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| A very cold Viking |
Climate change is a popular theory for two reasons, firstly
because of the disastrous impacts it can have on other factors, for
example decreased temperatures lead to more sea ice which reduces the amount of
trade that can be done with Europe. The second reason is because the colonisation
and collapse of Norse society correlates closely with severe changes in
climate.
The Medieval Warm Period (MWP) was a particularly warm period in climatic
history between 800-1300 A.D., the warmest until recent decades. As you may remember
the Norse arrived in Greenland in the 985 A.D. and so colonised in a period that
was highly conducive to growing pasture and rearing livestock. However, in the
period between the 1300-1850 A.D. the climate became markedly colder, so cold in
fact it’s called the Little Ice Age (LIA). Such cold conditions meant a number
of problems for the Norse: a great reduction in hay production which meant that fewer
livestock could be reared, and reduced trade and communication with
mainland Europe. By around 1420, the LIA was at its coldest and this corresponds nicely with the estimated time of Norse societal collapse.
Evidently, the parts of this puzzle fit together so well that surely, we must be able to conclude that climate change
is the key factor in the collapse of Norse Greenland. However, Seaver
(1996) points out that much more research needs to be done on the geography of
changing climate within Greenland before fingers can be pointed. This is best
highlighted by the fact that the Eastern Settlement was adversely affected by
drift ice, and so was affected by climate change more than the Western
Settlement, and yet the Western Settlement collapsed earlier. Thus, we don’t
yet have a chronologically or geographically accurate profile of climate change
and its impacts on the colony and so it isn't as simple as “it got cold and
they died”.
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