from
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/

Go to citation for pictures and maps.
This also disagrees with Diamond's views.

Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?

Newly discovered evidence is upending our understanding of how early
settlers made a life on the island — and why they suddenly disappeared
The remnants of a Viking barn
The remnants of a Viking barn still stand at what had been the
settlement of Gardar. (Ciril Jazbec)
By Tim Folger
SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
MARCH 2017
2.9K583292
On the grassy slope of a fjord near the southernmost tip of Greenland
stand the ruins of a church built by Viking settlers more than a century
before Columbus sailed to the Americas. The thick granite-block walls
remain intact, as do the 20-foot-high gables. The wooden roof, rafters
and doors collapsed and rotted away long ago. Now sheep come and go at
will, munching wild thyme where devout Norse Christian converts once
knelt in prayer.

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The Vikings called this fjord Hvalsey, which means “Whale Island” in Old
Norse. It was here that Sigrid Bjornsdottir wed Thorstein Olafsson on
Sunday, September 16, 1408. The couple had been sailing from Norway to
Iceland when they were blown off course; they ended up settling in
Greenland, which by then had been a Viking colony for some 400 years.
Their marriage was mentioned in three letters written between 1409 and
1424, and was then recorded for posterity by medieval Icelandic scribes.
Another record from the period noted that one person had been burned at
the stake at Hvalsey for witchcraft.

But the documents are most remarkable—and baffling—for what they don’t
contain: any hint of hardship or imminent catastrophe for the Viking
settlers in Greenland, who’d been living at the very edge of the known
world ever since a renegade Icelander named Erik the Red arrived in a
fleet of 14 longships in 985. For those letters were the last anyone
ever heard from the Norse Greenlanders.

They vanished from history.

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“If there was trouble, we might reasonably have thought that there would
be some mention of it,” says Ian Simpson, an archaeologist at the
University of Stirling, in Scotland. But according to the letters, he
says, “it was just an ordinary wedding in an orderly community.”

Europeans didn’t return to Greenland until the early 18th century. When
they did, they found the ruins of the Viking settlements but no trace of
the inhabitants. The fate of Greenland’s Vikings—who never numbered more
than 2,500—has intrigued and confounded generations of archaeologists.

Those tough seafaring warriors came to one of the world’s most
formidable environments and made it their home. And they didn’t just get
by: They built manor houses and hundreds of farms; they imported stained
glass; they raised sheep, goats and cattle; they traded furs,
walrus-tusk ivory, live polar bears and other exotic arctic goods with
Europe. “These guys were really out on the frontier,” says Andrew
Dugmore, a geographer at the University of Edinburgh. “They’re not just
there for a few years. They’re there for generations—for centuries.”

So what happened to them?

**********

Thomas McGovern used to think he knew. An archaeologist at Hunter
College of the City University of New York, McGovern has spent more than
40 years piecing together the history of the Norse settlements in
Greenland. With his heavy white beard and thick build, he could pass for
a Viking chieftain, albeit a bespectacled one. Over Skype, here’s how he
summarized what had until recently been the consensus view, which he
helped establish: “Dumb Norsemen go into the north outside the range of
their economy, mess up the environment and then they all die when it
gets cold.”

Thomas McGovern
Thomas McGovern (with Viking-era animal bones): The Greenlanders’ end
was “grim.” (Reed Young)
Accordingly, the Vikings were not just dumb, they also had dumb luck:
They discovered Greenland during a time known as the Medieval Warm
Period, which lasted from about 900 to 1300. Sea ice decreased during
those centuries, so sailing from Scandinavia to Greenland became less
hazardous. Longer growing seasons made it feasible to graze cattle,
sheep and goats in the meadows along sheltered fjords on Greenland’s
southwest coast. In short, the Vikings simply transplanted their
medieval European lifestyle to an uninhabited new land, theirs for the
taking.

But eventually, the conventional narrative continues, they had problems.
Overgrazing led to soil erosion. A lack of wood—Greenland has very few
trees, mostly scrubby birch and willow in the southernmost
fjords—prevented them from building new ships or repairing old ones. But
the greatest challenge—and the coup de grâce—came when the climate began
to cool, triggered by an event on the far side of the world.

In 1257, a volcano on the Indonesian island of Lombok erupted.
Geologists rank it as the most powerful eruption of the last 7,000
years. Climate scientists have found its ashy signature in ice cores
drilled in Antarctica and in Greenland’s vast ice sheet, which covers
some 80 percent of the country. Sulfur ejected from the volcano into the
stratosphere reflected solar energy back into space, cooling Earth’s
climate. “It had a global impact,” McGovern says. “Europeans had a long
period of famine”—like Scotland’s infamous “seven ill years” in the
1690s, but worse. “The onset was somewhere just after 1300 and continued
into the 1320s, 1340s. It was pretty grim. A lot of people starving to
death.”

Amid that calamity, so the story goes, Greenland’s Vikings—numbering
5,000 at their peak—never gave up their old ways. They failed to learn
from the Inuit, who arrived in northern Greenland a century or two after
the Vikings landed in the south. They kept their livestock, and when
their animals starved, so did they. The more flexible Inuit, with a
culture focused on hunting marine mammals, thrived.

That is what archaeologists believed until a few years ago. McGovern’s
own PhD dissertation made the same arguments. Jared Diamond, the UCLA
geographer, showcased the idea in Collapse, his 2005 best seller about
environmental catastrophes. “The Norse were undone by the same social
glue that had enabled them to master Greenland’s difficulties,” Diamond
wrote. “The values to which people cling most stubbornly under
inappropriate conditions are those values that were previously the
source of their greatest triumphs over adversity.”

But over the last decade a radically different picture of Viking life in
Greenland has started to emerge from the remains of the old settlements,
and it has received scant coverage outside of academia. “It’s a good
thing they can’t make you give your PhD back once you’ve got it,”
McGovern jokes. He and the small community of scholars who study the
Norse experience in Greenland no longer believe that the Vikings were
ever so numerous, or heedlessly despoiled their new home, or failed to
adapt when confronted with challenges that threatened them with
annihilation.

“It’s a very different story from my dissertation,” says McGovern. “It’s
scarier. You can do a lot of things right—you can be highly adaptive;
you can be very flexible; you can be resilient—and you go extinct
anyway.” And according to other archaeologists, the plot thickens even
more: It may be that Greenland’s Vikings didn’t vanish, at least not all
of them.

**********

Lush grass now covers most of what was once the most important Viking
settlement in Greenland. Gardar, as the Norse called it, was the
official residence of their bishop. A few foundation stones are all that
remain of Gardar’s cathedral, the pride of Norse Greenland, with stained
glass and a heavy bronze bell. Far more impressive now are the nearby
ruins of an enormous barn. Vikings from Sweden to Greenland measured
their status by the cattle they owned, and the Greenlanders spared no
effort to protect their livestock. The barn’s Stonehenge-like partition
and the thick turf and stone walls that sheltered prized animals during
brutal winters have endured longer than Gardar’s most sacred architecture.

Disko Bay
Vikings sailed hundreds of miles from their settlements to hunt walrus
in Disko Bay. (Guilbert Gates)
Gardar’s ruins occupy a small fenced-in field abutting the backyards of
Igaliku, an Inuit sheep-farming community of about 30 brightly painted
wooden houses overlooking a fjord backed by 5,000-foot-high snowcapped
mountains. No roads run between towns in Greenland—planes and boats are
the only options for traversing a coastline corrugated by innumerable
fjords and glacial tongues. On an uncommonly warm and bright August
afternoon, I caught a boat from Igaliku with a Slovenian photographer
named Ciril Jazbec and rode a few miles southwest on Aniaaq fjord, a
region Erik the Red must have known well. Late in the afternoon, with
the arctic summer sun still high in the sky, we got off at a rocky beach
where an Inuit farmer named Magnus Hansen was waiting for us in his
pickup truck. After we loaded the truck with our backpacks and essential
supplies requested by the archaeologists—a case of beer, two bottles of
Scotch, a carton of menthol cigarettes and some tins of snuff—Hansen
drove us to our destination: a Viking homestead being excavated by
Konrad Smiarowski, one of McGovern’s doctoral students.

On 9/9/2021 8:01 AM, a425couple wrote:
> from
> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/
>
>
> Go to citation for pictures and maps.
> This also disagrees with Diamond's views.
>
> Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?
>
> Newly discovered evidence is upending our understanding of how early
> settlers made a life on the island — and why they suddenly disappeared
> The remnants of a Viking barn
> The remnants of a Viking barn still stand at what had been the
> settlement of Gardar. (Ciril Jazbec)
> By Tim Folger
> SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
> MARCH 2017
> 2.9K583292

more reading at:

The Vikings: A Memorable Visit to America
The Icelandic house of what is likely the first European-American baby
has scholars rethinking the Norse sagas
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-vikings-a-memorable-visit-to-america-98090935/

Archaeology news: ‘Prefect storm’ including Black Death wiped out
Greenland’s vikings
VIKINGS in Greenland died out as a result of starvation, climate change
and even the Black Death archaeologists have revealed.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1231743/archaeology-news-vikings-black-death-history-greenland-climate-change

and, there are a lot of 'nattering' comments.

On Thu, 9 Sep 2021 08:01:25 -0700, a425couple <a425couple@hotmail.com>
wrote:

>from
>https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/
>
>Go to citation for pictures and maps.
>This also disagrees with Diamond's views.
>
>Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?
>
>Newly discovered evidence is upending our understanding of how early
>settlers made a life on the island — and why they suddenly disappeared
>The remnants of a Viking barn
>The remnants of a Viking barn still stand at what had been the
>settlement of Gardar. (Ciril Jazbec)
>By Tim Folger
>SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
>MARCH 2017
>2.9K583292
> etc....

--- <Vast Snip> ---

What is missing is any reference to the theory that the remnants of
the population were captured and put into slavery by two Portuguese
brothers whose name presently escapes me.
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On 9/9/2021 7:59 PM, SolomonW wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Sep 2021 15:06:51 -0700, a425couple wrote:
>
>> On 9/9/2021 8:01 AM, a425couple wrote:
>>> from
>>> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/
>>>
>>>
>>> Go to citation for pictures and maps.
>>> This also disagrees with Diamond's views.
>>>
>>> Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?
>>>
>>> Newly discovered evidence is upending our understanding of how early
>>> settlers made a life on the island — and why they suddenly disappeared
>>> The remnants of a Viking barn
>>> The remnants of a Viking barn still stand at what had been the
>>> settlement of Gardar. (Ciril Jazbec)
>>> By Tim Folger
>>> SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
>>> MARCH 2017
>>> 2.9K583292
>>
>> more reading at:
>>
>> The Vikings: A Memorable Visit to America
>> The Icelandic house of what is likely the first European-American baby
>> has scholars rethinking the Norse sagas
>> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-vikings-a-memorable-visit-to-america-98090935/
>>
>> Archaeology news: ‘Prefect storm’ including Black Death wiped out
>> Greenland’s vikings
>> VIKINGS in Greenland died out as a result of starvation, climate change
>> and even the Black Death archaeologists have revealed.
>> https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1231743/archaeology-news-vikings-black-death-history-greenland-climate-change
>>
>> and, there are a lot of 'nattering' comments.
>
> Well written but little new here. >
Correct.
Yeah I thought the hype indicated something new.
But,,,, not really.
But still, shows the revised thinking since Daimond's stupidity.

> What I found interesting is that it might not have been in search of
> farmland and who turned to ivory but ivory farmers.
>
I'm reminded of this display we saw in England:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lewis_chessmen

On 9/10/2021 2:06 AM, Eric Stevens wrote:
> On Thu, 9 Sep 2021 08:01:25 -0700, a425couple <a425couple@hotmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> from
>> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/
>>
>> Go to citation for pictures and maps.
>> This also disagrees with Diamond's views.
>>
>> Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?
>>
>> Newly discovered evidence is upending our understanding of how early
>> settlers made a life on the island — and why they suddenly disappeared
>> The remnants of a Viking barn
>> The remnants of a Viking barn still stand at what had been the
>> settlement of Gardar. (Ciril Jazbec)
>> By Tim Folger
>> SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
>> MARCH 2017
>> 2.9K583292
>> etc....
>
> --- <Vast Snip> ---
>
> What is missing is any reference to the theory that the remnants of
> the population were captured and put into slavery by two Portuguese
> brothers whose name presently escapes me.
>
Huh?? !!!

I find, that this is probably what you are referring to:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspar_Corte-Real

"In 1498, King Manuel I of Portugal took an interest in western
exploration, likely believing that the lands recently discovered by John
Cabot (the coast of North America) were within the realm of Portuguese
control under the Treaty of Tordesillas. Corte-Real was one of several
explorers to sail west on behalf of Portugal.[3]

In 1500, Corte-Real reached Greenland, believing it to be east Asia (as
Christopher Columbus had regarded the New World), but was unable to
land. He set out on a second voyage in 1501, taking three caravels. The
expedition was again prevented from landing at Greenland due to frozen
seas. They changed course, and landed in a country of large rivers, pine
trees, and berries, believed to be Labrador. There it is believed they
captured 57 indigenous people, who were taken back to Portugal to be
sold into slavery to assist in financing the voyage.[4] Two of the
expedition's three ships made the return trip to Portugal, but the ship
carrying Corte-Real was lost.[3]"

I have trouble, from other readings, thinking these
could have been the Vikings from Greenland.

On Friday, September 10, 2021 at 1:40:32 PM UTC-4, a425couple wrote:
> On 9/10/2021 2:06 AM, Eric Stevens wrote:
> > On Thu, 9 Sep 2021 08:01:25 -0700, a425couple <a425c...@hotmail.com>
> > wrote:
> >
> >> from
> >> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/
> >>
> >> Go to citation for pictures and maps.
> >> This also disagrees with Diamond's views.
> >>
> >> Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?
> >>
> >> Newly discovered evidence is upending our understanding of how early
> >> settlers made a life on the island — and why they suddenly disappeared
> >> The remnants of a Viking barn
> >> The remnants of a Viking barn still stand at what had been the
> >> settlement of Gardar. (Ciril Jazbec)
> >> By Tim Folger
> >> SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
> >> MARCH 2017
> >> 2.9K583292
> >> etc....
> >
> > --- <Vast Snip> ---
> >
> > What is missing is any reference to the theory that the remnants of
> > the population were captured and put into slavery by two Portuguese
> > brothers whose name presently escapes me.
> >
> Huh?? !!!
>
> I find, that this is probably what you are referring to:
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspar_Corte-Real

In "The Frozen Echo", Sievert deduces the existence of trade between England and Greenland, kept quiet as such was in violation of Danish law. She cites imports dating from well past the last known official trading trip (1408) found in the eastern settlement. People could have booked or worked their passage on such ships.

The Western settlement was perhaps dealt it's death blow by Ivar Bardarsson's taxation/pirate raid in which all their animals were taken (IB was collecting back taxes for both the church and the state).

Not being prepared to do anything for their co-religionists, the church satisfied itself with declaring them to be heretics. The bishopric of Gardar was continued into the late 1500s as a nice sinecure, but no Bishop of Gardar actually visited the place after 1378.

William Hyde

On Fri, 10 Sep 2021 10:40:28 -0700, a425couple
<a425couple@hotmail.com> wrote:

>On 9/10/2021 2:06 AM, Eric Stevens wrote:
>> On Thu, 9 Sep 2021 08:01:25 -0700, a425couple <a425couple@hotmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> from
>>> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/
>>>
>>> Go to citation for pictures and maps.
>>> This also disagrees with Diamond's views.
>>>
>>> Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?
>>>
>>> Newly discovered evidence is upending our understanding of how early
>>> settlers made a life on the island — and why they suddenly disappeared
>>> The remnants of a Viking barn
>>> The remnants of a Viking barn still stand at what had been the
>>> settlement of Gardar. (Ciril Jazbec)
>>> By Tim Folger
>>> SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
>>> MARCH 2017
>>> 2.9K583292
>>> etc....
>>
>> --- <Vast Snip> ---
>>
>> What is missing is any reference to the theory that the remnants of
>> the population were captured and put into slavery by two Portuguese
>> brothers whose name presently escapes me.
>>
>Huh?? !!!
>
>I find, that this is probably what you are referring to:
>https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gaspar_Corte-Real
>
>"In 1498, King Manuel I of Portugal took an interest in western
>exploration, likely believing that the lands recently discovered by John
>Cabot (the coast of North America) were within the realm of Portuguese
>control under the Treaty of Tordesillas. Corte-Real was one of several
>explorers to sail west on behalf of Portugal.[3]
>
>In 1500, Corte-Real reached Greenland, believing it to be east Asia (as
>Christopher Columbus had regarded the New World), but was unable to
>land. He set out on a second voyage in 1501, taking three caravels. The
>expedition was again prevented from landing at Greenland due to frozen
>seas. They changed course, and landed in a country of large rivers, pine
>trees, and berries, believed to be Labrador. There it is believed they
>captured 57 indigenous people, who were taken back to Portugal to be
>sold into slavery to assist in financing the voyage.[4] Two of the
>expedition's three ships made the return trip to Portugal, but the ship
>carrying Corte-Real was lost.[3]"
>
>I have trouble, from other readings, thinking these
>could have been the Vikings from Greenland.

From what I can recall one of the brothers at least made separate
voyages ... and ships disappeared ... it all got complicated and
highly speculative with fragmentary documentation and all that, but
the theory was proposed nevertheless..
--

Regards,

Eric Stevens

On Thu, 9 Sep 2021 15:06:51 -0700, a425couple wrote:

> On 9/9/2021 8:01 AM, a425couple wrote:
>> from
>> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119/
>>
>>
>> Go to citation for pictures and maps.
>> This also disagrees with Diamond's views.
>>
>> Why Did Greenland’s Vikings Vanish?
>>
>> Newly discovered evidence is upending our understanding of how early
>> settlers made a life on the island — and why they suddenly disappeared
>> The remnants of a Viking barn
>> The remnants of a Viking barn still stand at what had been the
>> settlement of Gardar. (Ciril Jazbec)
>> By Tim Folger
>> SMITHSONIAN MAGAZINE | SUBSCRIBE
>> MARCH 2017
>> 2.9K583292
>
> more reading at:
>
>
> The Vikings: A Memorable Visit to America
> The Icelandic house of what is likely the first European-American baby
> has scholars rethinking the Norse sagas
> https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/the-vikings-a-memorable-visit-to-america-98090935/
>
> Archaeology news: ‘Prefect storm’ including Black Death wiped out
> Greenland’s vikings
> VIKINGS in Greenland died out as a result of starvation, climate change
> and even the Black Death archaeologists have revealed.
> https://www.express.co.uk/news/science/1231743/archaeology-news-vikings-black-death-history-greenland-climate-change
>
> and, there are a lot of 'nattering' comments.

Well written but little new here.

What I found interesting is that it might not have been in search of
farmland and who turned to ivory but ivory farmers.