Scientists Have Discovered Why Vikings Disappeared

Scientists have for some reason just found out what happened to the vikings.
It was due to a cold snap in greenland at the time.
Please tell me what you think?
news.yahoo.com...

Every interesting article. Now if we could just figure where their gods went. Space or inner Earth?

Sounds reasonable to me, I can't fight their logic on this one. I have always suspected several mini Ice ages had caused a lot of chaos in the past. The Earth has cycles just like the seasons, it is not out of the realm of possibilities.

The Gods never left. Neither did the Vikings. We're still here and so are our Gods. Of course no one wanted to stay in Greenland, the only reason anyone went there in the first place was because that's where Eirik the Red tricked the Christian Norse into settling so the Heathen Norse could have warm luxurious Iceland all to themselves. "Because of some killings," Eirikraugarssaga.

And your opinion, much?


Nice article,

peace

reply to post by Sorayugiman


well greenland was called greenland because it was green and in England they use to grow grapes because they had warmer climent there. I could have told you what happen to those in greenland!

Originally posted by Sorayugiman
Scientists have for some reason just found out what happened to the vikings.
It was due to a cold snap in greenland at the time.
Please tell me what you think?

news.yahoo.com...

Well, the article looks good, the science looks reasonable.

BTW, the Vikings are still here (their descendants are) -- it's just that they settled Greenland after Eric the Red's voyage and then abandoned it, going back home. There is some evidence of conflict with the Inuits (Eskimos) and this was right as the "Medieval Warm Period" ended -- a period of about 400 years when the average temperature in the North Atlantic was around the same as it is today. (en.wikipedia.org...)

So they had a longer growing season and crops that needed several months of warm temperatures to ripen did well.

Then the temperature started falling, the growing season got shorter (according to this) as they headed into the Little Ice Age.

When they found they couldn't grow enough food, they left (according to this.)

So the history and climatology matches.

reply to post by Byrd



Nice thanks for the info, that what I'm talking about.

Star for that

reply to post by Byrd


Thanks for the info man

This had been known for some time.

i]reply to post by Sorayugiman


hmm this is strange, Becase the germanic were the first to travel and they had no cold snap.

The period from the earliest recorded raids in the 790s until the Norman Conquest of England in 1066 is commonly known as the Viking Age of Scandinavian history. Vikings used the Norwegian Sea[10] and Baltic Sea for sea routes to the south. The Normans were descended from Danish and Norwegian Vikings who were given feudal overlordship of areas in northern France — the Duchy of Normandy — in the 10th century.[citation needed] In that respect, descendants of the Vikings continued to have an influence in northern Europe. Likewise, King Harold Godwinson, the last Anglo-Saxon king of England, had Danish ancestors.

[

...not to mention that back in Europe and Norway the plague was decimating big segments of the population, which in turn would have ruined the Greenland trading that was between the colonies in Greenland and Iceland/Norway. The trade route was in particular mainly for polar bear fur, walrus tusks and live white falcons for the royal families of Europe, bringing back necessary foods and commodities to the Greenlanders. Possibly also a trading route to the Vineland colonies for wood and fur. There is a very interesting book that was written by Kåre Prytz - "Westward before Columbus" . It's unfortunately out of print but you may get a copy through your library system. There is much interesting info in that book regarding norse settlements in Greenland and the North American continent that should be investigated further.

In addition to the worsened climate, conflicts with the inuits, great changes to the trading due to the plague, there is also mention of a slave trade from the nortern regions by the Portugese. In particular the Corte Real brothers which claimed Greenland as theirs at the very beginning of the 1500's, calling it Terra Verde. There is also several mentions about their expeditions taking slaves in the far north regions to be used at their properties in Portugal.

Don João Fernandez from the Azores, which in 1500 had to give up his explorer- and govenor rights to Gaspar Corte Real, moved to England. In the winter of 1500-01 he appears in Bristol, UK. In Archivo dos Acores, XIII (1494) he is mentioned as an "Ilavrador" (slavehunter?) that operated at seas with a Bero de Barcellos.
On March the 19.th 1501 king Henry wrote a letter to Richard Warde, Thomas Ashehurst and John Thomas, that together with the portugese John [João] Fernandez, Francis Fernandez and John Gonsalves was given the right to explore and posess for England all islands and land which previousely was unknown for the Christians, in east, west, north and south. This right was granted tor 10 years.
...
Robert Fabians Chronicle tells that in 1502 they brought back three white slaves that was given to the king - probably as house slaves. They seemed very wild and rebellish at arrival, but when the writer saw them again in Westminster Palace two years later there it wasn't possible to discern them from ordinary englishmen.

(Sorry if my english isn't correct but I have translated the text above from my copy (Norwegian) of Kåre Prytz's book. The book I linked above is the english translation, so try get a copy through your library).

...more from the same book

The only greenlandish mention that excists regarding the norse settlements on Greenland's demise is what an eskimo told Niels Egede, the son of "the Apostle of Greenland" Hans Egede in the 1700's. The story is written down and preserved.
The eskimo told that his people had moved south in Greenland and reached the norse settlements. The relationship to the norse wasn't very good - the norse wouldn't have much with the eskimos to do except from trade. The eskimos which not yet had permantnt settlements was a bit afraid, but after a while they managed to reach a common confidence. This didn't last so long, when three pirate ships arrived. There were fights and plundering, but the norse managed to take control of one of the ships while the other two fled away. Next year a whole fleet arrived, plundering and slaying everyone they came across. Some survivors managed to flee in boats, probably to America, but some was left also this autumn. These tragic circumstances got the eskimos and the surviving Greenlanders closer together, and the eskimos promised to help if there would come more pirates. But when the slave ships arrived the next summer, they ran inward into the country together with five white women and some kids. When they later arrived at Austerbygda (Eastern Village) everything was plundered and destroyed.

There is still some more to this story, where the eskimos claimed that it was the same ships that had also plundered and pirated at the american side.

This can be collaborated by Portugese sources that mention that the ships had a main station at Newfoundland where they met after the slavehunt.

The five women and some kids in the midst of Austerbygda, where the eskimo lived, can't be the only survivors:
Ogmund, bishop of Iceland, that went from Bergen, Norway on the 13th of June 1522 with 11 men, was driven to the south point on Greenland during a storm. They saw people on Herjulfsnes, but didn't dare to get on land. They were probably afraid of pirating.

A man called John Greenlanding, because he had driven to Greenland three times on his journies to Iceland (from Norway) have told that he once followed a ship from Hamburg. They entered a silent and deep fjord, with many islands and settlements that still remained there. They avoided also meeting people, but entered a small island with several houses for fishing and a stone house for drying fish - just like what was common in Iceland. They found a man laying face down. On his head he had a nice sewn hood. His clothing was partly of frieze (vadmel) and sealskin. At his side was a bent and much used knife. They brought back the knife as a memory. This story was from the 1530-40.

When the german Gert Mestermacher wisited the Greenlandic coast in 1542, there was no life to be seen there.
A good map which Diogo Homem (the son's son from the Homem expedition in 1473) draw in 1558 has the following inscrition on Greenland: "Desertibusoz Terra Agricule." Homem isn't easy to translate due to his difficult latin, but the thranslation seems to be "the abandoned farmland". Simpler can't the Greenlandic enigma be explained. There wasn't any slaves (for the Portugese landlords) left to get there.

Again sorry for my english translations, but I believe that the ships that raided Greenland for slaves was a big part of the destruction of the norse colonies in Greenland. This happened together with the before mentioned climate changes, conflict with the eskimos (inuits), new trading structures in Norway and Europe due to the plague and other reasons. Slave trade was a legit business in most of Europe at that time.

There is also several instances of slave raids in Iceland and several other European nations by the Turks and North Africans later in history.
Turkish Abductions
Barbary corsairs

In Greenland, the disappearance of the norse settlements were probably many and a long line of unconvenient circumstances.

And in general, what happened to the Vikings elewhere? The christianity and the plague happened. But that's another loooong story...

Alot of them came to our shores, my ancestors thought all their yules had come at once..
Strapping viking blokes...WAYHEYYYY
We got our best frocks on and looked forward to a good hard pillage. The rest as they say is history.



We do still have descendants here, mostly oop North East I think. Which is probably why Geordies can walk around neck deep in snow wearing not much more than a belt and fake tan.

Its a great explanation and i was pleased with their reasons, until they swung it from an ancient civilization's disappearance to modern day global warming.........