Re: Ancient Greenland mystery has a simple answer, it seems:Thingsgot colder and they left.


"Tom McDonald" <kiltmac@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> skrev i meddelandet
news:qGM3j.160$vS5.138@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Inger E wrote:
"Matt Giwer" <jull43@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> skrev i meddelandet
news:474f801d$0$4970$4c368faf@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Jack Linthicum wrote:
"During the same time period, a lot of Norse settlements in Iceland
and northern Norway were being abandoned, but nobody writes big books
about that," Niels Lynnerup, a forensic anthropologist at the
University of Copenhagen in Denmark who studies the Norse says. "I'm
not sure that the Norse saw Greenland as being very different from the
fjords they came from in Norway, and leaving it was no more stressful
than abandoning a hamlet in Norway." His theory: In the 1300s and
1400s, Greenland's youths voted with their feet, leaving until the
colony could no longer support itself. The last few left.
...
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/1128/p13s01-stgn.html
I read that too. And my first thought was HUH!?!!? All my 62 years that
is
the
only reason I ever heard. I was not paying attention when it became a
mystery.
The reason was always because the climate got colder. I am shocked I
missed not
knowing that the reason has been known at least all my life.

Science writer syndrome strikes again.

First of all the notes re. Northern Norway might be a bit too hasty.
That
said Greenland wasn't abondoned due to the climate, nor did the young
ones
move to Iceland, Ireland, England or Scandinavia. Most of them moved to
NA
especially to places where they could hunt whales. What's incredible is
that
so many scholars missed that the Norse in Greenland were better skilled
hunting whales than the Inuits and that this can be proven from for
example
artifacts found by the Pfaff-voyage studies.
(A copy of that can be found here in Gothenburg but not in the expected
archives... Good photos and ref to where the artifact is to be found)

What do the 'Pfaff-voyage studies' say, specifically relevant to
the issue of the relative skills of Inuit vs. Greenlander
Europeans? Be very, very specific.

When archaeologists and alike been on a place doing research and have photos
of dated artifacts they found,
and those photos and datings show that the Inuits weren't the only ones to
hunt whales, then that's significant. Isn't it?

Apart from that. If the Inuits had been the ones who gave, sold or elsewhat
even half of the whale's parts that the Norse distributed over Europe, there
had to have been several hundreds Inuits employed by the Norse. The whales
and the walrus products didn't 'fall' on Norwegian and Orkney ships from the
heaven!

Inger E


.

Relevant Pages