-0-7509-8077-7 |page=230 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CFAfDgAAQBAJ&dq=norse+settlers+greenland&pg=PT230}}</ref>

The Norse never learned the Inuit techniques of [[kayak]] navigation or [[Ringed seal|ring seal]] hunting. Archaeological evidence plainly establishes that by 1300 or so the Inuit had successfully expanded their winter settlements as close to the Europeans as the outer fjords of the Western Settlement. By 1350, the Norse had completely deserted their Western Settlement.<ref>{{cite book| last=Kendrick| first=Thomas Downing| author-link=T. D. Kendrick|title=A History of the Vikings| page=366| location=New York| publisher=C. Scribner's Sons| year=1930}}</ref> But in 1355 union king [[Magnus IV of Sweden]] and Norway (In Norway crowned Magnus VII after claims of birthright) sent a ship (or ships) to Greenland to inspect its [[Western Settlement|Western]] and [[Eastern Settlement]]s. Sailors found settlements entirely Norse and Christian. The Greenland carrier (''Groenlands Knorr'') made the Greenland run at intervals till 1369, when she sank and was apparently not replaced.<ref name="Gwyn Jones 1997, p.292"/> Arneborg suggests that worsening climatic and economical circumstances caused them to migrate to Iceland or Scandinavia.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Arneborg |first1=Jette |title=Norse Greenland: Research into abandonment |url=https://www.researchgate.net/publication/287645613 |website=Medieval Archaeology in Scandinavia and Beyond |pages=257–271 |date=2015}} "Ultimately, the Norse Greenlanders fell victim to both major environmental and global economic changes, and the most obvious answer to the declining years would have been to emigrate. From the middle of the fourteenth century both Iceland and Norway had suffered greatly from several diseases that had diminished the population substantially and left farms deserted (eg Orrman 1997). New inhabitants would have been welcomed."</ref>

In mild weather conditions, a ship could make the 900-mile (1400 kilometers) trip from Iceland to Eastern Settlement within a couple of weeks. Greenlanders had to keep in contact with Iceland and Norway in order to trade. Little is known about any distinctive shipbuilding techniques among the Greenlanders. Greenland lacks a supply of lumber, so was completely dependent on Icelandic merchants or, possibly, logging expeditions to the Canadian coast.

The sagas mention Icelanders traveling to Greenland to trade.<ref>Grove, 2009: p. 40</ref> Settlement chieftains and large farm owners controlled this trade. Chieftains would trade with the foreign ships and then disperse the goods by trading with the surrounding farmers.<ref>{{cite book |first=Jette |last=Arneborg |chapter=Greenland and Europe |title={{harvnb|Fitzhugh|Ward|2000|pp=304–317}} |year=2000 |pages=307}}</ref> The Greenlanders' main commodity was the [[walrus]] [[tusk]],<ref name=":0">{{Cite news|url=https://www.science.org/content/article/why-did-greenland-s-vikings-disappear|title=Why did Greenland's Vikings disappear?|date=2016-11-07|newspaper=Science {{!}} AAAS|access-date=2016-12-26}}</ref> which was used primarily in Europe as a substitute for [[elephant ivory]] for art décor, whose trade had been blocked by conflict with the Islamic world. Professor Gudmundsson suggests a very valuable [[narwhal]] tusk trade, through a smuggling route between western Iceland and the [[Orkney islands]].<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://www.historic-uk.com/HistoryUK/HistoryofScotland/The-History-of-Orkney-Shetland/|title=The History of the Orkney and Shetland Isles|website=Historic UK}}</ref>

It has been argued that the royal Norwegian monopoly on shipping contributed to the end of trade and contact. However, Christianity and European customs continued to hold sway among the Greenlanders for the greater part of the 14th and 15th centuries. In 1921, a Danish historian, Paul Norland, found human remains from the Eastern Settlement in the [[Herjolfsnes]] church courtyard. The bodies were dressed in 15th-century clothing with no indications of malnutrition or inbreeding. Most had [[crucifix]]es around their necks with their arms crossed as in a stance of prayer. Roman papal records report that the Greenlanders were excused from paying their [[tithe]]s in 1345 because the colony was suffering from poverty.<ref>{{harvnb|Arneborg|2000|p=315}}</ref> The last reported ship to reach Greenland was a private ship that was "blown off course", reaching Greenland in 1406, and departing in 1410 with the last news of Greenland: the burning at the stake of [[Kolgrim|a condemned male witch]], the insanity and death of the woman this witch was accused of attempting to seduce through witchcraft, and the marriage of the ship's captain, Thorsteinn Ólafsson, to another Icelander, Sigríður Björnsdóttir.<ref>{{harvnb|Diamond|2005|p=270}}</ref> However, there are some suggestions of much later unreported voyages from Europe to Greenland, possibly as late as the 1480s.<ref>{{harvnb|Seaver|1996|p=205}}: a reference to sailors in Bergen in 1484 who had visited Greenland (Seaver speculates that they may have been English); p.229ff: archaeological evidence of contact with Europe towards the end of the 15th century</ref> In the 1540s,<ref name="The Fate of Greenland's Vikings"/> a ship drifted off-course to Greenland and discovered the body of a dead man lying face down who demonstrated cultural traits of both Norse and Inuit. An Icelandic crew member of the ship wrote: "He had a hood on his head, well sewn, and clothes from both homespun and sealskin. At his side lay a carving knife bent and worn down by whetting. This knife they took with them for display."<ref>{{cite book |first=Gunnar |last=Karlsson |title=The History of Iceland |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=mLk_Ox4pPTAC&pg=PA103 |year=2000 |publisher=[[University of Minnesota Press]] |isbn=978-0-8166-3589-4 |pages=103}}</ref>

According to a 2009 study, "there is no evidence for perceptible contact between Iceland and Greenland after the mid fifteenth century&nbsp;... It is clear that neither Danish and Norwegian nor Icelandic public functionaries were aware that the Norse Greenland colony had ceased to exist. Around 1514, the Norwegian archbishop Erik Valkendorf (Danish by birth, and still loyal to Christian II) planned an expedition to Greenland, which he believed to be part of a continuous northern landmass leading to the New World with all its wealth, and which he fully expected still to have a Norse population, whose members could be pressed anew to the bosom of church and crown after an interval of well over a hundred years. Presumably, the archbishop had better archives at his disposal than most people, and yet he had not heard that the Greenlanders were gone."<ref name="Seaver 271–292"/>

One intriguing fact is that very few fish remains are found among their middens. This has led to much speculation and argument. Most archaeologists reject any decisive judgment based on this one fact, however, as fish bones decompose more quickly than other remains, and may have been disposed of in a different manner. Isotope analysis of the bones of inhabitants shows that marine food sources supplied more and more of the diet of the Norse Greenlanders, making up between 50% and 80% of their diet by the 14th century.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Arneborg |first1=J. |last2=Heinemeier |first2=J. |last3=Lynnerup |first3=N. |last4=Nielsen |first4=H.L. |last5=Rud |first5=N. |last6=Sveinbjornsdottir |first6=A.E.|url=http://www.europhysicsnews.org/articles/epn/pdf/2002/03/epn02301.pdf |title=C-14 dating and the disappearance of Norsemen from Greenland |journal=Europhysics News |volume=33 |issue=3 |pages=77–80 |doi=10.1051/epn:2002301 |year=2002|bibcode=2002ENews..33...77A |doi-access=free}}</ref>

One Inuit story recorded in the 19th century tells that raiding expeditions by Inuit or European ships over the course of three years destroyed the settlements, however archeological evidence has repeatedly failed to support such stories.<ref name="The Fate of Greenland's Vikings"/> This story is thus regarded as a [[myth]] that is not based on true events, because archeological excavations of the farm revealed no evidence of fire or human conflict.{{sfn|McAnany|2009|loc=p. 81 "For example there is a story about how the Inuit overran the farm at Hvalsey and burned the Norse alive in their houses. When the farm was excavated in 1935, however, there was no carbonised layer or any other indication of a fierce fire, from which one must conclude that in this case the story or myth was not tied to actual events."}}{{sfn|Cole|2014|loc=p. 422 "An oral tradition from the nineteenth century tells of the Inuit overrunning a farm at Hvalsey and burning the Norse alive in their houses. Archeological excavations at the site, however, turned up no evidence of fire, leading some historians to conclude, as does Berglund, that "in this case the story or myth was not tied to actual events".}}

===Genetic legacy===
Genetic research has found that [[Inuit]] men in Western Greenland carry 40-60% Northwestern European Y-DNA haplogroups. This is consistent with admixture from the earlier [[Norsemen|Norse]] settlers of Greenland (1000-1200 AD), as well as more recent colonisation of Greenland by modern Scandinavians in the 18th century.<ref name="Olofsson2015">{{cite journal |last1=Olofsson |first1=Jill Katharina |last2=Pereira |first2=Vania |last3=Børsting |first3=Claus |last4=Morling |first4=Niels |title=Peopling of the North Circumpolar Region – Insights from Y Chromosome STR and SNP Typing of Greenlanders |journal=PLOS ONE |date=30 January 2015 |volume=10 |issue=1 |pages=e0116573 |doi=10.1371/journal.pone.0116573 |pmid=25635810 |pmc=4312058 |issn=1932-6203 |quote= "Approximately 40% of the Y-HGs in the male Greenlandic population were found to be of European origin. Only considering the European Y-HGs (I-M170, R1a-M513 and R1b-M232) in Greenland, the relative frequencies of these Y-HGs in the Greenlanders resembled those observed in the male Danish population examined in this study and other male Scandinavian [24–26] and Icelandic populations [27]." "In strong contrast to the results of this study and previous studies [9,13], typing of the mtDNA in the Greenlandic population shows an almost complete fixation of Inuit maternal lineages [5]. The European gene flow detected in Greenlanders can therefore primarily be attributed to males." |doi-access=free|bibcode=2015PLoSO..1016573O }}</ref> According to several studies, there is no evidence of a European female contribution to the [[mitochondrial]] lineages of modern [[Greenlandic Inuit]] people; their maternal lineages are nearly completely shared with other Inuit populations. This implies that European admixture in Greenlandic people derives primarily from European male ancestors.<ref name="Olofsson2015" />