Editing Greenland (section)

===Norse settlement===
{{main|Norse settlements in Greenland}}
[[File:I. E. C. Rasmussen - Sommernat under den Grønlandske Kyst circa Aar 1000.jpg|left|thumb|''Summer Night Off the Greenland Coast Circa Year 1000'', by [[Carl Rasmussen]], 1875]]
From 986, the west coast was settled by [[Icelanders]] and [[Norwegians]], through a contingent of 14 boats led by Erik the Red. They formed three settlements—the [[Eastern Settlement]], the [[Western Settlement]], and the [[Ivittuut|Middle Settlement]]—on fjords near the southwestern tip of the island.<ref name=Brown2000 /><ref>Kudeba, N. (19 April 2014). Chapter 5, "Norse Explorers from Erik the Red to Leif Erikson", in ''Canadian Explorers''.</ref> They shared the island with the late Dorset culture inhabitants, who occupied the northern and western parts, and later with those of the Thule culture, who entered from the north. Norse Greenlanders submitted to Norwegian rule in 1261 under the [[Kingdom of Norway (872–1397)|Kingdom of Norway]].<ref name = Encyclopedia.com>{{cite web |title=Viking Settlers in Greenland |url=https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/viking-settlers-greenland |website=Encyclopedia.com |access-date=2023-12-18 |language=en |archive-date=10 June 2024 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240610113237/https://www.encyclopedia.com/science/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/viking-settlers-greenland |url-status=live}}</ref> The Kingdom of Norway entered a personal union with Denmark in 1380, and from 1397 was a part of the [[Kalmar Union]].<ref>{{Cite book |last=Boraas |first=Tracey |url=https://archive.org/details/sweden0000bora/page/24 |title=Sweden |publisher=Capstone Press |year=2002 |isbn=0-7368-0939-2 |page=[https://archive.org/details/sweden0000bora/page/24 24]}}</ref>

The Norse settlements, such as [[Brattahlíð]], thrived for centuries, before disappearing in the 15th century, perhaps at the onset of the [[Little Ice Age]].<ref name="Diamond">{{Cite book |last=Diamond |first=Jared |title=Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed |title-link=Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed |publisher=Penguin |year=2006 |isbn=978-0-14-303655-5 |location=Harmondsworth [Eng.] |author-link=Jared Diamond}}</ref> Except for some runic inscriptions, the only contemporary records or [[historiography]] that survive from the Norse settlements are of their contact with Iceland or Norway. Medieval Norwegian sagas and historical works mention Greenland's economy, the bishops of [[Garðar, Greenland|Gardar]], and the collection of tithes. A chapter in the ''[[Konungs skuggsjá]]'' (''The King's Mirror'') describes [[Norse Greenland]]'s exports, imports, and grain cultivation.
[[File:Hvalsey Church.jpg|thumbnail|The last written records of the [[Norse Greenlanders]] are from a 1408 marriage at [[Hvalsey Church]], which is now the best-preserved Norse ruin.]]
Icelandic saga accounts of life in Greenland were composed in the 13th century and later, and are not primary sources for the history of early Norse Greenland.<ref name=Grove /> Those accounts are closer to primary for more contemporaneous accounts of late Norse Greenland. Modern understanding therefore mostly depends on the physical data from archaeological sites. Interpretation of [[Ice core|ice-core]] and clam-shell data suggests that between AD 800 and 1300 the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland had a relatively mild climate, several degrees Celsius warmer than usual in the North Atlantic<ref name="Arnold">Arnold C. (June 2010) "Cold Did In the Norse", ''Earth Magazine''. p. 9.</ref> with trees<!--"mild is vague" it makes people believe the climate was temperate; This sentence also suggests that trees stopped growing after 1300 and that trees don't grow in cold climates --> and [[herbaceous plant]]s growing and livestock being farmed. [[Barley]] was grown as a crop up to the 70th&nbsp;parallel.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Behringer |first=Wolfgang |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=VqjESAAACAAJ |title=Kulturgeschichte des Klimas: Von der Eiszeit zur globalen Erwärmung |language=de |location=Munich |publisher=Dt. Taschenbuch-Verlag |date=9 September 2009 |isbn=978-3-406-52866-8 |access-date=18 September 2022 |archive-date=24 June 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230624225857/https://books.google.com/books?id=VqjESAAACAAJ |url-status=live}}</ref> The ice cores show that Greenland has had dramatic temperature shifts many times in the past 100,000 years.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Alley |first1=R. |last2=Mayewski |first2=P. |last3=Peel |first3=D. |last4=Stauffer |first4=B. |year=1996 |title=Twin ice cores from Greenland reveal history of climate change, more |url=https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/ers_facpub/252 |url-status=live |journal=Eos, Transactions American Geophysical Union |volume=77 |issue=22 |pages=209–10 |bibcode=1996EOSTr..77R.209A |doi=10.1029/96EO00142 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20180414125211/https://digitalcommons.library.umaine.edu/ers_facpub/252/ |archive-date=14 April 2018 |access-date=16 August 2019}}</ref> Similarly the [[Landnámabók|Icelandic Book of Settlements]] records famines during the winters, in which "the old and helpless were killed and thrown over cliffs".<ref name=Arnold />

These [[Norse colonization of North America|Norse settlements]] vanished during the 14th and early 15th centuries.<ref>"[http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/07/17/2858655.htm Why societies collapse] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120802053920/http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2003/07/17/2858655.htm |date=2 August 2012 }}". ABC Science.</ref> The demise of the Western Settlement coincides with a decrease in summer and winter temperatures. A study of North Atlantic seasonal temperature variability during the Little Ice Age showed a significant decrease in maximum summer temperatures beginning about the turn of the 14th century—as much as {{convert|6|to|8|C-change}} lower than modern summer temperatures.<ref>{{Cite journal |last1=Patterson |first1=W. P. |last2=Dietrich |first2=K. A. |last3=Holmden |first3=C. |last4=Andrews |first4=J. T. |date=23 March 2010 |title=Two millennia of North Atlantic seasonality and implications for Norse colonies |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |volume=107 |issue=12 |pages=5306–5310 |bibcode=2010PNAS..107.5306P |doi=10.1073/pnas.0902522107 |pmc=2851789 |pmid=20212157 |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. The Eastern Settlement was probably abandoned in the early to mid-15th century, during [[Little Ice Age|this cold period]].[[File:Dorset, Norse, and Thule cultures 900-1500.svg|thumb|upright=1.5|Estimated extent of Arctic cultures in Greenland from 900 AD to 1500 AD. Coloured areas on each map indicate the extent and migration patterns over time of the [[Dorset culture|Dorset]], [[Thule people|Thule]], and [[Norse colonization of North America#Norse Greenland|Norse]] cultures.|left]]
Theories drawn from archaeological excavations at [[Herjolfsnes]] in the 1920s suggest that the condition of human bones from this period indicates that the Norse population was malnourished, possibly because of [[Erosion|soil erosion]] resulting from the Norsemen's destruction of natural vegetation in the course of farming, turf-cutting, and wood-cutting. Malnutrition may also have resulted from widespread deaths from [[pandemic]] plague;<ref name="IngstadIngstad2000">{{Cite book |last1=Ingstad |first1=Helge |url={{GBurl|Gj-I5hdpzGoC |p=28}} |title=The Viking Discovery of America: The Excavation of a Norse Settlement in L'Anse Aux Meadows, Newfoundland |last2=Stine Ingstad |first2=Anne |publisher=Breakwater Books |year=2000 |isbn=1-55081-158-4 |pages=28–}}</ref> the decline in temperatures during the Little Ice Age; and armed conflicts with the ''[[Skræling]]s'' (Norse word for Inuit, meaning "wretches"<ref name="Diamond" />). Recent archaeological studies somewhat challenge the general assumption that the Norse colonization had a dramatic negative environmental effect on the vegetation. Data support traces of a possible Norse soil amendment strategy.<ref>Bishop, Rosie R., et al. "A charcoal-rich horizon at Ø69, Greenland: evidence for vegetation burning during the Norse landnám?." ''Journal of Archaeological Science'' 40.11 (2013): 3890–902</ref> More recent evidence suggests that the Norse, who never numbered more than about 2,500, gradually abandoned the Greenland settlements over the 15th century as [[walrus ivory]],<ref name="LeoneKnauf2015">{{Cite book |last1=Leone |first1=Mark P. |url={{GBurl |id=zJy4CQAAQBAJ |p=211}} |title=Historical Archaeologies of Capitalism |last2=Knauf |first2=Jocelyn E. |date=2015 |publisher=Springer |isbn=978-3-319-12760-6 |page=211}}</ref> the most valuable export from Greenland, decreased in price because of competition with other sources of higher-quality ivory, and that there was actually little evidence of starvation or difficulties.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Folger |first=Tim |title=Why Did Greenland's Vikings Vanish? |url=http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/ |url-status=live |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170317033211/http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/ |archive-date=17 March 2017 |access-date=13 March 2017}}</ref>

Other explanations of the disappearance of the Norse settlements have been proposed:
# Lack of support from the homeland.<ref name="IngstadIngstad2000" />
# Ship-borne marauders (such as [[Basques|Basque]], English, or German pirates), rather than ''[[Skræling]]s'', could have plundered and displaced the Greenlanders.<ref name="TriggerWashburn1996">{{Cite book |last1=Trigger |first1=Bruce G. |url={{GBurl |id=CBLPX2ARjdgC |p=331}} |title=The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas |last2=Washburn |first2=Wilcomb E. |last3=Adams |first3=Richard E. W. |publisher=Cambridge University Press |year=1996 |isbn=0-521-57393-9 |page=331}}</ref>
# They were "the victims of hidebound thinking and of a hierarchical society dominated by the Church and the biggest land owners. In their reluctance to see themselves as anything but Europeans, the Greenlanders failed to adopt the kind of apparel that the Inuit employed as protection against the cold and damp or to borrow any of the Inuit hunting gear."<ref name="Brown2000" /><ref name="Diamond" />
# That portion of the Greenlander population willing to adopt Inuit ways and means intermarried with and assimilated into the Inuit community.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Stefansson |first=Vilhjalmur |title=Unsolved Mysteries of the Arctic |publisher=The Macmillan Company |year=1938 |isbn=9781878100955 |pages=1–36 |language=en}}</ref> Much of the Greenland population is mixed Inuit and European ancestry. It was impossible in 1938 when Stefansson wrote his book to distinguish between intermarriage before the European loss of contact and after the contact was restored.
# "Norse society's structure created a conflict between the short-term interests of those in power, and the long-term interests of the society as a whole."<ref name="Diamond" />