The answer is not simple, but the main reason is they could no longer farm. How do we know? Hundreds of human and animal bones, recovered from Greenland\u2019s archaeological sites, have been examined through isotopic analyses.\u00a0\u00a0 Okay, what\u2019s an isotopic analysis? There are many things that can be analyzed using isotopes, but, in this case, we\u2019re talking about water and how many atoms of a specific kind of oxygen, 18<\/sup> O, are contained in water. The number of atoms reflects the temperature at which water was formed in the atmosphere. After forming, the water then falls as rain or snow and is eventually drunk by human beings.\u00a0\u00a0 All that means is that the number of 18 <\/sup>O atoms that archaeologists find in human or animal skeletal remains reflects the climate.\u00a0\u00a0 The isotopes tell us that Viking colonists were under siege by the environment in the 14th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n They must have started noticing the climate change around AD 1250. The growing seasons were becoming shorter. Whereas during the Medieval Warm Period (AD 900-1200), the colonists could cut summer grasses and stockpile hay for winter forage for their animals, when the Little Ice Age settled over Greenland the fjord grasses their livestock depended upon for survival were in increasingly short supply. At the end of the grazing season, there was probably little grass left to cut for hay.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n On smaller farms, cattle were at first replaced by sheep and goats. Then they were replaced by pigs. After all, pigs didn\u2019t need hay. They could eat the same things humans did, fish and seafood. But even pigs had disappeared by around 1300.<\/p>\n When they could no longer sustain their livestock, the Vikings started living very much as their Inuit neighbors did; they became hunters and fishers. Were they healthy? Yes.\u00a0\u00a0 Analyses of the skeletal remains tell us they were not starving. Nor were they plagued by diseases, at least not by diseases that leave telltale signs in bones.<\/p>\n Yet, they disappeared, and we know that part of the reason rests in the far-reaching impacts of the Little Ice Age.<\/p>\n You see, the intense cold affected more than just the colonists\u2019 ability to raise livestock. For one thing, trade with the Old World simply ceased. Prior to 1350, there had been regular ship traffic between Norway, Iceland, and Greenland. After 1350, the northern Atlantic became a nightmare of sea ice. No sane mariner would dare risk travel to Greenland, especially when things at home were growing desperate. At this time, for example, there was a 60% decrease in the population of Norway, and a 30% decrease in Iceland. These dramatic decreases began before the spreading epidemics reached northern Europe. Famines, caused by crop failures, were rampaging across Europe. Who in their right mind would risk a sea voyage to Greenland to trade for luxury goods like walrus tusks and seal skins\u2014the island\u2019s primary trade goods\u2014when the only thing people at home wanted was food?<\/p>\n A very illuminating archaeological discovery was made in 2010 at a Norse farm on Igaliku Fjord. (The Journal of the North Atlantic, <\/em>Special Vol. III, 2012). Archaeologists from the University of Copenhagan and the University of Aarhus, in Denmark, excavated a cemetery from the late period of Viking colonization and found almost no young women. Women of child-bearing age had all but vanished. If they had starved, died from illness, or been killed in warfare, they\u2019d probably be in the cemeteries. So\u2026where did they go?<\/p>\n Theories abound.\u00a0\u00a0 For example, the young women might have returned to their ancestral Scandinavian homelands. In fact, one of the last written references from the colonies is a church document that records the wedding between Thorstein Olafsson and Sigrid Bjornsdottir on September 14, 1408, at Hvalsey Fjord. She was a Greenland native, but he was from Iceland. Did he marry her and take her home? Maybe. But that still doesn\u2019t explain the Igaliku Fjord cemetery mystery.\u00a0\u00a0 Why would the Greelanders marry off all their daughters to foreigners? Clearly a colony without young women is doomed to extinction. The Norse knew that. Did they realize their extinction was at hand and were saving their young women? Doubtful. If they knew they were doomed and they could get away, wouldn\u2019t they all have left?<\/p>\n Our favorite theory is that Gisli Oddsson was correct, they joined the \u201cfolk of America,\u201d probably the Inuit. But if so, archaeologists have not yet found the genetic evidence to prove it.\u00a0\u00a0 For the moment, however, let\u2019s grant that at least some of them did join the Inuit.\u00a0\u00a0 Assimilation is messy business. How was that accomplished? The young Norse women may have joined the native peoples because they wished to, or in exchange for food or peace, or because they were taken as slaves.\u00a0\u00a0 Taking slaves was a common practice among both the Inuit and the Norse. For example, one Icelandic chronicle states that in 1379 the Inuit attacked the Norsemen, killed 18, and took two men as slaves (Lewis-Simpson, 2000, p. 117).\u00a0\u00a0 So, it\u2019s possible that the young women either intermarried with, or were taken as slaves by, the native peoples.\u00a0\u00a0 Either possibility makes more sense, to us, than shipping them all back to Europe.<\/p>\n The mystery of the missing young women in the cemetery on Igaliku Fjord will stimulate many years of speculation and excavation and, one of these days, archaeologists will<\/em> discover what happened to them.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Let us hope it\u2019s soon.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u00a0 READ MORE ABOUT IT!<\/p>\n PEOPLE OF THE SONGTRAIL<\/p>\n http:\/\/www.chapters.indigo.ca\/en-ca\/books\/<\/a><\/p>\n http:\/\/www.barnesandnoble.com\/w\/people-of-the-songtrail-kathleen-oneal-gear\/1120327521?ean=9780765337252<\/a>\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"PEOPLE](\"http:\/\/www.gear-gear.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/04\/PEOPLE-OF-THE-SONGTRAIL-cover.jpg\")
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