Lessons from the Past: Climate Change, Adaption and Abandonment in Norse Greenland ca. AD 985 – ca. AD 1450.

The video of this talk is available on the IMEMS YouTube channel.

About the talk 

The disappearance of the Norse community in sub-Arctic Greenland by the mid 15th century AD has long been a source of academic controversy and now a vital case study in understanding the complex relationships between climate and early society adaptations leading to abandonment. First settled ca. AD 985 by walrus hunters from Iceland seeking high value ivory they also claimed land in an unoccupied landscape, establishing the three discrete but connected Eastern, Middle and Western settlements. Organisation of this newly settled landscape focused on individual farms making fodder available for domestic livestock and milk production while integrating caribou hunting and sealing.  

By the mid 1100s these activities had become subsumed into a sharply defined hierarchal social structure. This included large-scale church farms - most notably associated with the cathedral and bishop’s residence at Igaliku – Garðar, giving connection to the medieval European world - and manor farms, with middle-sized farms and small farms becoming more specialized to service the larger farms. From the 1300s, climate began to cool and become more unpredictable with increased summer sea ice that hindered trade and movement. At the same time contact with incoming Inuit communities intensified. Norse settlement responded and adapted to these existential changes by contracting to the inner fjord areas of the Eastern settlement together with a change in subsistence emphasis from domestic livestock production to a marine dominated diet. By ca. AD 1450 the Norse Greenland settlement had been abandoned.  

Early interpretations of the abandonment of Norse Greenland focused simply on a ‘it got cold so they died’ scenario. Recent inter-disciplinary research has however offered much more nuanced analyses emphasizing the detail of climate change and its focused effects on critical aspects the Norse socio-economic system. Furthermore, this work has served to highlight the tensions between subsistence adaptations and path dependency maladaptations. The first element is evident in environmental knowledge of seascapes and marine hunting; the second is found in a commitment to an agricultural system introduced via the Northern Isles, Faroe and Iceland, limiting the effectiveness of other subsistence activities, together with a social system marked by hierarchy and concentration of religious power, limiting innovation. With adaptations and maladaptive practice arguably evident in every societal – environmental system of every scale the recognition management of these tensions becomes a vital policy imperative.  

About the speaker

Ian Simpson is currently Honorary Research Fellow, Department of Archaeology, Durham University and Adjunct Professor, Anthropology, Graduate School, City University New York. Over a 40 year period he has worked on ‘reading the record’ of environmental change and human activity found in the soils and sediments of archaeological sites and landscapes. In doing so he has contributed new understanding of the complex relationships between early societies and environmental change over extended periods of time and in geographical areas that include the Middle East, South Asia and the North Atlantic region.  

References and further reading

• Rowan Jackson, Jette Arneborg, Andrew Dugmore, Ramona Harrison, Steven Hartman, Christian Madsen, Astrid Ogilvie, Ian Simpson, Konrad Smiarowski and Thomas H. McGovern (2022). Success and Failure in the Norse North Atlantic: Origins, Pathway Divergence, Extinction and Survival. In: A. Izdebski, J. Haldon and P. Filipkowski (Eds.). Perspectives on Public Policy in Societal – Environmental Crises. Springer Open Access. 247-272.
• Nelson, M.C., Ingram, S,E., Dugmore, A.J., Streeter, R., Peeples, M.A., McGovern, T.H., Hegmon, M., Arneborg, J., Kintigh, K.W., Brewington, S., Spielmann, K.A., Simpson, I.A., Strawhacker, C., Comeau, L.E.L., Torvinen, A., Madsen, C.K., Hambrecht, G., Smiarowski, K. (2016). Climate challenges, vulnerabilities and food security.  Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) 113, 298-303.
• Golding, K.A., Simpson, I.A., Wilson, C.A., Lowe, E.C., Schofield, J.E. and Edwards, K.J. (2015). Europeanization of sub-Arctic environments: Perspectives from Norse Greenland’s outer fjords.  Human Ecology 43, 61-77.