The end

Over the course of this blog I've reviewed each of Diamond's (2005) factors: environmental degradation, climate change, Inuit/Norse relations, friendly trade and societal response and the roles they may have played in the collapse of Norse Greenland. 

It seems that the conclusion of caused the collapse largely depends on the authors academic background. Environmentalists argue that deforestation and soil erosion caused environmental degradation which lead to the collapse, climatologists blame decreasing temperatures, archaeologists point to evidence of conflict between the Norse and Inuits, anthropologists argue that declining economic circumstances or failure to adapt to climate change are the culprits. However, it is too simplistic to point to only one factor as the ultimate reason for the collapse. Rather it is the combination of the factors and the connections between them that provide the most coherent interpretation of the evidence. 

It is only recently with the increased multi-disciplinary research that these factors are being blended together to provide a more holistic picture of why Norse Greenland collapsed. Climate change invariably added pressure to an already stressed agricultural environment. It also made trade with Europe harder as it was more dangerous to travel by boat. consequently, decreased communication trade links with Europe  which caused support from Europe to become more infrequent. Environmental degradation of pastoral land would have lead to the need for increased hunting which may have caused conflict with the Inuits over hunting grounds. This would have soured relations with the Inuits and made it less likely that the Inuits would want to teach the Norse and help them adapt to the colder conditions. In addition the hostilities would have cemented the Norse's prejudices against the Inuits and ensured that they try and maintain their own culture and not adapt to the undesirable Inuit way of life. The social hierarchy would have resisted any changes to the status-quo as a a nomadic way of life would have undermined their power and authority both politically and religiously. As you see, each factor played a role in the collapse of Norse Greenland and further research needs to be done in examining the connections and relationships between the factors to better determine the reasons for the collapse.

Finally, and most importantly, Norse Greenland provides us with an important analogue for our society. The failures of Norse Greenland serve as a warning for the obstacles our society must overcome in order to survive the potential impacts of anthropogenically-driven climate change.

So, that's the end of it. Thank you for tuning in each week, and I hope you've found the blog interesting or at the very least make good use of the sources for your revision in the summer. 

So what?

So what's the point of it all? Who cares why people who lived on a far off island of ice over 600 years ago couldn't survive? 

The collapse of Norse Greenland can serve as an analogue for our own society. Its not too much of a stretch to see the parallels between Norse Greenland and our modern society. The Norse were reliant on timber - an unrenewable resource just the same as our society is reliant on unrenewable fossil fuels such as oil. Our high consumption of natural resources has led to the re-emergence of Malthusian views that our planet is reaching its limit. 

The Norse failed to adapt to natural climate change. The decrease in temperatures made it harder for not only the Norse to survive, but the livestock and agricultural crops. Contemporary society is also facing the threat of a change in climate with irreversible consequences. With the limited political progress made in trying to mitigate climate change, increasing emphasis is being placed on adapting to the coming impacts. Technology will invariably play a key role in this. Diamond (2005) argues over the past centuries technology has provided more problems that fixes. The is evident with the Norse analogue. The Norse created an irrigation system to improve their agricultural productivity, but in the long term it amplified and accelerated the degradation of the environment. 

The next two factors in the collapse of societies - enemy and friendly trade relations don't really translate to our world. There are only so many friends and enemies we can have, unless of course the aliens decide to get involved (Page, 2005). 

The failure to recognise issues and the failure to respond to them are two key failings that cause societies to prevent collapse. In Norse Greenland the lack of accurate historical information about past environments and climate meant that it would have been more difficult to recognise the decline in conditions, and it is evident that the Norse failed to respond successfully (Dugmore et al., 2007). Our society has a much greater wealth of information about our environment and so are able to recognise any issues much better than our Norse counterparts. However, we are fully aware of issues of deforestation, over-fishing, over-hunting, biodiversity loss, noise, air and water pollution, and yet little has actually been achieved in stopping/ reducing them. Norse Greenland was a single country that had the same culture, economy, political system and climate. Whereas our 'island' is made up of many countries with different cultures, economies and political agendas. This makes agreeing on a course of action more difficult.

These parallels between our society and that of Norse Greenland highlight some crucial factors that our society will have to confront in the future. 

How did it really end?

In a city as technologically advanced as Tokyo, you'd think it would be easier to find free wifi, nope - its virtually impossible. So just a quick post on the debate about whether the Norse actually failed in Greenland. Researchers can't seem to agree on how Norse society in Greenland actually ended. Jared Diamond (2005) puts forward the description that of a dramatic collapse of society with the remaining population freezing or starving to death, or alternatively dying in a final bloody battle with the Inuits. This rather powerful Hollywood image of the defeat of the strong warrior Vikings succumbing to defeat from the environment or the better-adapted Inuits. 

Putting a face to the name: Jared Diamond, unfortunately I couldn't find a picture of Berglund.

On the other hand, Joel Berglund (2010) argues that such theories of dramatic collapse are only mirror our contemporary fears about the end of our civilisation. He argues instead that the Norse declined slowly in Greenland with the population emigrating as conditions worsened. The Vikings were known for their tendency to migrate when conditions worsened. There is no archaeological evidence from the Norse remains that they starved or froze to death. In addition only a few of the bodies have markings associated with conflict. Even in the last decades of existence there is no evidence if panic. The clothing fashions of Europe were still being followed, there was an elaborate wedding and full Christian burials were still performed. Surely a society at the brink catastrophic collapse would not be worrying about staying on the fashion trend and putting on a (relatively) resource intense wedding. This leads to Berglund to conclude that the Norse didn't fail as Diamond suggests, but that they lived in Greenland as long as it could sustain them and when that time was over they migrated to other lands.

So the jury's still out on this one. Whilst there is little evidence found so far that supports Diamond's theory, you can't use the absence of evidence of any catastrophic events to support Berglund's theory, especially as there is no known record of the Norse leaving Greenland or better yet arriving at another Norse colony.

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. 

Population decline and adaptation

My earlier blog posts on environmental degradation and climate change have presented the fate of Norse Greenland as environmentally determined, but this isn't the whole story. The other part of this thrilling tale of societal collapse is the question: why didn't the Norse adapt to their environment and the colder climate? Whilst the cooler climate was distressing the Norse settlements,  the Inuits were thriving and their settlements were actually expanding. Therefore it was possible to survive in those conditions, but the Norse for some reason didn't. Many scientists and governments argue that contemporary climate change won't lead to our extinction because we will adapt to the warmer temperatures. However, the Norse analogue shows that it is very possible for a society to fail to adapt to such changes, which paints a rather bleak picture of our future. Dugmore et al.'s (2007) paper suggests that the Norse couldn't adapt successfully because of their decreasing population. This decrease was due to Inuit attacks, plague and emigration prompted by reduced economic opportunity because of changing trading patterns.

The model above is environmentally deterministic and so is similar to the earlier arguments about the impacts of environmental degradation and climate change. It emphasises the change in climate, maladaptation and dependence on pastoral agriculture. However, Dugmore et al. (2007) disagrees with this model and argues that there is evidence that the Norse did manage their environment by conserving animals and regulating grazing. In addition the article shows that as the climate worsened the proportion of the Norse diet from marine sources increased. This demonstration of sustainable practices and changes to their lifestyle indicates that the Norse did at least partially adapt to their new home. However, problems with predicting climate and misleading memories of the past are used to explain why the Norse couldn't better adapt to their changing conditions.

Instead, Dugmore et al. (2007) proposes this alternative model to explain the end of Norse Greenland. The model shows that the "commercial revolution" caused trade relations with Europe to change unfavourably (2007:18). This reduced the economy of the colony and so caused increased emigration to take place. The decrease in population reduced the stability of the community structure that had enabled the Norse to adapt to the changing climate and survive in the first, this lead to the rapid collapse of the settlements. 

Dugmore et al.'s (2007) model challenges the assumptions surrounding societal collapse in Norse Greenland. The first assumption being that humans are fundamentally bad for their environment and that this leads to its inevitable destruction as well as our own. This assumption often portrays past societies as inept stewards of their environment which leads us to dissociate our contemporary environmental issues with those past analogues. The second assumption is that the Norse chose not to adapt to the colder climate. However,  the evidence of changes in their diet and farming practices indicate that the Norse were somewhat aware of their declining circumstances and did try to adapt and survive.  

This article doesn't ignore or down play the environmental and climate factors in the collapse as others who have looked at Norse adaption have, rather Dugmore et al. (2007) critically untangle the different pressures climate change can have on a society. This helps to more precisely determine the influence climate change had in causing the collapse. In addition the argument that the Norse couldn't adapt successfully proposes some interesting questions about our own ability to adapt to 21st century global warming. 

Trade with Europe

One of the common features of societies that have collapsed is isolation, for example Easter Island is described as the “most isolated inhabited island” on earth (Flenly and King, 1984:47). Geographically, you could argue that Greenland isn’t isolated at all, as evident by its Viking colonisation. However, there is a strong argument that changing trade relations with Europe caused Greenland to become economically isolated from the rest of Europe. This is a rather Euro-centric way of examining the situation which contrasts with the Greenland-centric investigation into changes in climate, environmental degradation and relations with the Inuits.

Greenland was a colony of Norway (1264) and so must have been dependent on Norway to a certain extent. The increased competition in the ivory trade from Asian and African suppliers decreased the demand from Greenland and resulted in a waning of attention from Norway (Arneborg, 2000). Keller (1990) argues that this loss of trade would undermine the authority in the colony and lead to the breakdown of the the hierarchical structure. However, the authority of the colonies leaders wasn't reliant on trade for money or power, rather their power stemmed from the size and output of their farms. However, I do agree that the loss of ivory trade would have been very damaging to the Greenland economy especially as it meant that they couldn't import as much timber (which was a very limited resource).

  

Diamond's (2005) opinion on Norse Greenland’s dependence on Norway differs from Keller’s. Whilst Norway largely had a monopoly of trade with Greenland, contact between the two countries was interrupted often by climate. The Greenland colony lasted until 1450, so that's about 200 years of inconstant trade. Therefore, Greenland couldn’t have been as dependent on Norway as originally thought.

After looking at both sides of this argument, I conclude that I don’t think it was worsening trade relations that directly caused the decline of Norse Greenland. However, I do think a stronger trade relationship with mainland Europe could have sustained the colony for much longer, for example greater imports of timber would have reduced environmental pressures on the land. In addition, the impacts of the loss of the ivory trade to Africa reminds me of the decline of coal mining villages in this country. After WWII, the increase in cheaper fuel alternatives such as North Sea gas together with increased costs of extracting the coal meant that many mines were closed down. This resulted in the decline of mining villages as people moved elsewhere in search of work and better opportunities. It may have been the case that the lack of trading opportunities resulted in the emigration of people looking for a place where it was easier to survive. I'll examine this theory in more detail in my next post, when I review Dugmore et al.'s (2007) theory on why Norse society in Greenland collapsed. 

Jared Diamond: Collapse

Jared Diamond gave a talk about collapsing societies which I've posted below. In the video he focuses on the Norse Greenland example and provides a good overview of the reasons for the collapse of society. It well worth a watch - so enjoy!