The man is keeping me down

It's been a while since I last posted anything, but even bloggers get Christmas off! In between last minute Christmas shopping, all my relatives asking me what I plan to do after I graduate, and the Doctor Who Christmas special, I've managed to do some more reading into the societal response in Norse Greenland. In this post I'm going to look in the reasons why the societal hierarchy and the church failed to stop the collapse.

Norse society in Greenland was highly hierarchical, operating with a rigid feudal system of chieftains.  The church in Greenland was setup in 1124 and in the next 300 years 12 large churches were built (Berglund, 1986). The ability of the church to command the resources and labour to build the churches and a cathedral indicates the significant power and influence the Norse elite had in governing the Norse community. McGovern (1980) argues that the Norse elite encouraged the maintenance of the status-quo because they were largely insulated from the deteriorating conditions. The church was the largest landowner and the elite farmed in the more favourable land in the inner fjords which were protected more from the impacts of the colder climate than those farms in the outer fjords. A diet based on sheep and cattle meant that the elites were less effected by the impact of a changing climate on seal populations. The deteriorating conditions had little negative impact on the decision makers in the beginning and so they felt less urgency to adapt and resisted changing.

As the situation in Norse Greenland worsened, the Norse should have adapted by migrating to the outer coast. This would make it easier to maintain a marine based diet and thus reduce pressure on the pastorial base. The clothes would have been made out of seal skin rather than sheep and goat wool. In addition the Norse would have to lead a more nomadic life, migrating seasonally with the marine food sources (Berglund, 1986). This did not happen, instead there was an intensification in religious activities such as church building.

The adaptive strategies outlined above had the potential to enable the Norse to survive and continue living in Greenland. However, it would result in the reorganisation of the societal structure. The power of the pastorial elite would diminish as the economic base in agriculture reduced. Furthermore,as the population became more mobile, the ability of the elite to control the politically and spiritually would decrease. The change to a hunter-gatherer way of life would be akin to the Inuit's way of life and this would have been deemed undesirable by the Norse.