The mysterious disappearance of the settlements of Norwegian colonists in Greenland has troubled the minds of scientists for centuries. Recently, archaeologists conducted a comprehensive study and revised old theories about how the Nords lived and where they disappeared, leaving their lands.
In 1721, the missionary Egged sailed on a ship called the Hope from Norway to Greenland, in search of Norwegian farmers, about whom nothing had been heard for 200 years, to convert them to Protestantism. He explored the coast, fjords and valleys, but when he asked the local Inuit hunters, they pointed out to him only the ruins of a stone church - all that remained from the 500-year occupation. “Is such a fate awaiting everyone who has been cut off from communication with the more civilized world for a long time? Was their invasion destroyed by the natives or the harshness of the climate and the scarcity of the soil?”Egged wrote in his travel account.
Archaeologists are still interested in this issue. None of the chapters in the history of the lands of the Arctic Ocean was as mysterious as the disappearance of these same Norwegian settlements in the 15th century. Theorists give a lot of hypotheses, from the invasion of pirates to the Black Death. But historians are mostly inclined to blame the colonists themselves for what happened, who could not adapt to the harsh climate. Norwegians arrived in Greenland from Iceland during the warming period around 1000 CE. But even during the cooling period (the so-called Little Ice Age), they still tried to raise livestock and build houses, spending small tracts of grazing soil and timber on this. At the same time, it appears that the Inuit also lived with them, leading the way of life of hunters and fishermen-whalers.
Over the past decade, however, new excavations in the North Atlantic have forced archaeologists to reconsider some of their old views. An international research team called the North Atlantic Biocultural Organization (NABO) has collected data according to which the Scandinavian population of Greenland did not prefer livestock breeding, but trade, especially walrus tusk, and relied more on seafood than on agriculture for their diet. However, the main problem in the study of organic artifacts - animal bones and horns, fragments of scales and skins for sewing clothes - is that they can perfectly survive in the permafrost, but during global warming, the consequences of which have significantly affected the climate of Greenland, they thaw and decompose quickly. This is a catastrophe:before our eyes priceless data is dying, and we do not have time to save everything!”, laments historian Paul Holm from Trinity College Dublin.
For more information on the research materials and data that scientists managed to get, you can find on the Sciense magazine portal.