Re: Jared Diamond's new book

From: Erik Hammerstad (egeha.is.all.you.need_at_start.no)
Date: 02/26/05 

Date: Sat, 26 Feb 2005 01:15:19 +0100

Tron wrote:

> "Erik Hammerstad" <egeha.is.all.you.need@start.no> skrev i melding
> news:3878nvF5keingU1@individual.net...
>
>>Tron wrote:
>
>
>>The birch trees could probably have been used to carry the sod roofs on
>>the presumably quite small houses the Norse build first (which had sod
>>walls).
>
>
> OK
>
> >But with driftwood freely available, that
>
>>could just as well have been the building material together with sod.
>
>
> OK, but "freely available" sounds a bit suspicious, at least to a
> non-specialist like me.

John Davis (in the 16th century) reported being amazed over the
appreciable amount of driftwood found on the coast outside the
Godthåbsfjord, and also over the large quantities of wooden tools
and weapons that the native population had (they traded them
freely for trinkets).
>
> While both birch and drift wood could have been used for most
>
>>applications requiring wood,
>
>
> Birch is harder to work, since it is not as "fibered" as spruce or pine.
> Also, birch wood has a certain "sandy graininess" that dulls tools very
> quickly; hence it is not a very good wood to work with.
> Driftwood would be larch from Siberia from the east, then west Greenland
> Current ...?
> Again, it is probably not the prime logs that keel over into Siberian
> rivvrs, and a year or two in seawater may not make the wood better.

To not sink most of the route the logs would have to have been
carried in or on ice. But that would still probably have made the
wood unsuitable for use in ship building.

> I write this because the Norse, technology-wise, were rather wood-oriented.
> Houses, furniture, utensils, ships, carts, sleds, horse gear ... a lot of
> wooden parts.
>
Yes, and quite a lot of worked driftwood has been found by the
archaeologists in the Norse ruins.

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