Norse and Aztecs · 1021
Was Vinland abandoned for lack of innovation or people?
The seminar question: “Does the abandonment of Vinland show the limits of Norse innovation or the limits of Norse numbers?”
In 985 or 986 Erik the Red led 25 ships west from Iceland and 14 arrived, founding Greenland’s Eastern and Western Settlements on fjord meadows the warm centuries had made green. The colony paid for its imports by hunting walrus for ivory, and Norse voyagers worked wood at L’Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland in 1021.
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To keep cattle in Greenland, a farmer first needed enough grass to get them through winter. Animals spent about eight months in byres, stone-and-turf sheds, eating stored fodder; the hay harvest therefore limited the herd and a farm’s wealth. Settlers chose the inner fjords, where summers were warmer and grass grew better than on the foggy outer coast. They built about 500 farms in the Eastern Settlement and perhaps 75–100 in the Western. Erik’s Brattahlíð occupied fine land at the head of a fjord, putting some of the best meadows in the hands of the leading household. At its peak around 1200 the colony probably had 2,000–2,500 inhabitants, although older estimates reached 5,000.
The short answer
- Warm summers greened the southern fjords. Hay depended on the summer growing season. Midge remains from Scoop Lake near the Eastern Settlement indicate that summers during the Medieval Climate Anomaly, approximately 900–1400, were about 1.5 °C warmer than in colder centuries before and after. In sheltered fjords grass could grow for the hay cattle needed through winter. Erik could see the grass, even if he could not describe the climatic window in modern terms.
- Iceland was already full and divided. By the 980s Iceland’s best land had been claimed for two or three generations, leaving younger sons and newcomers fewer opportunities. Feuds could also drive people away: Erik was outlawed for killings in Norway and Iceland. Greenland offered grassland and another start. Perhaps several hundred settlers and their animals embarked in 25 ships in 985 or 986; 14 ships arrived.
- A name chosen to attract settlers. A colony needed families willing to make the journey. According to Erik the Red’s Saga, Erik called the land Greenland because an attractive name would encourage people to go, rather as a developer might promote a new town. He kept choice meadows at Brattahlíð for his own farm. The saga’s account was written down more than two centuries later.
- European demand for walrus ivory. European craftspeople valued walrus ivory for religious objects and games, particularly when African elephant ivory was scarce. The tusks Greenlanders obtained at Norðrseta could be exchanged for goods their farms could not produce. Ancient DNA indicates that by the twelfth century Greenland supplied almost all the walrus ivory reaching Europe. Demand abroad gave the colony an income beyond subsistence.
THE TURNING POINT
L’Anse aux Meadows, 1021. Wood cut in 1021 at L’Anse aux Meadows places Norse people in Newfoundland five centuries before Columbus, in a region already inhabited by Indigenous Americans. Their ships and seamanship had brought them to another continent. The base’s short occupation poses a further question: could Greenland’s small community supply a settlement so far away, among people whose response mattered? Making the crossing demonstrated reach; sustaining a settlement required more.
What it changed
A colony locked into hay and ivory. After Vinland, Greenlanders continued to raise cattle and sheep on fjord meadows, eat seals and caribou, and hunt northern walrus for export. This combination worked for about three centuries, but it relied on hay and European demand for ivory. Chapter 5 follows the environmental and economic pressures affecting both after 1250.
Timber trips to Markland continue. The end of the Vinland base did not end voyages to North America. An Icelandic annal records a Greenland ship with 17 or 18 men that had visited Markland and was driven by storms to Iceland in 1347. Markland is generally associated with forested Labrador, a possible source of timber scarce in Greenland. This voyage shows continued contact more than three centuries after the L’Anse aux Meadows timber was cut, though a timber trip was different from a permanent settlement.
Greenland enters the Church and the crown. A bishop took office at Garðar in 1126, and Greenlanders built about fourteen to seventeen churches. In 1261 the colony accepted the Norwegian king’s authority. Connections to Church and crown brought priests, ships and goods, but also made Greenland dependent on decisions in Bergen and Trondheim. Chapter 6 examines those ties.
The full answer, argued
The evidence points more strongly to the resources of the society than to a failure of its ships. Norse crews crossed to Newfoundland, repaired vessels and built accommodation for perhaps 70–90 people at L’Anse aux Meadows. Keeping a distant colony supplied and defended was another undertaking. Greenland may have had only 2,000–2,500 inhabitants, and a long voyage separated it from the base. The sagas describe conflict with Indigenous people who were numerous, organized and fighting on their own ground; Norse weapons gave no decisive advantage. Distance made reinforcement and supply harder, while a larger population might have absorbed losses and long voyages more readily. Historians weigh conflict and logistics differently, and the evidence cannot establish that numbers alone decided the outcome. The ships carried this society farther than its resources could readily sustain a community.
An interesting fact
The Saga of the Greenlanders presents Snorri, born in Vinland around 1010 to Gudrid Thorbjarnardóttir and Thorfinn Karlsefni, as the first child of European parents born in the Americas. His family returned to farm in northern Iceland. The saga says Gudrid was later widowed, traveled on pilgrimage to Rome and became a nun; it counts several Icelandic bishops among her descendants. In the saga tradition her journeys took her through Iceland, Greenland, Vinland, Norway and Rome, making her one of her century’s most widely traveled people.
This is the study layer of Vikings in Greenland and Vinland, chapter 4 of Climate and Innovation: The Norse and the Aztecs, c. 790–1521; the full index of the atlas is here.
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