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Sometime around the year 1540, a ship
full of Norwegian sailors made the

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dangerous voyage to Iceland, a frozen
island in the middle of the North

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Atlantic. It was a notoriously dangerous
voyage and when they saw dark storm

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clouds begin to brew on the horizon, they
knew they were in trouble. Their boat was

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lashed by wind and rain and tossed
around like a cork on the towering waves.

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The storm went on for days, blowing them
far off their course with no idea where

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they were heading.
Finally, when all seemed lost, the storm

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lessened a little and they sighted land
in the distance. They managed to beach

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their boats through the rough waters in
a small cove choked with ice and there,

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they waited for the remainder of the
storm to blow over. They didn't know it

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then but the storm had blown them right
across the Atlantic Ocean, and the coast

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they now sheltered on was in Greenland, a
bleak and icy waste on the north of the

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American continent. In these days,
Greenland was an icy tundra where no

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sensible European would ever think to
venture but as the men waited for the

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storm to die down, they spotted something
not far from their boat. It was a man,

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facedown,
dead in the snow. They saw his clothes

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made from seal skins and the fur in his
hood and they thought that he must be an

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Inuit, one of the indigenous inhabitants
of Greenland. But as they approached,

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something didn't look right. They turned
the man over and saw with surprise that

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he had red hair and pale skin. He was a
Norseman just like them, but he was

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dressed in the clothes of an Inuit
hunter.

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On his head was a hood, well-made, and
otherwise clothes of frieze cloth and of

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seal skin. Near him was a sheath knife,
bent and much worn and eaten away. They

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thought he must have wandered through
the wilderness in these clothes to the

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coast, perhaps trying to find a ship to
carry him away, and then he died right

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there on the beach, all alone at the edge
of the world. Moved by the sight of this

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man,
the sailors took his knife. When the

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weather cleared and they set sail back
to Iceland, they took the knife with them.

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They must have rolled it around in their
hands and wondered to themselves

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who was this Norseman so far from home?
Why was he dressed in the clothes of an

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Inuit hunter? In this bleak and
uninhabited waste, where in all the world

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had he come from?

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My name's Paul Cooper and you're
listening to The Fall of Civilizations

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Podcast. Every episode I look at a
civilization of the past that rose to

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glory and then collapsed into the ashes
of history. I want to ask what did they

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have in common? What led to their fall,
and what did it feel like to be a person

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alive at the time who witnessed the end
of their world?

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In this episode I want to look at one of
the most unlikely tales of a society's

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fall; the incredible saga of the Vikings
of Greenland.

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I want to show how these European
settlers built a society on the farthest

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edge of their world and survived for
centuries among some of the harshest

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conditions ever faced by man. I want to
explore how this civilization was able

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to overcome the odds for so long and to
examine the evidence about what happened

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to cause its final and mysterious
collapse. If I were to ask you who was

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the first European to discover North
America, you might think of Christopher

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Columbus landing on the sandy shores of
the Bahamas at the end of the 15th

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century but actually, Columbus was far
from the first. In fact, Europeans had

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made routine journeys to America for
more than five centuries before Columbus

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was even born, and their story begins
over a thousand years ago in the 10th

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century. The people who made this
dangerous journey were Norsemen,

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otherwise known in the Middle Ages as
Vikings. They were sailors, soldiers, and

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settlers from Norway and Denmark who had
a terrifying reputation in all the lands

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they encountered. They were known as
raiders and pirates to their enemies, but

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they were also expert sailors and
shipbuilders, marvelous writers of epic

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poetry, and perhaps some of the hardiest
explorers in human history.

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Half a millennium before Columbus,
the Vikings crossed the ocean and landed

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on the icy coast of Greenland. They built
a permanent settlement there and the

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Norse of Greenland didn't just survive
in this far-flung outpost; they built

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manor houses and hundreds of farms where
they grew crops, imported steel, wine, and

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stained glass. They raised sheep, cattle,
and goats, and they made voyages to

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explore the North American mainland too,
making forays into Newfoundland and the

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coast of Canada. They fought with Native
American tribes and returned with furs,

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ivory, and hardwoods cut
from the American forests. In Greenland

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they hunted walrus and even captured
live polar bears to send back home to

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Norway. In this impossible landscape, they
grew and thrived. Then, after

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centuries of survival at the edge of the
world, their civilization collapsed. The

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Norse settlements in Greenland were
abandoned, left to crumble into the hard,

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icy earth. Exactly what happened is
still one of our most chilling mysteries.

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Our two main sources of information
about the Greenland Norse are two of the

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great Icelandic sagas. These are pieces
of epic poetry passed on by word of

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mouth that relate the great deeds of
Viking heroes and adventurers. They were

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designed to be spoken out in mead halls
for celebration and feasts. This extract

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of a piece of Viking poetry called the
Hofudlausen should give you a sense

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of the sound and form of these great
poems.

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West,
over the sea, I fared and mine shore,

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I bare a across the sea so that it
might recall great deeds. The wave

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oak I have drawn with the ice breaking
on, and loaded praises part in the mine

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ships barred.
Later, these sagas were written

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down and today they give us an
incredible insight into the lives that

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these men and women lived as they
explored the icy lands of the North

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Atlantic. Our story begins right
there on the snowy slopes and steaming

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vents of Iceland. Iceland is a volcanic
island in the northern Atlantic, about a

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third of the way between Europe and
North America, and until around the year

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874, it was completely uninhabited. Only
flocks of seabirds and the reclusive

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Arctic
Fox roamed its snowy hills. But then, the

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Vikings arrived. From their homeland of
Norway, it was a journey of over 1,500

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kilometres by sea through some of the
harshest weather on earth. But the

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Vikings sailed in slender, wooden long-
ships that were the very height of

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medieval technology. Their ships had
perfectly hydrodynamic hulls, and strong,

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square sails that were perfectly adapted
for plying the freezing stormy waters of

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the northern ocean. After the year
874, when the Vikings first landed, the

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transformation of the land happened
quickly. Back home in Norway, land was

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scarce and competition over farmland
meant that many people were eager to

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start new lives in a completely
unexplored land. Within sixty years of

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their first landing, the Vikings had
already built over 1,500 farms in Iceland

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and the population rose to over three
and a half thousand people. But the

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ambitions of the Vikings wouldn't end
here. By the Year 930 it seems, just about

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all of the usable land in Iceland had
already been claimed, and already stories

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were beginning to spread among the Norse
sailors; stories about a new land,

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a land of blue ice and mists that lay
somewhere over the stormy sea. According

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to the sagas, the first person to attempt
to find this new land was a man named

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Erik Thorvaldsson and he would be known
to history as Erik the Red.

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Erik the Red was born around the year
950 into a Norway that had only just

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been unified into a single state. Norway
has a ragged, undulating coast broken by

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wooded fjords, great mountainous inlets,
and dotted with rocky islands out to sea.

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But Erik was born in the south of the
country where the flat land meant that

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the sea always stretched out before his
eyes, calling to him with its inviting

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horizon.
As a boy, he must have gazed out at the

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ships sailing off in the direction of
the sunset; watched them sink below the

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horizon, and he must have wondered what
lay beyond that tantalizing vanishing

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point. Erik was about to find out.
That's because he was the son of an

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outlaw named Thorvald
who had an explosive temper. This

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temper would have dire consequences for
Thorvald's family. When his son Erik was

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only ten years old,
Thorvald killed a man in a quarrel.

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In Norway, murderers didn't only have the
law to fear. Viking honor meant that the

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family of the dead man would soon be out
for blood

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in revenge. Fearing reprisals, Erik's
family managed to gain passage across

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the sea to Norway's newest settlement;
the freezing land of Iceland where smoke

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was said to rise from the very earth. The
young Erik must have looked out from the

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ship on that voyage and seen the seas
stretching out in all directions, gray,

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and bleak, and forbidding. But it must
have been exciting for the young boy, too.

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Here at last was the adventure that he
dreamed of. By this time, in the second

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half of the 10th century, Iceland was
already well settled by Norway. The Norse

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had brought large amounts of thralls, or
slaves, from Ireland and Scotland to help

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them populate their new colony. They'd
introduced horses, cattle, and rabbits, and

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Iceland's snow forests had been cut down
to clear farmland for the cultivation of

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barley. Its people ate cod from the sea,
unsalted, but dried on wooden racks by

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the wind and cold.
But this success story of a settlement

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also meant that most of the best land
had already been taken. When Erik arrived

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with his family, all that was left was a
plot of uninhabited wasteland in the

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forbidding tundra of the Northwest. But
that was all the choice they had, and

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Thorvald and his family settled down and
began to work their farm. We can imagine

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that as a child in Iceland, the young
Erik must have listened to the stories

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that the sailors told when they passed
through, when they stopped on shore to

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repair their ships. Norsemen of this age
navigated the oceans with no compasses,

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using the sun, moon, and stars to find
their way, as well as following natural

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cues like the paths of seabirds and
whales. But although they were expert

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navigators, it only took a strong storm
to sweep them far off course, as we'll

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learn a few times throughout this
episode. The Vikings of Iceland believed

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that they lived on the edge of the world
but already at this time, stories were

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beginning to spread of sailors who had
been blown off-course and seen strange

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things in the distance. They brought back
stories about mysterious islands they'd

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seen drifting out of the sea mists,
faraway lands spied across the ocean,

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tales of blue coasts in the West. When
Erik's father Thorvald died, Erik

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inhabited their humble farm and he began
a family of his own. But as he grew into

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a proud and pugnacious young man, it
became clear that Erik the Red had

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inherited something of his father's
temper, and even more of his bad luck. One

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day, a group of workers on Erik's farm
caused a landslide that tumbled into the

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neighboring farm. This belonged to a
disagreeable neighbor known only as

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Eyjolf the Foul. Eyjolf seems to have lived
up to his name. Enraged at the damage

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caused to his farm, Eyjolf killed Erik's
workers. But Erik was his father's son,

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and he
wasn't to take this insult lightly. He

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chased after Eyjolf and the two of them
fought. In the brutal struggle that

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ensued, Erik prevailed and Eyjolf the
Foul was killed. But once the heat of

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battle had died down, Erik realized what
he had done. Just like his father, he

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feared the beginning of a blood feud. In
the society of the medieval Norse, one

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death could be like a spark in dry
heather, setting off a cycle of violence

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and revenge that could last for
generations. So, it may have felt like

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something of a relief for Erik when the
law and not Eyjolf the Foul's family

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finally came down on him. For the killing,
the Lords of Iceland declared that Erik

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the Red was banished for three years.
Soon, just like his father,

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Erik would have to flee the land that he
had learned to call home. But Erik didn't

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have many good options before him. His
family had many enemies now; in Norway,

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the relatives of the man his father had
killed might still be looking for blood,

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and it was clear he couldn't stay in
Iceland. For a Norseman in the 10th

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century, that didn't leave many other
options.

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Erik stayed in hiding while he put
together a boat and a crew. It must

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have been during this time that those
stories came back to him, the stories

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he'd once heard the sailors tell of the
islands in the mist and their blue

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coasts half-seen beyond the horizon. In
the year 982, at around the age of 30,

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Erik set sail once again with only one
goal in mind; he was going to reach the

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mythical land that was said to lie on
the other side of the ocean. Many people

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must have laughed at him, but that year
he set sail and his voyage would change

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the map of the world forever.

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Greenland is the world's largest island
that is not considered a continent. Over

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80% of its land mass is covered in the
Greenland ice sheet, a plate of ice up to

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three kilometers thick, behind only
Antarctica as the second largest body of

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ice in the world. The ice that makes up
the sheet is as ancient as rock, some of

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it over a million years old, and the
sheet is so heavy but the land beneath

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it
has been crushed into the Earth's mantle

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beneath its weight. Although he couldn't
know any of this at the time, this is the

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land that Erik the Red set sail for at
the end of the 10th century. Against

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all the odds, he would reach it. The
voyage was nearly 1,500 kilometers

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through a deadly gauntlet of floating
ice and Atlantic storms. But despite the

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dangers, Erik rounded the southern coast
of Greenland later that year and sailed

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up its western coast, searching for
somewhere to land. For the most part, the

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land he saw was covered with Arctic
tundra and the unending wall of that

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enormous glacial ice sheet. But after
many weeks of sailing, Erik and his men

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found a small, sheltered cove that seemed
relatively free of ice. When they

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sailed into, it their hearts must have
filled with joy. They saw green slopes

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where deciduous willows, alder, and
juniper trees grew, and low shrubs like

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dwarf birch covered the sides of some
valleys. The landscape here was still

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harsh.
It must have resembled the treeline

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level of Norwegian mountains, right where
most forms of life stopped growing.

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To most people it wouldn't have looked
like a promising location for a

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settlement, but to the Norse of the time,
this small strip of land promised the

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potential for future growth. Erik would
spend the next three years of his exile

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exploring this new land, sailing up its
coast methodically, and taking careful

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note of what he saw. When his
sentence of exile was over, he finally

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returned to
Iceland with a plan in mind. He was going

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to gather as many settlers as he could
and travel back to this new land to

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settle it permanently. But he knew it was
going to be a hard sell;

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how could he convince enough settlers to
risk that dangerous crossing, and all for

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a land that was barely more than a
sliver of green on the edge of a barren

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ice sheet? Well, it seems that Erik the
Red had something of a talent for

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salesmanship, and one of the key ways he
tried to encourage people to follow him

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was with the name that he gave to his
newly discovered land. The Icelandic saga

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of the Greenlanders recalls this trick
with something of an ironic tone. There

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was a man called Erik the Red who
traveled out from here and took land. He

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gave a name to the land and called it
Greenland, and said that people would be

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more eager to go there because the land
had a good name.

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Perhaps imagining rolling green fields
and pastures, many Icelanders agreed to

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follow Erik. When summer came back
around, he set sail once again for the

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land beyond the ocean. But this time, he
wasn't going alone. Erik the Red

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had amassed a great fleet of 25 ships
full of men, women, and children, along

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with supplies, building materials, wood
and nails, as well as livestock including

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00:20:54,270 --> 00:21:01,950
cattle, chickens, and rabbits. It must have
been an incredible sight; all of those

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00:21:01,950 --> 00:21:07,610
colorful sails and dragon-headed prows
cleaving through the ocean waves. Of

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these 25 ships, only 14 would reach
Greenland. 11 of them were lost at sea,

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00:21:15,570 --> 00:21:24,809
and for those that arrived, the trials
had only just begun. For the medieval

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Norse of Europe, establishing a colony in
Greenland was about as difficult as we

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00:21:30,600 --> 00:21:33,650
today might find establishing a colony
on the moon.

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If that seems like a far-fetched
comparison, consider that only 18

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astronauts have ever been killed in the
history of space exploration. For

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medieval Vikings crossing the Atlantic,
the casualties were enormous, and the

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reasons for this aren't hard to imagine.
Firstly, the journey to Greenland took

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several weeks by sea through freezing
arctic conditions. If you want to see a

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good example of the kind of ship the
Norse used, there's no finer example than

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00:22:06,980 --> 00:22:13,250
the so-called Gokstad ship in the
Museum of Oslo. When you see this ship,

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you're at once impressed by its slender,
organic shape which testifies to the

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enormous skill of the shipbuilders. But
you're also struck by just how small and

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00:22:24,980 --> 00:22:29,780
exposed it is, how the Vikings who
huddled on board must have suffered on

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00:22:29,780 --> 00:22:34,700
those weeks-long voyages through storms
and waves that must have towered over

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00:22:34,700 --> 00:22:42,200
this tiny ship. Today, it seems incredible
that anyone survived these journeys at

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all. Greenland is about as far from
Iceland as Iceland is from Norway; both

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of them being journeys for about 1,500
kilometers. But although the distances

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are similar, the voyage from Iceland to
Greenland was many times more dangerous.

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00:22:58,390 --> 00:23:04,880
Worse than anything else was the drift
ice. Greenland sat right on a powerful

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00:23:04,880 --> 00:23:10,220
current that flowed down from the Arctic
Ocean, and this current drew huge blocks

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00:23:10,220 --> 00:23:17,000
carved from glaciers and icebergs the
size of mountains. This freezing current

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00:23:17,000 --> 00:23:21,250
runs down the east coast of Greenland
and then back up the west coast,

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00:23:21,250 --> 00:23:27,890
effectively ringing the island in a
chainsaw blade of flowing ice. Today, this

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00:23:27,890 --> 00:23:32,090
flow causes just as much of a problem to
modern shipping as it did in the 10th

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00:23:32,090 --> 00:23:37,000
century, but the Vikings didn't have any
of the advantages of our technology.

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One story shows just how deadly these
seas could be. A saga tells the story of

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00:23:44,020 --> 00:23:50,409
a Norse Icelander named Loden, who got
himself the nickname Lik-Loden, or Corpse

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00:23:50,409 --> 00:23:54,280
Loden, because he made his living
sailing up and down the east coast of

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00:23:54,280 --> 00:23:59,440
Greenland, exploring its caves and coves,
and gathering up the corpses of men

250
00:23:59,440 --> 00:24:06,280
shipwrecked there. Ships were always
wrecked in this ice from the northern

251
00:24:06,280 --> 00:24:12,520
bays. Lik-Loden would search the waves
to the north and bring back to church the

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00:24:12,520 --> 00:24:18,130
bodies he found in caves and on rock
ledges. They had come there from the

253
00:24:18,130 --> 00:24:24,580
drift ice or wrecked ships, and near
them they often lay carved runes about

254
00:24:24,580 --> 00:24:31,450
all the events of the misfortunes and
sufferings. But the skill of Norse

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00:24:31,450 --> 00:24:38,260
sailors meant that many did successfully
navigate this asteroid belt of ice. Still,

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00:24:38,260 --> 00:24:43,630
it couldn't hurt to pray. One surviving
document contains a prayer written by a

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00:24:43,630 --> 00:24:50,049
Greenland sailor who was about to
undertake this perilous voyage. God, the

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00:24:50,049 --> 00:24:56,590
sinless I pray, save my voyage from
danger. Lord of heaven on high, guard my

259
00:24:56,590 --> 00:25:04,630
ways. But despite these immense obstacles,
Erik and his surviving 14 boats of

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settlers did succeed. They landed in
Greenland and started one settlement on

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00:25:11,200 --> 00:25:17,740
the south tip of the island. This would
become known as Eystribyggð or the Eastern

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00:25:17,740 --> 00:25:22,750
Settlement, and it's where Erik built
himself an estate and began to farm the

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land. Later, the Norse would sail up the
western coast of Greenland and found a

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second settlement. This was called Vestri-
byggð or the Western Settlement.

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Life in Greenland was hard. Greenland has
an Arctic climate, with average

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temperatures that don't exceed 10
degrees centigrade or 50 degrees

267
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Fahrenheit even in the warmest summer
months. Summer temperatures can drop

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00:25:51,730 --> 00:25:56,820
as low as minus 30 degrees centigrade, or
minus 27 degrees Fahrenheit. During

269
00:25:56,820 --> 00:26:01,809
winter, the temperatures can reach minus
50 degrees centigrade or minus 58

270
00:26:01,809 --> 00:26:07,059
degrees Fahrenheit. For two to three
months in summer, there is continuous

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00:26:07,059 --> 00:26:13,900
daylight, the so-called Midnight Sun.
During winter, the sun never quite rises;

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00:26:13,900 --> 00:26:20,530
with only three to four hours of
daylight peeking over the horizon. But

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the Norse were expert settlers. There's
evidence that they adapted to the

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00:26:25,090 --> 00:26:28,870
difficult farming conditions of the
Greenland winters by aggressively

275
00:26:28,870 --> 00:26:33,490
fertilizing the soils around their
farmsteads. While the men of the

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00:26:33,490 --> 00:26:37,360
settlements were out hunting, the women
would have spent the day improving the

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00:26:37,360 --> 00:26:42,880
soil, spreading it with manure to
increase its fertility. Studies of the

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00:26:42,880 --> 00:26:47,890
soil in early North settlements show a
dramatic increase in the thickness of

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00:26:47,890 --> 00:26:52,720
soil after the arrival of the Norse and
the establishment of their farms. Bone

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00:26:52,720 --> 00:26:57,520
samples suggest that at the height of
the settlements, even small farms kept a

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00:26:57,520 --> 00:27:02,799
cow or two which was a sign of great
status back in Norway. Written records

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00:27:02,799 --> 00:27:07,840
from Greenland mentioned dairy products
including cheese, milk, and yogurt as

283
00:27:07,840 --> 00:27:13,630
important staple foods. But it soon
became clear that the Greenland settlers

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wouldn't simply survive in this barren
land. In fact, they would thrive and

285
00:27:19,030 --> 00:27:23,730
ultimately make themselves and their
home country very wealthy.

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00:27:23,730 --> 00:27:28,659
That's because Greenland had a plentiful
supply of one resource that was in

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00:27:28,659 --> 00:27:34,560
enormous demand in Europe at the time.
That thing was the walrus.

288
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:40,920
An adult bull walrus has tusks made of
ivory that can grow to be over a meter

289
00:27:40,920 --> 00:27:47,400
long and can weigh as much as five and a
half kilos each. Ivory was hugely prized

290
00:27:47,400 --> 00:27:51,930
by medieval people and many ivory
artifacts from the Middle Ages were

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00:27:51,930 --> 00:27:58,920
carved from walrus tusks. The most famous
of these artifacts are the Lewis

292
00:27:58,920 --> 00:28:04,080
chessmen carved in Scotland in the 12th
century, with marvelously expressive eyes

293
00:28:04,080 --> 00:28:12,080
and faces. It's hard to overstate
just how valuable ivory was at this time.

294
00:28:12,080 --> 00:28:16,440
Every six years
the Norse in Greenland paid their taxes

295
00:28:16,440 --> 00:28:22,200
to the Norwegian King, and a document
from 1327 shows that a shipment of a

296
00:28:22,200 --> 00:28:27,900
single boatload of walrus tusks, hunted
from about 260 walruses, was worth more

297
00:28:27,900 --> 00:28:32,940
than all the woolen cloth sent to the
king by nearly 4,000 Icelandic farms in

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00:28:32,940 --> 00:28:37,620
the same period.
This single boatload of tusks was equal

299
00:28:37,620 --> 00:28:44,130
to the cost of nearly 800 cows. The
Vikings monopolized this high-value

300
00:28:44,130 --> 00:28:49,950
commodity right across Northern Europe.
The few walrus there were in Iceland had

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00:28:49,950 --> 00:28:52,470
already been hunted to extinction for
their tusks,

302
00:28:52,470 --> 00:28:58,140
but in Greenland, the Vikings came across
vast herds in a place called Disko Bay, an

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00:28:58,140 --> 00:29:03,750
ice fjord about 500 kilometres to the
north of the Western Settlement. It

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00:29:03,750 --> 00:29:08,060
seemed there were more than they could
ever hunt.

305
00:29:08,510 --> 00:29:15,419
As well as the walrus, the Vikings also
hunted seal and salmon, and even the

306
00:29:15,419 --> 00:29:21,750
elusive narwhal, the whale with a single
bony horn jutting from its head. Here

307
00:29:21,750 --> 00:29:26,610
again, the Vikings showed they had a
flair for salesmanship. They sold the

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00:29:26,610 --> 00:29:31,110
horn of the narwhal to gullible
Europeans, claiming them to be the horns

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00:29:31,110 --> 00:29:36,779
of unicorns. Suddenly unicorn horn became
in great demand throughout medieval

310
00:29:36,779 --> 00:29:42,659
Europe, with the powdered horn being used
to treat a variety of ailments. It was

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00:29:42,659 --> 00:29:47,940
believed that unicorn horns could detect
poison in food and drinks, and the horns

312
00:29:47,940 --> 00:29:52,289
themselves were used to make the sceptre
and imperial crown of the Austrian Empire,

313
00:29:52,289 --> 00:29:57,659
and the unicorn throne of the Danish
kings, among other artifacts across

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00:29:57,659 --> 00:30:03,750
Europe. This growing economy attracted
more people to Greenland and before long,

315
00:30:03,750 --> 00:30:08,639
there may have been over 5,000
inhabitants spread over the fjords and

316
00:30:08,639 --> 00:30:13,769
valleys of Greenland's coast. Most of
these would be in the Eastern Settlement

317
00:30:13,769 --> 00:30:19,080
which was the closest to Europe and the
better connected of the two. In the

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00:30:19,080 --> 00:30:23,850
Eastern Settlement, at a place they
called Garda, the Norse built an ornate

319
00:30:23,850 --> 00:30:28,190
Christian cathedral out of sandstone that
they quarried from the Greenland Hills,

320
00:30:28,190 --> 00:30:35,070
probably using the skills of stonemasons
brought from Norway. This Cathedral was

321
00:30:35,070 --> 00:30:40,350
complete with stained glass and a heavy
bronze bell shipped over from Europe.

322
00:30:40,350 --> 00:30:44,659
It must have been quite a sight when the
eerie lights of the aurora borealis

323
00:30:44,659 --> 00:30:50,669
flickered blue green and violet over
this church, streamers of charged

324
00:30:50,669 --> 00:30:55,980
particles thrown out from solar flares,
impacting the Earth's atmosphere 100

325
00:30:55,980 --> 00:31:01,289
kilometers overhead. But just as
impressive today is the remains of a

326
00:31:01,289 --> 00:31:07,350
barn in Gardar, itself the size of a
cathedral. Its doorways are built of

327
00:31:07,350 --> 00:31:12,950
enormous solid stone blocks that today
looked like the pillars of Stonehenge.

328
00:31:12,950 --> 00:31:18,000
Here, the prized animals of the Greenland
Vikings, perhaps as many as a hundred

329
00:31:18,000 --> 00:31:23,700
cows, would shelter through the bitter winters,
protected from the biting wind and snow

330
00:31:23,700 --> 00:31:31,200
by thick walls covered in banks of earth.
Viking chronicles record that in spring,

331
00:31:31,200 --> 00:31:35,490
the Vikings would often have to carry
their cows out of these sheds since the

332
00:31:35,490 --> 00:31:41,640
animals legs grew so weak from inaction
through the long dark winter months. But

333
00:31:41,640 --> 00:31:46,020
despite their impressive advancements,
the colonies of Greenland never became

334
00:31:46,020 --> 00:31:51,360
truly self-sufficient. We can see this
demonstrated in the story of one Green-

335
00:31:51,360 --> 00:31:59,310
lander named Asmund Kastanrassi. In 1189,
Kastanrassi built his own ship in

336
00:31:59,310 --> 00:32:04,470
Greenland which is quite an achievement
considering the lack of timber, steel, and

337
00:32:04,470 --> 00:32:09,480
other building materials in the
environment. Kastanrassi's ship was held

338
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:14,940
together with wooden pegs and lashings
made of walrus sinew and amazingly, he

339
00:32:14,940 --> 00:32:20,310
sailed it successfully back to Iceland.
Although we don't know exactly what this

340
00:32:20,310 --> 00:32:25,020
craft looked like, we can tell it was a
strange sight by the way people reacted.

341
00:32:25,020 --> 00:32:30,120
When he landed, the Icelanders on the
shore gathered around to marvel at his

342
00:32:30,120 --> 00:32:35,280
strange Frankenstein's monster of a ship
returned from beyond the edge of the

343
00:32:35,280 --> 00:32:42,030
world. But Kastanrassi's inventiveness
could only take him so far. Somewhere on

344
00:32:42,030 --> 00:32:47,010
the next leg of his voyage to Norway, the
tendons and wooden bolts that held the

345
00:32:47,010 --> 00:32:52,440
craft together gave way. The ship came
apart and Kastanrassi went down with

346
00:32:52,440 --> 00:32:58,800
his ship somewhere in the North Sea.
This story gives you some sense of just

347
00:32:58,800 --> 00:33:02,250
how difficult life would be for the
Greenlanders if their connection to

348
00:33:02,250 --> 00:33:06,500
Europe was somehow severed.

349
00:33:09,540 --> 00:33:14,320
The harsh weather conditions of
Greenland weren't the only opponents

350
00:33:14,320 --> 00:33:20,260
that the Greenlanders faced. When the
Vikings first arrived in this new land,

351
00:33:20,260 --> 00:33:24,940
they began to find clues that told them
that they weren't the only people to

352
00:33:24,940 --> 00:33:29,460
have set foot there.
In fact, the sagas recall how the Vikings

353
00:33:29,460 --> 00:33:36,610
stumbled upon the ruins of a previous
inhabitation. They found their people's

354
00:33:36,610 --> 00:33:42,370
habitations both to the east and the
west on the land. Pieces of skin boats

355
00:33:42,370 --> 00:33:47,860
and worked stones from which one could
tell that a people were already there

356
00:33:47,860 --> 00:33:55,360
whom the Greenlanders call skrælings.
The word skræling is the only word from

357
00:33:55,360 --> 00:34:00,130
the old dialect of Greenlandic Norse
that has survived into modern Icelandic.

358
00:34:00,130 --> 00:34:05,290
In the modern language it means
something like barbarian, and in the

359
00:34:05,290 --> 00:34:09,730
Middle Ages, the Greenland Vikings used
it to describe all the various tribes

360
00:34:09,730 --> 00:34:15,310
and peoples they encountered during
their exploration of the new world. In

361
00:34:15,310 --> 00:34:19,810
Viking folklore, the indigenous peoples
of North America are often referred to

362
00:34:19,810 --> 00:34:26,500
as semi-mythical creatures and less than
human. In the stories, they transform into

363
00:34:26,500 --> 00:34:32,590
witches, pygmies, and trolls. The first
people that the Norse encountered in

364
00:34:32,590 --> 00:34:38,440
Greenland were called the Dorset but
their contact was fleeting. The Dorset

365
00:34:38,440 --> 00:34:43,450
were later supplanted by a people known
as the Thuli, who are the ancestors of

366
00:34:43,450 --> 00:34:48,400
all modern Inuit peoples and were at
this time spreading their influence

367
00:34:48,400 --> 00:34:55,000
across Canada, Alaska, and Greenland. In
the vast expanse of Greenland, it took

368
00:34:55,000 --> 00:34:59,980
the Thuli and the Norse a long time to
come into contact, but by the end of the

369
00:34:59,980 --> 00:35:05,170
12th century at least, it seems they had
encountered each other. One explorer

370
00:35:05,170 --> 00:35:11,800
known as Thorfinn Karlsenfi, wrote
down an account of these peoples. They

371
00:35:11,800 --> 00:35:15,550
were short in height, with threatening
features and tangled hair on their heads.

372
00:35:15,550 --> 00:35:21,700
Their eyes were large and their cheeks
broad. We don't just have the Norse

373
00:35:21,700 --> 00:35:28,030
side of this story. Today, tales of the
arrival of the Vikings still survive in

374
00:35:28,030 --> 00:35:32,770
Inuit folklore and it's fair to say that
at times, relations between these two

375
00:35:32,770 --> 00:35:37,270
cultures were not always friendly. In the
Inuit folktales,

376
00:35:37,270 --> 00:35:42,550
the Vikings are sometimes referred to
simply as the enemy. In their stories,

377
00:35:42,550 --> 00:35:47,740
encounters between the Inuit and the
Norse are often violent; for instance, in

378
00:35:47,740 --> 00:35:55,570
this ancient Inuit tale. It once happened
that a kayaker from Arpat-sivik came

379
00:35:55,570 --> 00:36:00,760
rowing up the river, trying his new bird
javelin. On approaching Kak-ortok,

380
00:36:00,760 --> 00:36:05,050
where the first Norseman had taken up
their abode, he saw one of them gathering

381
00:36:05,050 --> 00:36:09,970
shells on the beach. Presently, the
Norseman called out to him; let's see

382
00:36:09,970 --> 00:36:15,610
whether you can hit me with your lance.
The kayaker would not, but the other kept

383
00:36:15,610 --> 00:36:23,080
shouting at him to throw. At last, however,
the kayaker lost patience. He threw his

384
00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:29,200
spear and killed the Norseman on the
spot. When winter came, all feared that

385
00:36:29,200 --> 00:36:35,470
the Norsemen would come and avenge the
death of their countryman. In this piece

386
00:36:35,470 --> 00:36:40,630
of folklore, this one act of violence
begins a cycle of revenge that leads to

387
00:36:40,630 --> 00:36:45,430
a war between the Inuit and the Norsemen.
Norse accounts also seemed to

388
00:36:45,430 --> 00:36:50,830
indicate that battles between the two
cultures did take place. Other Inuit

389
00:36:50,830 --> 00:36:56,050
stories cast the Norsemen as mysterious
and slightly ridiculous creatures, ill-

390
00:36:56,050 --> 00:37:00,820
suited to the harsh environment but who
nevertheless have power over strange

391
00:37:00,820 --> 00:37:08,230
magic. A kayaker one day went to the bay
of Iminguit to catch fish. He found

392
00:37:08,230 --> 00:37:12,160
there a tent belonging to some Norsemen
and heard them joking and talking inside.

393
00:37:12,160 --> 00:37:17,140
He was curious and he thought he might
play a joke on the Norsemen, so he left

394
00:37:17,140 --> 00:37:21,210
his kayak, went up to the place, and began
to strike on the sides of the tent.

395
00:37:21,210 --> 00:37:26,100
Inside they fell quiet, and so
he struck harder on the tent. Then he took

396
00:37:26,100 --> 00:37:30,420
a peep inside and a lot of them shrieked
with fear. There were four fathers and

397
00:37:30,420 --> 00:37:35,280
their children, and they fled in fear
across the ice. But the ice was thin and

398
00:37:35,280 --> 00:37:39,840
broke through with them, so that all were
drowned. He said that some nights they

399
00:37:39,840 --> 00:37:44,220
can still be seen through the ice and
when they are visible, it is an omen that

400
00:37:44,220 --> 00:37:50,880
someone will soon die. By the 14th century,
the Thuli peoples had moved south

401
00:37:50,880 --> 00:37:57,240
towards the settled areas of the Vikings.
At some sites, they even occupied the

402
00:37:57,240 --> 00:38:02,490
same fjords, although at different sides
of the water. It's worth pointing out

403
00:38:02,490 --> 00:38:06,830
that the images of friendly Eskimos you
may have seen in children's books

404
00:38:06,830 --> 00:38:12,560
shouldn't fool you into thinking that
the Inuit were a meek or pacifist people.

405
00:38:12,560 --> 00:38:17,730
Although they were not a particularly
warlike society, they were more than

406
00:38:17,730 --> 00:38:22,350
capable of defending themselves when
challenged, and they frequently defended

407
00:38:22,350 --> 00:38:26,690
their southern borderlands against other
Native American tribes like the Cree.

408
00:38:26,690 --> 00:38:31,740
Their warriors wore armor made of
hardened walrus hide and sinew, and

409
00:38:31,740 --> 00:38:38,130
they carried bone harpoons and knives
with stone blades. Their bows were

410
00:38:38,130 --> 00:38:43,440
particularly powerful weapons, as the
Inuit enhanced their tensile strength by

411
00:38:43,440 --> 00:38:49,350
coiling them with dried sinew. This all
meant they could be a serious threat to

412
00:38:49,350 --> 00:38:56,580
the Norse settlements. In 1379 for
instance, Viking chronicles record that

413
00:38:56,580 --> 00:39:01,530
the Thuli attacked the Eastern
Settlement, killing 18 men, and capturing

414
00:39:01,530 --> 00:39:07,740
two boys and a woman. This isn't to say
that contact between these two cultures

415
00:39:07,740 --> 00:39:13,650
was always violent. In fact, it seems a
rich tradition of trade went on between

416
00:39:13,650 --> 00:39:20,130
them. Items such as comb fragments, pieces
of iron, cooking utensils, and chisels,

417
00:39:20,130 --> 00:39:26,640
chess pieces, ship rivets, carpenters
planes, and oaken ship fragments have

418
00:39:26,640 --> 00:39:31,650
been found in several Inuit sites far
beyond the traditional range of Norse

419
00:39:31,650 --> 00:39:37,569
colonization. A small ivory statue that
appears to represent a European

420
00:39:37,569 --> 00:39:43,449
has also been found among the ruins of
one Inuit house, and it's clear that

421
00:39:43,449 --> 00:39:48,669
there was more than just goods being
exchanged. Today, we can trace some words

422
00:39:48,669 --> 00:39:53,949
in modern Inuit languages back to their
Viking origins, borrowed nearly a

423
00:39:53,949 --> 00:39:59,469
thousand years ago from their Norse
neighbors. But while there were periods

424
00:39:59,469 --> 00:40:04,509
of peace between these two cultures, they
were often at odds, and the Vikings'

425
00:40:04,509 --> 00:40:09,009
inability to make a lasting peace with
their new neighbors would certainly not

426
00:40:09,009 --> 00:40:14,309
help matters when their luck took a turn
for the worse.

427
00:40:15,809 --> 00:40:21,130
The Vikings' difficulty in making friends
in the new world would extend beyond

428
00:40:21,130 --> 00:40:25,749
Greenland, too. This can be seen more
than anything when they made their

429
00:40:25,749 --> 00:40:31,119
famous voyages over to the mainland of
North America, five centuries before

430
00:40:31,119 --> 00:40:37,479
Christopher Columbus was born. The
Icelandic sagas vary on their accounts

431
00:40:37,479 --> 00:40:42,130
of who was the first Norseman to
discover America, but many believe that

432
00:40:42,130 --> 00:40:47,889
the most plausible account gives the
honour to a man called Leif Erikson. In

433
00:40:47,889 --> 00:40:52,779
Norse naming conventions, the name
Erikson means literally that he was the

434
00:40:52,779 --> 00:40:57,579
son of Erik, and the Erik in question was
the one we've already spent some time

435
00:40:57,579 --> 00:41:02,919
with, Erik the Red.
Born the son of this high chief of

436
00:41:02,919 --> 00:41:08,829
greenland, Leif Erikson shared some of
his father's adventurous spirit, and a

437
00:41:08,829 --> 00:41:15,699
little of his appetite for trouble. In
the year 999, Leif travelled back to

438
00:41:15,699 --> 00:41:21,130
Norway as a young man in his 20s and he
swore to serve under the Norwegian King

439
00:41:21,130 --> 00:41:26,649
Olaf the first. Olaf was the first
Norwegian king to convert to

440
00:41:26,649 --> 00:41:32,949
Christianity and to turn his back on the
old gods of his ancestors Thor, and Odin,

441
00:41:32,949 --> 00:41:39,099
and Loki. While serving under King Olaf,
the young Leif also converted to

442
00:41:39,099 --> 00:41:44,889
Christianity and soon the new king had a
mission for him; he was to return to his

443
00:41:44,889 --> 00:41:50,109
home of Greenland and convert the people
there to Christianity, too.

444
00:41:50,109 --> 00:41:55,839
So, Leif was soon back on the sea, but
whether by divine intervention or by the

445
00:41:55,839 --> 00:42:01,480
fickle nature of fate, Leif was blown
off-course like so many Vikings before

446
00:42:01,480 --> 00:42:06,519
him. After many weeks of sailing
through open ocean, he landed on the

447
00:42:06,519 --> 00:42:10,589
coast of a strange land he had never
seen before.

448
00:42:10,589 --> 00:42:16,630
Wild grapes were growing here, fields of
wild wheat, and even butter nuts that he

449
00:42:16,630 --> 00:42:22,630
and his men gathered for food. They also
found two shipwrecked Norsemen who had

450
00:42:22,630 --> 00:42:27,460
been blown off course like them. They
rescued the men and took them on board,

451
00:42:27,460 --> 00:42:32,920
and if Leif's story is to be believed,
these shipwrecked sailors were actually

452
00:42:32,920 --> 00:42:35,829
the first Europeans to ever discover
America, and

453
00:42:35,829 --> 00:42:42,910
we will never know their names. When
he returned to Greenland, Leif was

454
00:42:42,910 --> 00:42:47,980
determined to put together an expedition
to explore this new land. He gathered as

455
00:42:47,980 --> 00:42:51,640
many men as he could and got back on the
sea as soon as possible.

456
00:42:51,640 --> 00:42:57,039
They crossed the choppy waters and soon
landed in a desolate and rocky place

457
00:42:57,039 --> 00:43:02,950
that he called Helluland, or the land of
flat rocks. From there they sailed south

458
00:43:02,950 --> 00:43:08,650
to a place he called Markland,
or forest land, and finally they returned

459
00:43:08,650 --> 00:43:13,869
to the land that he called Vinland after
the grapevines that he once again found

460
00:43:13,869 --> 00:43:20,279
growing there. Here there was a mild
climate and bountiful supplies of salmon.

461
00:43:20,279 --> 00:43:26,109
This was most likely the coast of what
we today would call Canada, where you can

462
00:43:26,109 --> 00:43:32,259
still find this particular species of
frost grape growing wild. Leif and his

463
00:43:32,259 --> 00:43:36,549
men spent the winter on the North
American coast in a small settlement

464
00:43:36,549 --> 00:43:40,720
they called Leafsbudir. When
spring came,

465
00:43:40,720 --> 00:43:46,180
they sailed back to Greenland with a
cargo of timber and grapes. Leif's journey

466
00:43:46,180 --> 00:43:50,109
and the stories he brought back would
encourage other Norsemen to make the

467
00:43:50,109 --> 00:43:56,650
same journey. Not to be outdone, Leif's
brother Thorvald, named after his

468
00:43:56,650 --> 00:44:03,700
hot-blooded grandfather, made the journey
in the year 1004, but he was to have

469
00:44:03,700 --> 00:44:09,750
far worse luck than his brother. At first,
the journey seemed to be going well.

470
00:44:09,750 --> 00:44:14,890
Thorvald landed at Leif's abandoned camp
and spent the winter there without

471
00:44:14,890 --> 00:44:20,530
incident. But in the spring, they sailed
south and came across a strange sight on

472
00:44:20,530 --> 00:44:26,530
one of the beaches. They saw nine people
sleeping under three skin-covered

473
00:44:26,530 --> 00:44:31,650
canoes. They were indigenous Americans, or
what the Norsemen would have called

474
00:44:31,650 --> 00:44:38,070
skrælings. Thorvald attacked these
sleeping men and killed eight of them,

475
00:44:38,070 --> 00:44:43,180
but among them, one managed to get away
and flee through the forests that

476
00:44:43,180 --> 00:44:47,500
fringed the beach.
The Norsemen celebrated their victory

477
00:44:47,500 --> 00:44:53,710
and set up camp, but their celebration
wasn't to last long. Soon, they heard the

478
00:44:53,710 --> 00:44:58,079
noise of an approaching force and
shouting voices coming through the trees.

479
00:44:58,079 --> 00:45:03,609
They realized too late that the man who
had escaped had come back, and this time

480
00:45:03,609 --> 00:45:09,040
with reinforcements. Arrows began
whizzing out of the forest, and the

481
00:45:09,040 --> 00:45:14,109
Norsemen fled back to their boats in
disarray, hastily throwing up a barricade

482
00:45:14,109 --> 00:45:19,720
while they prepared to set sail. During
the flight, Thorvald was struck by an

483
00:45:19,720 --> 00:45:25,119
arrow and it pinned him to the wooden
hull of his ship. As he died, he is

484
00:45:25,119 --> 00:45:30,730
supposed to have shouted out a final
bellowing proclamation. what a fat joke;

485
00:45:30,730 --> 00:45:39,310
we found a land of fine resources but
we will hardly enjoy any of them. The group

486
00:45:39,310 --> 00:45:43,720
retreated back along the coast and
without a leader, they fell to in-

487
00:45:43,720 --> 00:45:48,250
fighting and bickering. They only just
managed to make it back to Greenland

488
00:45:48,250 --> 00:45:54,310
alive. We may never know how things might
have gone had history been just a little

489
00:45:54,310 --> 00:45:59,079
different, but it's possible that this
fierce reaction by the indigenous

490
00:45:59,079 --> 00:46:03,940
inhabitants of Vinland may have
prevented the colonization of America

491
00:46:03,940 --> 00:46:10,170
for another 500 years.
Partly because of their unwillingness to

492
00:46:10,170 --> 00:46:15,330
coexist with native peoples, the Vikings
were never able to establish a permanent

493
00:46:15,330 --> 00:46:20,700
settlement in North America. The Norse-
men did set up a number of temporary

494
00:46:20,700 --> 00:46:25,530
camps in Canada; often places where they
would spend the winter before abandoning

495
00:46:25,530 --> 00:46:31,200
them and returning to Greenland. Today,
only one confirmed Norse site has been

496
00:46:31,200 --> 00:46:35,940
discovered in North America, at a place
called L'anse aux Meadows, or the Bay of

497
00:46:35,940 --> 00:46:44,280
Meadows in Newfoundland, Canada. In 1960, a
man called George Decker who lived in a

498
00:46:44,280 --> 00:46:49,230
small fishing village nearby, led
archaeologists to what he called the old

499
00:46:49,230 --> 00:46:54,480
Indian camp. But when the archaeologists
began to excavate, they realized that

500
00:46:54,480 --> 00:46:59,010
these ruined buildings didn't match the
profile of any Native American building

501
00:46:59,010 --> 00:47:04,950
methods. In fact, the only thing they
resembled were the Viking buildings in

502
00:47:04,950 --> 00:47:10,619
Iceland and Greenland; rough stone walls
covered over with turf to keep in the

503
00:47:10,619 --> 00:47:16,950
warm. Eight buildings were discovered in
total, which could have held up to 150

504
00:47:16,950 --> 00:47:22,740
people, and Viking artifacts were
uncovered at the site, too; a stone oil lamp,

505
00:47:22,740 --> 00:47:28,770
a whetstone, a bronze fastening pin, a
bone knitting needle, and part of a

506
00:47:28,770 --> 00:47:35,250
spindle. But it seems that this too was a
temporary settlement. There were no

507
00:47:35,250 --> 00:47:41,460
findings of burials here, or tools,
agriculture, or animal pens, but

508
00:47:41,460 --> 00:47:47,070
archaeologists did find a carpentry
workshop and an iron forge, suggesting

509
00:47:47,070 --> 00:47:52,380
that L'anse aux Meadows was used as a way
station to repair boats damaged on the

510
00:47:52,380 --> 00:47:59,340
violent seas. Partly helped by repair
stations like this, the Vikings made

511
00:47:59,340 --> 00:48:03,830
routine voyages to North America to
collect wood to build their ships, and

512
00:48:03,830 --> 00:48:10,980
probably to collect the furs of foxes,
bears, and lynx, too. But Greenlanders

513
00:48:10,980 --> 00:48:15,150
simply never had the resources to
establish a permanent settlement in

514
00:48:15,150 --> 00:48:20,040
America. Their links back to Europe were
just too fragile to support anything

515
00:48:20,040 --> 00:48:24,450
other than a temporary
base and for a number of reasons, these

516
00:48:24,450 --> 00:48:29,579
links were about to weaken. In fact,
events would soon occur that would

517
00:48:29,579 --> 00:48:35,270
threaten the very survival of the Green-
land settlements themselves.

518
00:48:41,840 --> 00:48:46,410
Greenland's Western Settlement, the more
remote of the two and the furthest from

519
00:48:46,410 --> 00:48:52,470
Europe, was the first to fall.
Strangely, nobody at the time seems to

520
00:48:52,470 --> 00:48:58,050
have known what happened. The last person
to set eyes on the Western Settlement

521
00:48:58,050 --> 00:49:06,150
was a man named Ivar Bardason, who
sailed to Greenland in the year 1341. For

522
00:49:06,150 --> 00:49:11,369
more than a decade, no one had heard any
news from the Western Settlement. For

523
00:49:11,369 --> 00:49:15,869
centuries, it had sent taxes to the
Norwegian king and although these

524
00:49:15,869 --> 00:49:20,340
shipments were often many years apart,
they had never failed to pay what they

525
00:49:20,340 --> 00:49:26,010
owed to their distant homeland. But the
last payment to arrive from the Western

526
00:49:26,010 --> 00:49:30,600
Settlement had been in the year 1327.
That's fourteen years

527
00:49:30,600 --> 00:49:36,750
earlier. Ivar Bardason was given one
task; to make the terrifying voyage

528
00:49:36,750 --> 00:49:40,920
across the North Atlantic,
to find the Western Settlement, and to

529
00:49:40,920 --> 00:49:47,010
demand to know why their taxes were so
late. It was a long and dangerous voyage

530
00:49:47,010 --> 00:49:52,430
through icy waters. We can imagine the
eerie lights of the aurora borealis

531
00:49:52,430 --> 00:49:57,540
flickering far overhead as Bardason
made the journey, but he survived the

532
00:49:57,540 --> 00:50:02,010
trip. He arrived in the Eastern
Settlement in Greenland and began asking

533
00:50:02,010 --> 00:50:07,590
around, seeing if anyone knew what had
happened in the West. But no one could

534
00:50:07,590 --> 00:50:12,750
tell him anything. There, too, no one had
heard anything from the Western

535
00:50:12,750 --> 00:50:18,420
Settlement for years. So, Bardason
set out on the next leg of his voyage

536
00:50:18,420 --> 00:50:23,790
with a growing sense of foreboding.
When he finally arrived at the Western

537
00:50:23,790 --> 00:50:29,300
Settlement he saw why; the entire place
was in ruins.

538
00:50:29,300 --> 00:50:34,730
I saw nobody, neither Christians nor
heathen, only some wild cattle and sheep

539
00:50:34,730 --> 00:50:41,450
all running free. Bardason explored the
ruined settlement but he could find no

540
00:50:41,450 --> 00:50:46,070
sign of the settlers, and he couldn't
find any clue about where they might

541
00:50:46,070 --> 00:50:51,680
have gone. Since the domestic animals
were still there, wandering free among

542
00:50:51,680 --> 00:50:56,240
the crumbling buildings, it can't have
been long since they left. The animals

543
00:50:56,240 --> 00:51:01,400
wouldn't have survived long without
shelter. Bardason wandered around the

544
00:51:01,400 --> 00:51:07,070
surrounding area and found four more
farms in similar condition. He and the

545
00:51:07,070 --> 00:51:11,120
men with him knew that the farm animals
wouldn't survive the winter, so they

546
00:51:11,120 --> 00:51:16,369
slaughtered them and took as much meat
as they could carry back to their ships.

547
00:51:16,369 --> 00:51:21,470
Bardason felt sure that he knew
what had happened. He reported back to

548
00:51:21,470 --> 00:51:26,150
Norway that the Greenland settlers had
been killed by skrælings, by the

549
00:51:26,150 --> 00:51:31,339
indigenous people of Greenland. But to
the end of his life, he must have

550
00:51:31,339 --> 00:51:36,170
wondered why were there no signs of
bloodshed at the Western Settlement? Why

551
00:51:36,170 --> 00:51:41,299
no signs of battle or the burning of
buildings? If the skrælings had done

552
00:51:41,299 --> 00:51:45,910
this, then what had they done with the
bodies?

553
00:51:49,690 --> 00:51:53,799
As we've already seen in a number of
different collapses over the course of

554
00:51:53,799 --> 00:51:58,599
this series, for much of history
humankind has been at the mercy of the

555
00:51:58,599 --> 00:52:04,839
global climate. Even small variations in
weather systems can have utterly

556
00:52:04,839 --> 00:52:10,030
devastating consequences for human
societies, and those that are already

557
00:52:10,030 --> 00:52:14,700
pushing the boundaries of habitability
are particularly vulnerable.

558
00:52:14,700 --> 00:52:20,260
The first Norseman to discover Greenland
did so during a time that we know today

559
00:52:20,260 --> 00:52:26,950
as the Medieval Warm Period. This began
around the Year 900 and lasted for about

560
00:52:26,950 --> 00:52:34,809
four centuries, ending around the year
1300. During this period of warmth, sea

561
00:52:34,809 --> 00:52:39,579
ice decreased in the North Atlantic,
so sailing from Scandinavia to Greenland

562
00:52:39,579 --> 00:52:44,740
became less dangerous. The longer
summers meant that cattle, sheep, and

563
00:52:44,740 --> 00:52:49,059
goats could graze in the meadows along
Greenland's sheltered fjords on the

564
00:52:49,059 --> 00:52:54,190
southwest coast, and the growing seasons
allowed European crops to be cultivated

565
00:52:54,190 --> 00:52:59,980
in this northern land. This relatively
mild climate meant that in the early

566
00:52:59,980 --> 00:53:03,910
days of their settlement, the Vikings
were able to more or less transplant

567
00:53:03,910 --> 00:53:09,970
their medieval European lifestyle to
this new land. During the summer, some

568
00:53:09,970 --> 00:53:13,869
might even have been able to imagine
that they were back home in the quiet

569
00:53:13,869 --> 00:53:18,730
fjords of Norway, but this warm period
wouldn't last forever.

570
00:53:18,730 --> 00:53:24,309
Soon, the Norsemen of Greenland would
realize that they were actually very far

571
00:53:24,309 --> 00:53:30,609
from home. The Medieval Warm Period was
followed by a period that today we call

572
00:53:30,609 --> 00:53:35,680
the Little Ice Age. This describes a
period that began in the late 13th

573
00:53:35,680 --> 00:53:40,619
century, when summer temperatures around
the world underwent a dramatic drop.

574
00:53:40,619 --> 00:53:46,809
There are many theories about what
caused this dramatic climate shift. Some

575
00:53:46,809 --> 00:53:52,150
scientists have suggested astronomical
causes, including a fall in solar

576
00:53:52,150 --> 00:53:59,200
radiation or even changes in the earth's
tilt and orbit. Others have pointed to a

577
00:53:59,200 --> 00:54:03,340
heightened volcanic activity around the
world, including the eruption

578
00:54:03,340 --> 00:54:08,650
of the Indonesian island of Lombok in
1257, one of the most powerful eruptions

579
00:54:08,650 --> 00:54:13,360
of the last seven thousand years, that
reduced the penetration of sunlight all

580
00:54:13,360 --> 00:54:18,310
around the world. Others have even
suggested that the drop in temperature

581
00:54:18,310 --> 00:54:22,600
resulted from the reduction in the
overall human population caused by the

582
00:54:22,600 --> 00:54:27,400
Black Death, which caused the death of as
many as 200 million people across

583
00:54:27,400 --> 00:54:35,470
Eurasia, reducing the population by as
much as 60%. Whatever the cause, an icy

584
00:54:35,470 --> 00:54:41,320
veil began to descend over the whole
world. Radiocarbon dating of plant

585
00:54:41,320 --> 00:54:46,090
material in Iceland shows that summers
began to get abruptly colder between

586
00:54:46,090 --> 00:54:53,770
1275 and 1300, and sea ice expanded. This
was followed by yet another dramatic

587
00:54:53,770 --> 00:55:01,930
drop from 1430 to 1455. The lowest winter
temperatures of the last 2,000 years

588
00:55:01,930 --> 00:55:08,980
occurred right around this time, during
the 14th and 15th centuries. In London,

589
00:55:08,980 --> 00:55:13,840
people would soon skate on the River
Thames and hold frost fairs out on the

590
00:55:13,840 --> 00:55:20,560
ice while in Rotterdam, people would
skate on the city's Grand Canal. Painters

591
00:55:20,560 --> 00:55:25,000
like Pieter Brueghel the Elder would
depict winter scenes of enormous scale,

592
00:55:25,000 --> 00:55:29,890
while crop failures and epidemics led to
a dramatic increase in a number of

593
00:55:29,890 --> 00:55:34,840
executions for witchcraft across Europe.
Through all of this chaos,

594
00:55:34,840 --> 00:55:40,270
the Greenland settlers were all but
forgotten. But for them, the results of

595
00:55:40,270 --> 00:55:45,450
this changing climate would be the most
devastating of all.

596
00:55:45,469 --> 00:55:50,369
The Greenland Norse settlements were
already built on the edge of the Earth's

597
00:55:50,369 --> 00:55:56,849
habitable zone. Only 300 kilometers to
the north lay the Arctic Circle, beyond

598
00:55:56,849 --> 00:56:01,829
which the sun didn't show in winter.
Just over the hills to the north of the

599
00:56:01,829 --> 00:56:06,739
Viking settlements, the vast expanse of
the Greenland ice sheet stretched. In

600
00:56:06,739 --> 00:56:12,029
Greenland, temperatures would now plummet
to as much as six to eight degrees lower

601
00:56:12,029 --> 00:56:17,759
than summer temperatures today. Soon, sea
ice would choke up the fjords and

602
00:56:17,759 --> 00:56:23,489
prevent ships from landing. The ice would
crush the ship's hulls in a vice-like

603
00:56:23,489 --> 00:56:29,009
grip and freeze the ground to stone so
that nothing would grow. The number of

604
00:56:29,009 --> 00:56:33,949
storms coming in from the sea also
increased dramatically during this time.

605
00:56:33,949 --> 00:56:39,539
Studies of ice cores show that around
this time, the Greenland ice contained a

606
00:56:39,539 --> 00:56:44,400
greater amount of salt, since the harsh
ocean winds were blowing sea mist across

607
00:56:44,400 --> 00:56:49,650
it with greatest strength and ferocity.
As the weather got worse, the

608
00:56:49,650 --> 00:56:54,150
Greenland Vikings had a simple choice;
they could continue living their

609
00:56:54,150 --> 00:57:00,059
essentially European lives, the lives of
growing crops and grazing livestock, or

610
00:57:00,059 --> 00:57:05,339
they could adapt. They could learn from
their Inuit neighbors and change their

611
00:57:05,339 --> 00:57:10,319
lifestyles to that of subsistence
hunter-gatherers, relying on hunting and

612
00:57:10,319 --> 00:57:15,420
fishing instead. For a long time,
historians have assumed that the

613
00:57:15,420 --> 00:57:20,699
Greenland Norse didn't adapt when the
harsh winters arrived. It was thought

614
00:57:20,699 --> 00:57:25,499
that they must have stuck to their crops
and livestock, and when these died, so did

615
00:57:25,499 --> 00:57:31,589
they. One archeologist, Thomas McGovern,
has summarized this theory in blunt

616
00:57:31,589 --> 00:57:37,829
terms. Dumb Norsemen go into the north
outside the range of their economy,

617
00:57:37,829 --> 00:57:43,079
mess up the environment, and then
they all die when it gets cold. To

618
00:57:43,079 --> 00:57:47,640
some extent, it's true that the Vikings
clung to their European culture even

619
00:57:47,640 --> 00:57:53,339
when conditions worsened. Archeologists
have recovered clothing left behind by

620
00:57:53,339 --> 00:57:57,329
the Greenland Norse, perfectly preserved
in the ice.

621
00:57:57,329 --> 00:58:02,640
Some even have the brilliant red dyes
still on their fabrics, as bright today

622
00:58:02,640 --> 00:58:07,799
as the day their owners left them.
From these clothes, we can see that well

623
00:58:07,799 --> 00:58:12,690
into the 15th century, the Greenland
Vikings still wore woollen clothing and

624
00:58:12,690 --> 00:58:19,160
even kept up with the latest European
fashions; hooded clothing with long capes.

625
00:58:19,160 --> 00:58:24,959
Meanwhile, their Inuit neighbors knew
that seal skins and furs provided the

626
00:58:24,959 --> 00:58:30,359
best protection against the cold.
The Norse also seemed to have clung

627
00:58:30,359 --> 00:58:35,670
largely to their European eating habits.
They never copied the Inuit in learning

628
00:58:35,670 --> 00:58:40,769
to cut holes in the ice and fish the
waters underneath. They never carved fish

629
00:58:40,769 --> 00:58:46,650
hooks out of bone the way the Inuit did,
and some writers like Jared Diamond have

630
00:58:46,650 --> 00:58:51,299
seized on a lack of fish bones found in
the settlements of the Norse. They argue

631
00:58:51,299 --> 00:58:56,459
that this shows a cultural aversion to
eating fish, that the the Norse thought

632
00:58:56,459 --> 00:59:01,949
themselves simply too good for this
lowly food. But I think the numerous

633
00:59:01,949 --> 00:59:06,989
references to salmon that we find in
Icelandic sagas seems to refute this, and

634
00:59:06,989 --> 00:59:12,269
it's worth remembering the fish bones
are very delicate and fragile. In the

635
00:59:12,269 --> 00:59:16,829
harsh environment of Greenland, they may
be simply more prone to breaking down or

636
00:59:16,829 --> 00:59:23,219
being blown away. Still, we can see some
stubbornness in the Vikings' refusal to

637
00:59:23,219 --> 00:59:29,219
adopt the ways of the Inuit entirely.
After all, they were Norsemen and if

638
00:59:29,219 --> 00:59:33,719
they began wearing seal skins and
carving boned fish hooks, what would that

639
00:59:33,719 --> 00:59:38,789
make them? To the Vikings of the time,
perhaps this was considered behavior

640
00:59:38,789 --> 00:59:44,249
suited only to the skrælings.
Perhaps to them, adopting these methods

641
00:59:44,249 --> 00:59:49,480
of survival would have looked something
like a cultural suicide.

642
00:59:49,480 --> 00:59:54,530
Some commentators have also focused on
the damage that they claim the Norse did

643
00:59:54,530 --> 00:59:59,390
to their environment. They observed that
the Vikings imported farming methods

644
00:59:59,390 --> 01:00:03,800
that were successful in Europe but were
less well-suited to the thin soils and

645
01:00:03,800 --> 01:00:09,590
short grazing seasons of Greenland. Over
the centuries, the Norse also cut down

646
01:00:09,590 --> 01:00:14,510
the low trees and vegetation that grew
in the Greenland landscape, partly to

647
01:00:14,510 --> 01:00:19,130
create pastures for their farm animals.
While the Inuit burned seal blubber

648
01:00:19,130 --> 01:00:23,900
to heat and light their homes,
the Norse continued to burn wood in

649
01:00:23,900 --> 01:00:29,590
their stoves and hearths just as they
would have in Europe. This deforestation

650
01:00:29,590 --> 01:00:34,760
gradually exposed the land to the brutal
icy winds, and soon

651
01:00:34,760 --> 01:00:41,420
the topsoil was blown away, and covered
in sand and ice. In one settlement known

652
01:00:41,420 --> 01:00:46,250
as Vatnahverfi, the ruin of one Norse
house has been found completely buried

653
01:00:46,250 --> 01:00:51,770
in sand dunes up to ten feet deep, and
surrounded by barren plains that were

654
01:00:51,770 --> 01:00:58,310
once fertile farmland. So, some of the
collapse can be attributed to these

655
01:00:58,310 --> 01:01:03,859
factors, that the Greenlanders didn't
sufficiently adapt and that they caused

656
01:01:03,859 --> 01:01:09,589
some damage to the environment. But new
evidence has shown but this might not be

657
01:01:09,589 --> 01:01:15,380
a complete picture. New excavations of
Norse settlements have shown that around

658
01:01:15,380 --> 01:01:21,109
this time, the Norse did undergo a
dramatic shift in their diet. Like the

659
01:01:21,109 --> 01:01:25,820
Inuit, they began to hunt seals, and the
amount of seal bones found in the

660
01:01:25,820 --> 01:01:30,130
rubbish heaps of their settlements
increases dramatically around this time.

661
01:01:30,130 --> 01:01:35,540
Bone analysis shows that food from the
sea would increase as a proportion of

662
01:01:35,540 --> 01:01:40,849
the Norse diet until it made up about
80% in the final days of the settlements.

663
01:01:40,849 --> 01:01:46,250
Far from committing the
irresponsible environmental damage, it

664
01:01:46,250 --> 01:01:51,440
seems the Norse were careful to manage
their scarce resources. For instance, they

665
01:01:51,440 --> 01:01:55,849
show that efforts to fertilize the harsh
soil actually increased during the

666
01:01:55,849 --> 01:02:00,589
Little Ice Age, and another example is
how the Norse conducted their seal

667
01:02:00,589 --> 01:02:04,110
hunting.
There are two kinds of seals that live

668
01:02:04,110 --> 01:02:09,900
in the fjords of Greenland; the first is
the harbour seal, and today this species

669
01:02:09,900 --> 01:02:16,380
is critically endangered. It's not hard
to see why. Harbour seals are so called

670
01:02:16,380 --> 01:02:20,100
because they raise their young on the
beaches, making them easy prey for

671
01:02:20,100 --> 01:02:25,920
hunters. But despite their desperation,
the Greenland Norse seemed to have

672
01:02:25,920 --> 01:02:30,360
limited their hunting of this species,
being careful not to drive them to

673
01:02:30,360 --> 01:02:35,220
extinction. Instead, they went after the
more abundant but more difficult-to-

674
01:02:35,220 --> 01:02:40,200
catch harp seal, which migrates every
year up the west coast of Greenland on

675
01:02:40,200 --> 01:02:46,950
their way from Canada. But despite their
efforts to adapt, studies on human

676
01:02:46,950 --> 01:02:51,510
remains found in the Norse settlements
show that the population began to become

677
01:02:51,510 --> 01:02:57,480
severely malnourished around this time.
Skeletons buried in the late period of

678
01:02:57,480 --> 01:03:02,370
the settlements are stunted in growth
and the teeth are worn down from eating

679
01:03:02,370 --> 01:03:08,460
poor quality food. But in all of this,
perhaps the Greenland Norse might still

680
01:03:08,460 --> 01:03:13,200
have survived. Despite all these
pressures, it's worth noting that these

681
01:03:13,200 --> 01:03:17,820
settlements continued for over a century,
even after the climate of the Little Ice

682
01:03:17,820 --> 01:03:23,070
Age reached its coldest point. Part
of this reason is that their connection

683
01:03:23,070 --> 01:03:27,000
to Europe allowed them to continue
getting supplies and food to the hardy

684
01:03:27,000 --> 01:03:32,250
settlers. Perhaps if this connection had
remained, the Greenland settlements

685
01:03:32,250 --> 01:03:38,010
might not have fallen. But for a number
of reasons, as the 14th century drew on,

686
01:03:38,010 --> 01:03:44,330
that connection was going to be put
under increasing strain.

687
01:03:46,680 --> 01:03:53,740
In the year 1349, a ship arrived in
Norway from England and docked at the

688
01:03:53,740 --> 01:03:59,590
port town of Bergen. This ship would
cause the death of as many as half of

689
01:03:59,590 --> 01:04:05,380
the people of Norway. That's because like
all ships at the time, it carried black

690
01:04:05,380 --> 01:04:11,290
rats that fed on its grain cargo. The
rats carried fleas that fed on the rat's

691
01:04:11,290 --> 01:04:17,320
blood, and the fleas carried the
bacterium Yersinia pestis, known commonly

692
01:04:17,320 --> 01:04:24,940
as the bubonic plague or Black Death.
Days after the ships arrival in Bergen,

693
01:04:24,940 --> 01:04:31,000
familiar symptoms exploded among the
population. People's skin turned black,

694
01:04:31,000 --> 01:04:38,230
they coughed blood, and their lymph nodes
swelled to enormous size. From Bergen, the

695
01:04:38,230 --> 01:04:43,390
plague spread rapidly along the coast
and over land, ravaging Norway for

696
01:04:43,390 --> 01:04:49,690
approximately six months. The annals say
that roughly two-thirds of Norway's

697
01:04:49,690 --> 01:04:55,120
population died, and while this may be an
exaggeration, mortality may have reached

698
01:04:55,120 --> 01:05:02,670
as much as 40 or 50 percent. Able-bodied
men were now dying in Norway's streets.

699
01:05:02,670 --> 01:05:07,750
Every major industry, including those
involved in shipbuilding and maintenance,

700
01:05:07,750 --> 01:05:13,510
would have suffered while some may have
collapsed completely. While there's

701
01:05:13,510 --> 01:05:17,890
no evidence that the Black Death ever
crossed the sea to Greenland, this

702
01:05:17,890 --> 01:05:22,800
epidemic would still be utterly
devastating for the Greenland Vikings.

703
01:05:22,800 --> 01:05:27,790
Bergen was the port from which all
voyages to Iceland and Greenland would

704
01:05:27,790 --> 01:05:33,280
have departed. As Norway reeled from the
disaster and tried to pick up the pieces,

705
01:05:33,280 --> 01:05:38,310
it seems supply missions to the distant
outpost slowed to a trickle.

706
01:05:38,310 --> 01:05:44,590
The last Bishop of Greenland died around
the year 1378, and no

707
01:05:44,590 --> 01:05:50,350
new Bishop was ever sent from Norway to
replace him. Matters would only get

708
01:05:50,350 --> 01:05:55,680
worse.
In the year 1393, a band of German

709
01:05:55,680 --> 01:06:00,990
pirates known as the victual brothers
attacked the city of Bergen. They raided

710
01:06:00,990 --> 01:06:06,630
the port, pillaged and looted the town,
killed the garrison, and finally burnt it

711
01:06:06,630 --> 01:06:13,970
to the ground. The link from Greenland to
mainland Europe was now all but severed.

712
01:06:13,970 --> 01:06:19,079
Imports of grain from Norway to
Greenland virtually stopped, and this

713
01:06:19,079 --> 01:06:23,460
happened right as the cold weather swept
in on the Greenlanders, and their crops

714
01:06:23,460 --> 01:06:29,819
and cattle began to die. They became
increasingly short on iron, too. We can see

715
01:06:29,819 --> 01:06:33,930
this from the lack of any nails or iron
objects in the top layer of their

716
01:06:33,930 --> 01:06:40,470
habitation. The Greenlanders now had to
constantly reuse the same iron tools, and

717
01:06:40,470 --> 01:06:46,680
archaeologists have found the tragic
artifacts of knives worn down almost to

718
01:06:46,680 --> 01:06:53,099
stubs by use, but still too precious for
the Greenlanders to throw away. With

719
01:06:53,099 --> 01:06:58,079
food dwindling, the Norse in Greenland
would have had little choice. They would

720
01:06:58,079 --> 01:07:02,640
now have to hunt even more seals and
walrus in order to feed themselves.

721
01:07:02,640 --> 01:07:07,980
To make this possible,
they couldn't spare a single man. Now,

722
01:07:07,980 --> 01:07:12,299
every able-bodied hunter in the
settlements would have to sail farther

723
01:07:12,299 --> 01:07:17,430
and farther up the Greenland coasts,
sometimes traveling as much as 1,500

724
01:07:17,430 --> 01:07:22,499
kilometers on their hunts, often rowing
large portions of the journey when the

725
01:07:22,499 --> 01:07:27,720
weather was too bad to sail. Their
ships in this era might have begun to

726
01:07:27,720 --> 01:07:32,400
resemble something closer to Kastan-
rassi's Frankenstein's monster of a

727
01:07:32,400 --> 01:07:38,759
craft, rather than the sleek longboats
sent from Norway. Virtually all the men

728
01:07:38,759 --> 01:07:43,019
of these settlements would have left on
these long trips. As the climate

729
01:07:43,019 --> 01:07:48,150
worsened, the ice spread, and storms on
the sea increased, it's not hard to

730
01:07:48,150 --> 01:07:53,609
imagine what could go wrong. For a
historical parallel, we might look at

731
01:07:53,609 --> 01:07:58,960
another set of islands in the North Sea;
the Shetlands to the north of Scotland.

732
01:07:58,960 --> 01:08:05,869
On the 16th of July, 1832, a freak storm
hit the Shetland Islands completely by

733
01:08:05,869 --> 01:08:13,609
surprise. On that day, the whole fishing
fleet of the islands was out at sea. 16

734
01:08:13,609 --> 01:08:19,100
boats were sunk and over a hundred men
were killed. In some of these small

735
01:08:19,100 --> 01:08:24,020
Shetland communities, this meant that
over 80% of the male population was

736
01:08:24,020 --> 01:08:30,620
wiped out in a single day. Many of these
communities never recovered, and as the

737
01:08:30,620 --> 01:08:34,429
Greenland Vikings were driven ever
further from their homes seeking food,

738
01:08:34,429 --> 01:08:38,929
it's not hard to imagine something like
this catastrophe swooping down on them.

739
01:08:38,929 --> 01:08:45,520
After that, the death of these
communities would have been assured.

740
01:08:48,179 --> 01:08:54,449
The 15th century marked the end of the
Norse presence in Greenland. The last

741
01:08:54,449 --> 01:08:59,759
written record of the Greenland Vikings
documents a marriage in the year 1408 at

742
01:08:59,759 --> 01:09:05,460
Hvalsey Church, part of the surviving
Eastern Settlement. This took place

743
01:09:05,460 --> 01:09:13,770
around 70 years after Ivar Bardason dis-
covered the ruins of the Western Settlement.

744
01:09:13,770 --> 01:09:18,359
The ruins of Hvalsey Church can still be seen today,
a rough construction of granite field

745
01:09:18,359 --> 01:09:24,299
stones crumbling into the grassy banks
of the fjord. It almost looks like part

746
01:09:24,299 --> 01:09:29,250
of the landscape. Hvalsey Church is
the best preserved Norse building in

747
01:09:29,250 --> 01:09:33,120
Greenland, and today when you walk
through the ruins, you can almost imagine

748
01:09:33,120 --> 01:09:39,359
the atmosphere of that day in 1408, the
wedding of Thorstein Olafsson and

749
01:09:39,359 --> 01:09:44,730
Sigrid Bjornsdottir. As the fires burned
and the seal meat crackled in

750
01:09:44,730 --> 01:09:50,790
celebration, Thorstein and Sigrid would
soon leave Greenland, back to Thor-

751
01:09:50,790 --> 01:09:56,429
tein's native Iceland. After this,
barely any written records mention the

752
01:09:56,429 --> 01:10:03,840
Greenland settlers. By the year 1435, less
than three decades later, archaeological

753
01:10:03,840 --> 01:10:08,010
evidence suggests that all of the
Greenland Vikings had disappeared.

754
01:10:08,010 --> 01:10:18,179
It's as if they simply vanished from the
earth. At least some of this decline

755
01:10:18,179 --> 01:10:24,840
seems to have been economic. Evidence
suggests that walrus ivory, the most

756
01:10:24,840 --> 01:10:29,429
valuable export from Greenland, simply
began to lose its value towards the end

757
01:10:29,429 --> 01:10:35,070
of the Norse period. This was the
beginning of the age of European empire,

758
01:10:35,070 --> 01:10:40,020
and around this time, Portugal and other
Mediterranean countries were beginning

759
01:10:40,020 --> 01:10:43,230
to open up their trade routes with
sub-saharan Africa.

760
01:10:43,230 --> 01:10:49,190
This meant that high-quality elephant
ivory began to enter the European market.

761
01:10:49,190 --> 01:10:55,110
Elephant tusks yield an ivory of higher
quality and size than the walrus hunted

762
01:10:55,110 --> 01:11:00,150
by the Norse, and so with the climate
worsening, with the cold winters falling

763
01:11:00,150 --> 01:11:03,719
on them harder and
harder, some of the Greenland Vikings may

764
01:11:03,719 --> 01:11:07,980
simply have drifted back to Iceland or
Norway and never seen any point in

765
01:11:07,980 --> 01:11:13,469
returning. As with any tale of economic
downturn, this certainly seems to have

766
01:11:13,469 --> 01:11:17,910
been the case with the younger
generations. In the later stages of Norse

767
01:11:17,910 --> 01:11:22,830
settlement, most of the human remains
found are of older people. All of the

768
01:11:22,830 --> 01:11:28,290
youngsters seem to have left for
somewhere else. But this emigration

769
01:11:28,290 --> 01:11:33,600
doesn't seem to have happened en masse.
There's no mention in the Icelandic

770
01:11:33,600 --> 01:11:38,670
Chronicles of any kind of exodus or
evacuation from Greenland, and if

771
01:11:38,670 --> 01:11:43,410
thousands of people had started arriving
on Iceland's shores looking for food and

772
01:11:43,410 --> 01:11:49,320
farmland, wouldn't there be some mention
of this in the histories? At other sites

773
01:11:49,320 --> 01:11:55,050
around Greenland, the situation looks to
have been pretty bleak. Studies have

774
01:11:55,050 --> 01:11:59,280
shown that the remains of blowflies have
been found in the living areas of some

775
01:11:59,280 --> 01:12:04,440
Norse ruins, suggesting that at some
point the bedrooms and living areas were

776
01:12:04,440 --> 01:12:10,430
home to rotting carcasses, and of course,
that no one was around to bury the dead.

777
01:12:10,430 --> 01:12:16,550
The silted-up ruins of one Norse
farmhouse tells another chilling story.

778
01:12:16,550 --> 01:12:22,770
Here, archaeologists have found the
remains of two animals; one a newborn

779
01:12:22,770 --> 01:12:30,060
calf and the other a Norwegian elk hound,
a large hunting dog. Both sets of bones

780
01:12:30,060 --> 01:12:34,800
were covered in knife marks, meaning that
these animals had been butchered and

781
01:12:34,800 --> 01:12:39,750
eaten. It's fair to say that no
family would have killed and eaten this

782
01:12:39,750 --> 01:12:45,540
dog unless they were on the edge of
starvation. Hunting dogs were useful; they

783
01:12:45,540 --> 01:12:49,560
helped the Vikings to catch animals like
caribou in the spring, and so they were

784
01:12:49,560 --> 01:12:54,390
vital to survival on the settlements.
We can imagine that the Norse were

785
01:12:54,390 --> 01:12:59,160
probably no more inclined to kill their
four-legged companions than we might be

786
01:12:59,160 --> 01:13:06,900
today, but at this point they may have
had little choice. Remains also show that

787
01:13:06,900 --> 01:13:11,760
the Vikings around this time began
eating the hooves of cows and hunting

788
01:13:11,760 --> 01:13:16,230
small animals like birds and rabbits, that
up until that point they wouldn't have

789
01:13:16,230 --> 01:13:23,760
considered worth hunting. So, this is the
most pessimistic theory. But as the

790
01:13:23,760 --> 01:13:28,740
climate worsened and ships from Europe
stopped coming, all the Greenland Vikings

791
01:13:28,740 --> 01:13:36,360
who remained simply starved and froze
to death in their homes. But there's one

792
01:13:36,360 --> 01:13:41,280
final theory that I think is worth
mentioning, and this theory changes the

793
01:13:41,280 --> 01:13:46,560
outcome of this story completely. Could
it be that the Greenland Vikings didn't

794
01:13:46,560 --> 01:13:51,600
simply freeze and starve as we might
have thought? In fact, might they have

795
01:13:51,600 --> 01:14:01,430
left for somewhere else? In 1723, a
Norwegian explorer named Hans Egede

796
01:14:01,430 --> 01:14:06,270
visited Greenland with the intention of
finding the Norsemen who he believed

797
01:14:06,270 --> 01:14:12,150
still lived there. Like Bardason before
him, he was disappointed to find only

798
01:14:12,150 --> 01:14:18,120
rubble and ruins left behind. But while
he was there, he spent time among the

799
01:14:18,120 --> 01:14:22,890
Inuit people of Greenland and tried to
see if they knew anything about what had

800
01:14:22,890 --> 01:14:25,220
happened to the Vikings who once lived
here.

801
01:14:25,220 --> 01:14:31,080
The Inuit had no clear answers for him,
but they showed him the ruins of a stone

802
01:14:31,080 --> 01:14:37,500
church where once the Greenland settlers
had worshiped. I inquired of the savages

803
01:14:37,500 --> 01:14:42,450
whether they had destroyed the stone
building, but they replied that the

804
01:14:42,450 --> 01:14:48,680
Norwegians did it when they left this
country. But if they left this country,

805
01:14:48,680 --> 01:14:55,620
where did they go to? It's true that at
some settlements, it seems the Norse did

806
01:14:55,620 --> 01:15:00,990
depart in an orderly and planned fashion.
They took all their valuables with them

807
01:15:00,990 --> 01:15:07,080
and in some places even closed the doors
behind them. But where did they go? Why

808
01:15:07,080 --> 01:15:11,640
did no one back in Europe know what had
happened to them? Why did Hans Egede

809
01:15:11,640 --> 01:15:17,040
think he might find Norsemen still
living there? Could it be that when the

810
01:15:17,040 --> 01:15:21,120
climate became impossible in Greenland,
the Vikings did what they had always

811
01:15:21,120 --> 01:15:26,940
done? That's set sail and find a new land
to call home.

812
01:15:26,940 --> 01:15:32,700
The land that the Vikings called Vinland
and we today call Canada, was unknown

813
01:15:32,700 --> 01:15:37,290
territory for the Norse. But it's worth
remembering that it was a much shorter

814
01:15:37,290 --> 01:15:43,500
journey than the voyage back to Norway
or Iceland. With Arctic ice floes and the

815
01:15:43,500 --> 01:15:48,030
activity of pirates worsening, this might
have been a major factor in their

816
01:15:48,030 --> 01:15:54,000
decision. For a race of settlers and
explorers, they might have found the

817
01:15:54,000 --> 01:15:58,740
distant shore a more tempting prospect
than struggling to survive in the

818
01:15:58,740 --> 01:16:04,110
already well-settled land that their
ancestors had left behind. Some

819
01:16:04,110 --> 01:16:09,600
corroboration for this theory comes from
the annals of the Bishop Oddsson, writing

820
01:16:09,600 --> 01:16:14,880
in the 17th century. He tells a
remarkable story about where the

821
01:16:14,880 --> 01:16:21,420
Greenland Vikings might have gone. The
settlers of Greenland lapsed of their

822
01:16:21,420 --> 01:16:27,570
own free will from the true faith and
the Christian religion. Having abandoned

823
01:16:27,570 --> 01:16:35,180
all good conduct and true virtues, they
turned to the people of America.

824
01:16:35,180 --> 01:16:40,290
There is some more evidence that at
least some of the Greenland Vikings may

825
01:16:40,290 --> 01:16:45,120
have actually departed for America. At
around the period of the decline of the

826
01:16:45,120 --> 01:16:51,360
Greenland settlements, in the year 1347,
the Icelandic Chronicles mention a

827
01:16:51,360 --> 01:16:57,660
curious incident. A ship arrived on the
shore of Iceland after apparently being

828
01:16:57,660 --> 01:17:03,860
blown off-course, and the crew claimed
that their destination had been Vinland.

829
01:17:03,860 --> 01:17:08,790
Some have argued that this could have
been one of a number of ships full of

830
01:17:08,790 --> 01:17:14,250
Norse immigrants trying to start a new
life on the coast of North America once

831
01:17:14,250 --> 01:17:20,280
life in Greenland had become impossible.
What happened to these settlers? If they

832
01:17:20,280 --> 01:17:26,490
existed, we may never know. Did they meet
a violent end like Thorvald Ericksson,

833
01:17:26,490 --> 01:17:31,200
under a hail of native arrows? Or did
they learn the lessons of their

834
01:17:31,200 --> 01:17:36,000
ancestors? Did they learn to adapt to
their new environment, to make friends

835
01:17:36,000 --> 01:17:39,510
with the people who already lived in
that land? Did they take up their ways

836
01:17:39,510 --> 01:17:44,070
and customs and
embrace their new adopted country? Until

837
01:17:44,070 --> 01:17:48,510
any archaeological evidence is uncovered
to support this theory, it will remain

838
01:17:48,510 --> 01:17:52,950
just a theory. But I'd like to remind you
of the story that we opened the episode

839
01:17:52,950 --> 01:17:59,190
with, of that Norseman lying face-down
in the snow, dressed in the seal skins of

840
01:17:59,190 --> 01:18:04,290
an Inuit. Does this show that some of
these Vikings actually did take that

841
01:18:04,290 --> 01:18:10,050
final step and blend in with the people
of the new world? Did they learn their

842
01:18:10,050 --> 01:18:15,390
language and adopt their customs? While
I'm suspicious of this story as a

843
01:18:15,390 --> 01:18:21,630
historian, as a storyteller I do like to
imagine that this is a possibility, that

844
01:18:21,630 --> 01:18:25,020
at least some of the Vikings of
Greenland may have swallowed their

845
01:18:25,020 --> 01:18:29,790
European pride and put on the seal skins
that would keep them warm through the

846
01:18:29,790 --> 01:18:35,340
increasingly darkening winters. I like to
imagine that they once again set sail

847
01:18:35,340 --> 01:18:43,850
for a new horizon and lost themselves
somewhere on the shores of a new world.

848
01:18:43,850 --> 01:18:48,840
I want to end the episode by reading a
piece of ancient Norse poetry called the

849
01:18:48,840 --> 01:18:54,060
Voluspa. It comes from the era before the
introduction of Christianity to Norway,

850
01:18:54,060 --> 01:19:00,270
when the Vikings worshiped the old gods
of ancient times. It tells the story of

851
01:19:00,270 --> 01:19:06,150
how the world was created and how it
will soon come to an end. This passage

852
01:19:06,150 --> 01:19:13,470
tells of the coming end of the world, an
event known as Ragnarok. As you listen,

853
01:19:13,470 --> 01:19:17,790
try to imagine what it must have felt
like to live right at the end of the

854
01:19:17,790 --> 01:19:25,050
known world, surrounded by the dark and
wild oceans on every side. Imagine how it

855
01:19:25,050 --> 01:19:29,550
must have felt to have your contact with
the rest of the world slowly fade and

856
01:19:29,550 --> 01:19:34,800
then die altogether, how it must have
felt to feel all alone on that narrow

857
01:19:34,800 --> 01:19:39,810
strip of land between the blue-white
glacial walls and the roaring Black Sea

858
01:19:39,810 --> 01:19:44,730
as the Northern Lights flicker in the
sky overhead and all around you, the

859
01:19:44,730 --> 01:19:50,480
ruins of your houses and fields, your
farms and your churches, crumble

860
01:19:50,480 --> 01:19:54,620
unstoppably into the earth.

861
01:19:58,010 --> 01:20:03,980
Black become the sun's beams
in the summers that follow, weathers

862
01:20:03,980 --> 01:20:09,230
all treacherous. Brothers
will find and kill each other, sisters'

863
01:20:09,230 --> 01:20:13,850
children will defile kinship.
It is harsh in the world,

864
01:20:13,850 --> 01:20:18,950
infidelity rife, an axe age,
a sword age.

865
01:20:18,950 --> 01:20:25,160
Shields are riven. A wind age,
a wolf age, before the world goes

866
01:20:25,160 --> 01:20:31,370
headlong. No man will have
mercy on another.

867
01:20:31,370 --> 01:20:38,450
Thank you once again for
listening to The Fall of Civilizations

868
01:20:38,450 --> 01:20:42,320
Podcast. I'd like to thank my voice
actors for this episode;

869
01:20:42,320 --> 01:20:49,280
Jacob Rowlinson, Jake Barrett-Mills, and
Sebastian Garbacz. Special thanks go

870
01:20:49,280 --> 01:20:53,780
to Jordan Ashley Moore for letting us
hear these poems in their original Old

871
01:20:53,780 --> 01:20:58,730
Norse. Do check out his YouTube channel
Ancient Literature Dude for more

872
01:20:58,730 --> 01:21:03,290
readings from ancient and medieval
languages. I love to hear your thoughts

873
01:21:03,290 --> 01:21:07,700
and responses on Twitter, so please come
and tell me what you thought. You can

874
01:21:07,700 --> 01:21:12,250
follow me @PaulMMCooper, and if
you'd like updates about the podcast,

875
01:21:12,250 --> 01:21:17,240
announcements about new episodes, as well
as images, maps, and reading suggestions,

876
01:21:17,240 --> 01:21:22,760
you can follow the podcast @Fall_of_
Civ_Pod with underscores separating the

877
01:21:22,760 --> 01:21:27,440
words. This podcast can only keep going
with the support of our generous

878
01:21:27,440 --> 01:21:32,030
subscribers on Patreon. You keep me
running, you help me cover my costs, and

879
01:21:32,030 --> 01:21:36,230
you also let me dedicate more time to
researching, writing, recording, and

880
01:21:36,230 --> 01:21:40,700
editing to get the episodes out to you
faster and bring as much life and detail

881
01:21:40,700 --> 01:21:46,040
to them as possible. I want to thank all
my subscribers for making this happen. If

882
01:21:46,040 --> 01:21:50,900
you enjoyed this episode, please consider
heading to patreon.com/fallof

883
01:21:50,900 --> 01:21:56,210
civilizations_podcast.
If you can spare anything,

884
01:21:56,210 --> 01:22:03,160
please help keep this podcast running.
For now, goodbye, and thanks for listening.