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.