Erik The Red: The Norse Greenland Civilization

The Norse Greenland civilization began in 986 C.E. and lasted until the early 1500s. It was founded by Erik the Red, who first explored it in 982 C.E. after getting kicked out of Norway and Iceland for manslaughter. He was the person that led to first settlers of Greenland there, where they established three settlements; the largest being the eastern settlement, the second greatest was the western settlement, and the smallest was the middle settlement. The eastern settlement was by far the largest with 500 farms, the western had 95, and the middle had 20. At the peak of the settlements, it is estimated that they had a population of 2,000 to 10,000 people. They used the same farming techniques as their European trade partners, and did almost …show more content…
That means that they were cut off from the rest of Europe, which provided them many of their necessary resources. Their entire civilization was based on trading walrus tusk ivory, so when the walrus tusk ivory market collapsed, it hit the people of Greenland hard. Trade with sub-Saharan Africa opened up and elephant ivory was better quality than walrus', so people wanted that more, and ivory in general was becoming much less possible, so merchants were less willing to make the increasingly dangerous trip to Greenland for a resource that wasn’t really worth it. However the Norse were desperate for the imported resources, iron, iron goods, tar, timber, and grain, all of which the Norse needed to continue as a society was no longer getting there. There is evidence of the Norse continuing to trade with Norway as the climate grew colder, but they lost lots of resources attempting to sail across the sea to trade. One merchant sent out 6 vessels in 6 years, and only 2 ever succeeded to make it from Norway to Greenland. Greenland could no longer get the outside resources that they needed through trading anymore. The Norse were more reliant on their trade with Europe than Europe was reliant on Greenland, so when the treacherous journey was no longer worth it mainland Europe were forced to cease trade with Greenland, which …show more content…
Because of the worsening storms and desperation for seals, a large storm could have easily wiped out a large number of people who were hunting. The Norse could have also much more thoroughly exploited Greenland's natural resources, such as fish or vegetation, but instead burned the vegetation to make room for their fields and almost completely ignoring the fish in the area, which is seen from almost no fish bones in middens. The Norse were running low on resources in the 14th century and weren't changing to take advantage of other natural resources that they had access to. They ate lots of seals but didn't eat nearly as much fish, which was abundant in their waters. They could have easily elongated their civilization by eating more fish and using less of their imported resources so inefficiently, but they were stuck in their old ways. The refusal to adapt was partially due to the leaders in their society not wanting to seem weak and wanted to uphold their position in power. As the situation in Greenland got worse the leaders were also becoming greedy and taking the few resources that the Norse had for themselves, so the common population abandoned their leaders. In the very