Ancient Norse Settlements Hit Cold Spell

[Liffrea]

A long cooling period may have led to famine in Greenland and Iceland more than 1,000 years ago.

New research reveals just how bad an idea it was to colonize Greenland and Iceland more than a millennium ago: average temperatures in Iceland plummeted nearly 6 degrees Celsius in the century that followed the island's Norse settlement in about A.D. 870, a climate record gleaned from mollusk shells shows.

The record is the most precise year-by-year chronology yet of temperatures experienced by the northern Norse colonies, says William Patterson, an isotope geochemist at the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada, who led the new work. The study will appear online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"We're aware from written documents of the kinds of things that people faced in the North Atlantic over the last 1,000 years," he says. "This is a way to quantify the experiences they had."

http://news.discovery.com/archaeology/norse-vikings-iceland-greenland.html

[poiuytrewq0987]

I always found it interesting why the Northmen never really settled Greenland (Greenland is essentially half the size of Australia) in large numbers. This is perhaps the reason why.

[Lenny]

Greenland is essentially half the size of Australia
And 90% of it's an ice-sheet; with 9.{some}% of the rest being tundra :icon_cool:

[Kornelia]

Very interesting place Greenland. I'm sure there are mysteries buried under the ice cap.

[poiuytrewq0987]

And 90% of it's an ice-sheet; with 9.{some}% of the rest being tundra :icon_cool:

Who says you can't melt ice to make way for settlement? But then again the crazy environmentalists would cry foul...

[Agrippa]

Actually its nothing new, the phenomenon was observable in the bones and settlements. A basic problem for Greenland was that in the worst time the connection to the mainland was largely lost, there was simply no great interest in the colony. They weren't even able to gather enough wood for new ships f.e. it seems.

And of course, the deterioration had many effects on the health of the European inhabitants of the island and exactly at the time their animal stocks died, wood became rare, climate colder, the Eskimo-people, the Inuits in particular came, which are known to have eliminated or pushed away older strata in the arctic area, so weren't always that peaceful neither.

The record spoke about incidents and warlike situations with them, so they might have played a role when the Europeans were already weakened and almost helpless.

They were physically (Borealisation, Nordoids are made for a temperate to maximal continental climate) and in their culture (ate raw meat, had a different clothing, way of fishing-hunting etc.) better adapted to the situation then.

Actually Iceland itself was almost lost, the people went through a bottleneck with many of the original settlers died, lines died off, the adult males shrinking to a dwarfish size, while being today and genetically among Europe's tallest.

That time was a hard time for many areas of Europe, especially with "Little Ice Age" and some consequences of it were Alpinisation and Baltisation in Europe too.

[Liffrea]

An interesting novel by Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders:

In fourteenth-century Greenland, a small Norse settlement struggles for survival through increasingly harsh winters, famine, witchcraft, and a tragic feud between the family of Asgeir Gunnarsson and one of his neighbors.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Greenlanders-Jane-Smiley/dp/044991089X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268347746&sr=8-1

[poiuytrewq0987]

An interesting novel by Jane Smiley, The Greenlanders:

In fourteenth-century Greenland, a small Norse settlement struggles for survival through increasingly harsh winters, famine, witchcraft, and a tragic feud between the family of Asgeir Gunnarsson and one of his neighbors.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Greenlanders-Jane-Smiley/dp/044991089X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1268347746&sr=8-1

Sounds like a must-buy but getting through 600 pages will take a bit. :)

[Lenny]

Who says you can't melt ice to make way for settlement? But then again the crazy environmentalists would cry foul...
I once concocted a plan with another guy (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/member.php?u=347) to secretly found a new nation, called "Thule", in far-northern Canada, to be ready to take advantage of the coming de-permafrosting from global warming :lightbul:

Greenland can be an honorary province. We will sit waiting quietly until Denmark donates it to Us. :icon_cool:

[Grey]

I once concocted a plan with another guy (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/member.php?u=347) to secretly found a new nation, called "Thule", in far-northern Canada, to be ready to take advantage of the coming de-permafrosting from global warming :lightbul:

Greenland can be an honorary province. We will sit waiting quietly until Denmark donates it to Us. :icon_cool:

Strangely enough, I always had similar thoughts about greenland. Nothing serious of course.

[Lenny]

Actually Iceland itself was almost lost, the people went through a bottleneck with many of the original settlers died, lines died off, the adult males shrinking to a dwarfish size, while being today and genetically among Europe's tallest.

That time was a hard time for many areas of Europe, especially with "Little Ice Age" and some consequences of it were Alpinisation and Baltisation in Europe too.How do you reconcile these two things?

Why would Icelanders' population bottleneck turn out taller people but Continental-Europe experience the opposite from the same cold-period?(Alpinization would inply lower body height).

[Lenny]

Lenny:
I once concocted a plan with another guy to secretly found a new nation, called "Thule"Strangely enough, I always had similar thoughts about greenland. Nothing serious of course.
Interesting :
http://www.theapricity.com/forum/member.php?u=1106 ....

The plans are coming together nicely.:joy

[Pallantides]

I once concocted a plan with another guy (http://www.theapricity.com/forum/member.php?u=347) to secretly found a new nation, called "Thule", in far-northern Canada, to be ready to take advantage of the coming de-permafrosting from global warming :lightbul:
Greenland can be an honorary province. We will sit waiting quietly until Denmark donates it to Us. :icon_cool:


Strangely enough, I always had similar thoughts about greenland. Nothing serious of course.

In the end the nation will be full of Björkids after centuries of interbreeding with local inuits.


People like Amundsen, Nansen and also other Norwegian explorers have descendants among the Inuits in Canada and Greenland who they took as concubines on their travels.

[Agrippa]

How do you reconcile these two things?

Why would Icelanders' population bottleneck turn out taller people but Continental-Europe experience the opposite from the same cold-period?(Alpinization would inply lower body height).

No, the Icelanders didnt turned out taller genetically than they were before, they being probably shorter too now, but in their case it was modification primarily, which could be reversed when the conditions became better again.

I think they might be taller and more Atlanto-Nordid too without that intermezzo, which was, however, not as influential as in continental Europe, where various other factors came together and a similar selection worked on some populations much longer.

Additionally Alpinid variants and genes were already present in a much higher numbers and could just "use" the advantage under such bad living conditions and social structures - the latter were not present in Iceland, as weren't the Icelanders as much under the constant pressure of plagues and negative social selection like areas of Alpinised and Baltised farmers in Europe.

Talking about their nutrition, this must have been very bad, but probably still more protein rich in comparison, because Iceland was in the worst phase surely no good place for agriculture, but some animals should have survived and there was fishing.

The modification just points in the direction of the selection, but of course there can be balancing factors, if f.e. a tall-robust-lean body is still advantageous even if the nutrition is bad.

Various factors were different in Iceland and Europe under similarly worsened climatic conditions and it wasnt something positive for the Icelanders neither, they just didnt changed AS MUCH.