Jón Haukur Ingimundarson

Interdisciplinary investigations of the end of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland

The loss of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland around the mid-fourteenth century has long been taken as a prime example of the impact of changing climate on human populations. This study employs an interdisciplinary approach combining historical documents, detailed archaeological investigations, and a high-resolution proxy climate record from the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) to investigate possible causes for the end of this settlement. Historical climate records, mainly from Iceland, contain evidence for lowered temperatures and severe weather in the north Atlantic region around the mid-fourteenth century. Archaeological, palaeoecological and historical data specifically concerning the Western Settlement suggest that Norse living conditions left little buffer for unseasonable climate, and provide evidence for a sudden and catastrophic end around the mid-fourteenth century. Isotopic data from the GISP2 ice core provide annual- and seasonal-scale proxy-temperature signals which suggest multiyear intervals of lowered temperatures in the early and mid-fourteenth century. The research synthesized here suggests that, while periods of unfavourable climatic fluctuations are likely to have played a role in the end of the Western Settlement, it was their cultural vulnerabilities to environmental change that left the Norse far more subject to disaster than their Inuit neigh bours.

Raiding the Landscape: Human Impact in the Scandinavian North Atlantic

Between ca. A.D. 800–1000, Scandinavian chiefly societies with a mixed maritime and agricultural economy expanded into the North Atlantic, colonizing Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, Hebrides, Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland. The settlers brought continental European economics and expectations to a widely varied set of island ecosystems. In many regions, rapid degradation of flora and soils took place associated with social and climate change. Recent research coordinated by the North Atlantic Bicultural Organization (NABO) highlights the extent of pre-modern impacts.

The Political Economy of Northern Regional Development : Vol. I

“….Taking the structure and functioning of the Arctic regional economies and the degree of economic dependence as a point of departure, these regions self-reliance and comparative ...