Greenland, the world’s largest island, lies mostly north of the Arctic Circle. For nearly 5,000 years it has been occupied by the Inuit. Sometime in the tenth century (perhaps about 932, but some reports indicate as early as 876), Gunnbjørn Ulfsson was blown off course while sailing from Norway to Iceland. He sailed off the coast of Greenland and reported this new land to the Norse in Iceland.
The next Norse explorer to reach Greenland was Snøbjørn Galte Holmsteinsson in 978. Unlike Gunnbjørn Ulfsson, however, this was an intentional voyage following the early reports of the island. The goal was to establish a colony on the island, but internal strife ended the venture.
In 982-984, Erik the Red (Erik Thorvaldsson) explored the western shores of Greenland. He was acting on earlier reports about the island. He found several fjords that provided conditions similar to those in Iceland. Erik’s exploration of the island came after he had been exiled from Iceland for three years for several murders he had committed.
When he returned to Iceland following his exile, Erik the Red called the island Goenland (Greenland) in order to make it more attractive to prospective settlers from Iceland. In 985 he returned to Greenland to found the Eastern Settlement near Brattahild. He originally assembled 500 settlers and transported them in 25 boats. Only 18 boats, however, survived the trip. A second settlement, the Western Settlement, was established as a base for hunting arctic mammals.
The Settlements:
While the Norse—also called Vikings—had a reputation as fierce, sea-faring warriors, they were actually agriculturalists who raised domesticated animals and engaged in farming. With the scarcity of good agricultural land in Iceland in the eleventh century, Greenland provided economic opportunities for many Norse.
The Eastern Settlement, located on the southwestern tip of the Island, became the main colony. The stock farming settlers exploited the grazing potential of the relatively fertile inner fjords. As they had done in Iceland, the Norse settlers did not settle in villages, but in scattered farmsteads. Archaeologists have identified more than 400 such farmsteads in the Eastern Settlement.
The Greenlanders raised sheep, goats, cows, and horse. Of these, sheep and goats were most common. They also had some dogs which were used in herding the sheep.
The Norse Greenlanders used the shieling system: they moved their livestock to outlying grasslands for part of the grazing season. Thus there were two seasonal farmsteads for each family.
One of the architectural forms that developed in Greenland was the turf house. Turves were cut from the surrounding terrain in the sizes needed for building up the walls. The walls in the turf houses ranged in width from 20 to 40 inches thick. Wood was scarce and was often reused in building. They made extensive use of the large quantities of driftwood from the Siberian and North American forests.
As in Scandinavia, animals and humans were housed together. The heat from their bodies helped to maintain a tolerable temperature indoors during the extremely cold winters.
The making of textiles was an important activity. Textiles were woven not only for clothing, but as a commercial export. All of the cloth found by archaeologists has been of high quality. The primary material used in weaving the textiles was sheep’s wool. In addition, the Greenland weavers used hair from caribou, polar bear, and arctic fox. Archaeologists have found that they also used the hair from brown bear and bison: these may have come from either North America or from Scandinavia.
The Western Settlement was 600 miles to the north in an area rich in both land and marine game. The primary wild animals harvested by the Norse were caribou, hare, and seal. Walrus was important as their tusks were an export.
Trade with Iceland and Norway was essential to the Greenland colonies. This trade was based on walrus ivory, narwhale tusks, sealskins, and furs—all of which were in high demand in Europe. The Greenlanders imported iron and timber.
While the sagas make it clear that the Norse Greenlanders were not only aware of the timber resources in North America, but they also harvested timber from this region. The archaeological record, however, does not show that they used any wood from North America in building their homes. They may have exported this valuable resource to Iceland, another area of scarce timber resources.
One of the common misconceptions today is the assumption that the Greenland colonies were isolated from Europe. The archaeological evidence, however, shows that they were not really isolated. Part of this evidence comes from burials.
The Christian burials in northern Europe show some interesting changes through time. In the early Christian times, bodies were buried with the arms laid down by the side of the corpse. Later on, the arms were slightly bent so that the hands would meet across the lower abdomen. Then, burial customs changed so that the arms were placed across the abdomen crossing each other, the elbows being bent at right angles. Then, by the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the arms were placed across the breast, folded as if the deceased person were praying. What archaeologists have found in Greenland is this same pattern through time. This seems to indicate that the Norse adjusted their burial customs to the prevailing customs in northern Europe. This indicates that although geographically remote, the Norse colonies were not completely isolated.
While the culture of the Norse Greenlanders was Scandinavian, the DNA analysis of their remains shows that they had strong Celtic bloodlines. It should be remembered that the Vikings had established a kingdom in Ireland and that many of the women who had first come to Iceland with the Vikings were Irish.
With regard to population, it is estimated that the Greenland Norse may have numbered from as few as 2,000 to as many as 6,000.
The relationships between the Norse and the Inuit are not well understood. The few contacts between the two groups may have been peaceful at times and violent at others. There are almost no Inuit artifacts found in the Norse occupied sites. A few Norse artifacts have been found in the Inuit campsites in Greenland and North America. This suggests that trade between the two groups was not common. While there is at least one account of a battle between the two groups in the Norse sagas, there is little archaeological evidence of violent conflict.
Christianity:
The Greenland Norse were predominantly Christian and archaeologists have uncovered a small church—6.5 feet wide and 11.5 feet long—with room for 20 to 30 worshippers on Brattahlid, the farmstead of Erik the Red. It was most likely constructed for Erik’s wife Thjodhilde. Buried under the floor of the church, archaeologists found three skeletons which have been interpreted as the remains of Thjodhilde, Erik, and their son Leif.
The remains of a Norse church in Greenland are shown above.
According to Erik the Red’s Saga, it was Lief the Lucky who brought Christianity to Greenland on behalf of the Norwegian King Olaf Tryggvason. This would put the introduction of Christianity at about 1000 CE, a time when Iceland also became Christian. However, archaeologists have not uncovered any heathen Norse burials in Greenland and radiocarbon dating on structures identified as churches comes back to 985. In other words, it looks as though at least some of the original group that colonized Greenland were already Christian.
Archaeologists have identified 17 churches in the Eastern Settlement and two or three in the Western Settlement. Most of the churches were built from stone and turf. While some of the churches were simply rectangular buildings, some of them had a small chancel and a wider nave with an open west gable. The churches built after 1250 seem to have been inspired by the Norwegian church architecture of this time.
In the twelfth century, the Greenland Norse built a cathedral for their new bishop. In Europe, the Greenland Norse had a reputation for being a little contentious. When Bishop Arnald was selected to go to Greenland, he protested: “I am no good at handling difficult people.” There is no evidence, by the way, that Arnald ever actually went to Greenland. The cathedral, built from local sandstone and dedicated to St. Nicholas, was large enough to hold several hundred people. For the next two centuries, the Catholic priests would collect goods from the Greenland Norse which would help support the Crusades and the fight against heretics in Italy. The records show that Greenlanders paid to the Pope crusade tithes in 1282 and 1327.
The first bishop who was actually in Greenland was Bishop Helgi who arrived in 1210 or 1212. The last bishop to actually reside in Norse Greenland was Bishop Alf who arrived in 1368 and who died in Greenland in 1378.
Abandonment:
During the 14th and 15 centuries, the Norse settlements on Greenland were abandoned and the colonists disappeared. This is a time period which corresponds to the beginning of the Little Ice Age.
The last written evidence of the colony comes from the wedding of Sigrid Bjornsdotir and Thorstein Olafsson who were married at the church at Hbalsey Fjord in Greenland. Both were Icelanders. In 1414 and in 1424 wedding guests testified in Iceland that they had witnessed the wedding. This provides some clues as to the movement of population between Iceland and Greenland. Archaeological evidence shows that settlement continued through the mid-1400s.
There has been a lot of speculation about the reasons for the abandonment of the settlements. Some writers have suggested that warfare with the Inuit may have resulted in depopulation. The archaeological evidence, however, does not show any sign of armed conflict or violence.
Some writers have suggested that the Greenland Norse degenerated into a small, sickly population. Again, this is not supported by the archaeological record.
The evidence from archaeology and from biological anthropology shows a shift in the Greenland Norse diet from a predominance of terrestrial resources to a more marine diet. As an agricultural people, animal husbandry was integral to the Norse way of life not only in Scandinavia, but also in Greenland. Milk, cheese, and skyr were important to the diet. The change in the Greenland Norse diet suggests that the Norse could not sustain their livestock production adequately. It looks as though the carrying capacity for the land was reduced, perhaps by the climate becoming colder. The ice core and clam shell data show that Greenland had experienced a relatively mild climate between 800 and 1300. After this the climate became colder. The summers became shorter and cooler.
While the colder climate certainly decreased the carrying capacity of the land, part of the change in carrying capacity was caused by Norse activity. The combination of turf removal for building and the cutting of dwarf willows for the production of charcoal deprived the land of the roots which held the soil down.
As the carrying capacity of Greenland decreased, the population in Iceland had also decreased due to epidemics, thus freeing up land. The Greenland Norse saw themselves as a part of Iceland and many families had claims to land in Iceland. The most obvious explanation of what happened to the Greenland Norse is that they simply went home. This was not a mass migration, but one which took place gradually over a period of several generations.
After Abandonment:
Current archaeological evidence shows that by 1500, and most likely somewhat earlier, the Norse had abandoned their Greenland colonies. However, other Scandinavians were unaware that the colonies no longer existed. While there was no communication from the colonies, many people assumed that they still existed. In 1514-1516, Norwegian Archbishop Erik Valkendorf tried to organize an expedition to Greenland to reclaim it for the Catholic Church. At this time there had been no communication with the island for more than a century. The expedition did not happen. In 1518, Pope Leo X appointed a non-resident bishop for the Greenlanders.
In 1605, King Christian IV sent an expedition to West Greenland. He was convinced that the Norse Greenlanders were still alive and just needed to be found. A second expedition was sent in 1606 and a third in 1607, but they were not found.
In 1721, the Norwegian missionary Hans Egede arrived in the outer part of the former Western Settlement region. He found no Norse nor any trace of Norse habitation. He was greeted by groups of Inuit.