The belief that 10th-century Vikings were driven or encouraged to colonize Greenland because of unusually warmer weather is probably wrong – the climate was already cold when the Norse got there – say researchers at Columbia University in New York City. Scientists analyzed old glaciers and concluded that it was cold at the time the Vikings arrived.
The scientists don’t believe that the climate played any role in their disappearance 400 many years later. The study is the latest evidence to suggest that the “Medieval Warm Period”, when Europe experienced an unusually clement climate, from 950 up to 1250 AD, may have not spread as widely to other regions of the globe, contrary to what many scientists and historians have suggested.
It has been suggested that the Vikings colonized Greenland and possibly neighboring Baffin Island during a period of temporary warmth. The 1400s is where they vanished. Southern Greenland’s Hvalsey Church (picutred below) is the most well-preserved Viking ruin.
The Medieval Warm Period wasn’t uniform or global. Nicolas Young (glacial geologist at Columbia University’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory) said that it was becoming more clear that the Medieval Warm Period’s effects were not global. This concept is Eurocentric, as that’s the place where most of the well-known observations have been made.
“The climate may have changed elsewhere.” Climate scientists have cited Medieval Warm Period, also called the Medieval Climate Optimum (MWP) to explain the unusual precipitation patterns and high temperatures found in remote regions from China to America’s Southwest. According to Icelandic records, the Vikings led by Erik Thorvaldsson (950, also known as Erik The Red, set sail from Iceland around 985AD. Between 3,000 and 5,000 Vikings eventually settled in Greenland, raising livestock and harvesting walrus ivory.
They vanished sometime between 1360 & 1460, leaving only ruins and long-standing mysteries about their fate. Although the Inuit were still there, the 1700s was the time when the Europeans returned to Greenland.
Their apogee was at the Medieval Climatic Annomaly. They died shortly after the Little Ice Age . Glaciers tend to recede in warm periods and move forward during colder ones. They are retreating in Western Greenland from the place they were when Vikings first arrived.
Both these periods can be clearly seen in historical records from Europe and Iceland. Many scientists and authors believe the Vikings moved to Greenland because of the warmer climate. Then, the severe weather followed and caused their death. There are many other possible factors that could have led to the Greenland Vikings’ death. However, there is no historical record of Greenland’s climate.
Recent research suggests that other factors may be responsible for the Greenland Vikings’ disappearance. These include hostilities against the Inuit and soil erosion due to cattle imported. There is also the possibility that migration to European farms, which had been decimated by the Black Plague or the decline in the ivory trade, could have played a role.
In this new study, the researchers sampled boulders left by advancing glaciers over the past 1,000 or so years in southwest Greenland, as well as on neighbouring Baffin Island, which the Vikings may have occupied too, according to newly uncovered evidence. The Little Ice Age glacial advancements have erased most evidence that the Viking settlement was made by the glaciers. However, Professor Young and his colleagues found traces of some moraines.
These are masses of sediment and rocks that were carried down by glaciers and left behind by the Little Ice Age. In western Greenland small outlet glaciers are retreating backward, leaving behind heaps of stones (moraines), that indicate their past advances. The lake has been formed by melting water.
They developed new methods for analyzing the chemical isotopes found in rocks. The results showed that they had discovered that some of the moraines were deposited during Viking times. Also, the scientists determined that the maximum Little Ice Age position between 975 & 1275. had passed or was nearing their peak.
The Vikings probably arrived in Greenland at a cold temperature. This means that Greenland was as cold as it is now. It would make no sense for them to have left Greenland because it was too cold.
Professor Young stated that “if the Vikings went to Greenland in the cool of winter, then it is not unreasonable to assume that a deteriorating climate forced them to leave.” These findings are consistent with recent evidence showing the different effects of Medieval Warm Period.
Temperatures may have fallen in some areas, such as the northwestern United States and central Eurasia. Jason Briner (University at Buffalo) samples the boulder that was left behind by a glacier in Baffin Island’s Naqsaq Valley during early Viking settlement. The rock contains chemical isotopes that indicate cold-weather conditions for Greenland’s settlers.
A study on ocean-bottom sediments has shown that the temperatures in the Western North Atlantic have actually decreased while those in the Eastern North Atlantic are getting warmer.
Others have shown a different picture. An 2011 study of a Greenland core showed that temperatures fell steeply during Viking occupation. Then, they rose again at middle age, but there was also some warming. Lamont-Doherty paleoclimatologist William D’Andrea conducted another study in 2011 using lake-bottom sediments. This showed that temperatures were indeed warm at the time the Vikings arrived.
However, they started to fall in 1160, long before the Little Ice Age. Scientists may be encouraged by this new study to suggest that the Medieval Warm Period (NAO) was partially an extended phase. According to current observations, NEO can be described as a climate cycle of varying durations.
It is characterized by warm winds coming from the west that increase temperatures and make Europe and Iceland warmer. However, it also cools Baffin Island, southwest Greenland, and sucking more Arctic air into the region. This causes the temperatures to swing in different directions between these two areas.
The statue depicts Erik the Red, a fierce, red-haired Viking who founded Greenland’s first Norse settlement.
A ‘coup de Grace’ on the Medieval Warm Period Paleoclimatologist Gifford Miller at the University of Colorado called the paper “a coup de grace” on that period. Prof. Ogilvie said: “I don’t like the simple argument that Greenland’s people went there.”
