I've always found it interesting that there was mail service between Greenland and Iceland at least up until 1424.<p>Not too long after that, in 1477, Columbus went to Galway Ireland to ask fishermen about routes across the northern sea. These fishermen routinely visited Iceland, and knew about Greenland. Columbus also inspected a boat on which a couple had arrived in Galway from beyond Iceland, likely Greenland, and either viewed the bodies of the couple or met with them depending on how you read his Latin.
If you’re into this kind of thing, check out The Fall Of Civilizations podcast — it’s great and also has an episode on this topic.<p><a href="https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/03/26/episode-4-of-fall-of-civilizations-is-now-live/" rel="nofollow">https://fallofcivilizationspodcast.com/2019/03/26/episode-4-...</a>
My reading of the article is that it happened, as they say, "slowly and then all at once."<p>Not dissimilar from the hollowing out of rural America today. People keep on going, assuming that things will either stay stable or turn around at some point. Meanwhile everything keeps on at roughly the same trajectory of the people hanging on getting older and older, and the young people moving on to greener pastures.<p>And then one day you realize that there isn't really anything left.
This subject is discussed in Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond.[1]<p>Some topics that the article didn't mention is that:<p>a) Norse in Greenland continued internal infighting losing (in such a small population) able men due to duels and revenge killing<p>b) They had been spending much of the efforts during short summer on costly expeditions to aquire walrus-tusk ivory instead of obtaining timber and other necessities.<p>c) The upper class had been directing most resources into vanity projects like large cathedral and exchanging walrus-tusk ivory for luxury imports like wine, fine clothes etc..<p>It is still beyond me why living in Greenland by the sea they had refused to eat fish.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose_to_Fail_or_Succeed" rel="nofollow">https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collapse:_How_Societies_Choose...</a>
It's quite a bit of a stretch to call anyone from after the 11th century a viking. But for some reason the epithet often gets bandied about when talking of the Norse in Greenland.
I wonder how the Vikings kept warm during winter. It's mentioned in the article that there almost weren't any trees in Greenland and it must have been extremely cold there in winter.
This website is utterly unreadable on mobile without an adblocker.<p>I thought something named the Smithsonian magazine would be better than this yet here we are