Norse settlements in Greenland

When new arable and pastureland in Scandinavia could no longer be developed due to the relatively dense settlement, the only alternative left to those born later was to build up their own property outside the established structures.

This stable distribution of land, several years of bad harvests and a famine provided the setting to look for new settlement areas in the 970s.

Around 900, the seafarer Gunnbjörn Ulfsson was on a voyage from Norway to Iceland and his ship drifted towards a western coast, probably in the area of today's Cape Farvel on the southern tip of Greenland.

[11] The Landnámabók reports that in 982 he sailed west from the Snæfellsnes peninsula with the outlaws Þorbjörn (Thorbjörn), Eyjólfr (Eyjolf) and Styrr (Styr) to find Gunnbjörn's land.

The Grœnlendinga saga did not mention him, but the fact that the wife of Erik the Red Þórhildr (Thorhild, after the baptism Þjóðhildr - Thjodhild) had a small church built some distance from the court makes the very early presence of a priest appear credible.

The Grœnlendinga saga reports that in 1118 the colony sent Einarr Sokkason to Norway to persuade King Sigurðr Jórsalafari (Sigurd the Jerusalem Rider) to assign Greenland its own bishop.

In contrast to the Inuit, who needed immediate access to the open sea as hunters and fishermen, the agricultural Grænlendingar settled in the protected areas at the end of the long fjords.

A practical and artfully executed water supply and drainage system made of covered canals irrigated and drained the houses.

An extensive complex with several interconnecting residential buildings contained an 80-foot-long hall that served as a central living and meeting room.

Garðar Cathedral Ruins, dedicated to Saint Nicholas,[14] of which little more than the foundation walls remain, was 27 m long when completed at the beginning of the 13th century and 16 m wide in the cross choir including the side chapels.

To the south of the church and connected by a tiled path, there was a large building complex with several rooms and a hall measuring 16.75 × 7.75 m as the bishop's residence.

In total, the complex includes around 40 larger and smaller buildings and this alone proves the outstanding position that Gardar held in Greenland's Viking society.

Since church buildings in Iceland and Norway were usually made of wood, this may suggest regular contact between the colony and the British Isles.

From 1991 to 1996, the Danish Polar Center, in collaboration with the University of Alberta, researched the "Gården under sandet or Farm beneath the sand" in the Western Settlement, which dates back to between 1000 and 1400 AD.

The main food fish was Arctic char (Salvelinus alpinus), followed by cod (Gadus morhua) and capelin (Mallotus villosus).

The bird bones found and identified come primarily from ptarmigan (Lagopus muta) and to a lesser extent from mallards (Anas platyrhynchos) and eider ducks (Somateria mollissima).

[17] Earth samples proved that the Vikings used slash-and-burn agriculture to cultivate the area and burned down the birch bushes that originally grew there to create pastures.

There are no known permanent Viking settlements north of the Arctic Circle, but written sources provide evidence of annual hunting expeditions in the summer months.

These ventures served to provide the essential supply of meat as a nutritional supplement, but also to procure walrus ivory, narwhal teeth, seal and polar bear fur, eider down, muskox horns and caribou antlers.

The Greenlandic economy was based primarily on three pillars: livestock farming, hunting and catching animals, which provided food, and trade goods in varying proportions.

Finds of hand mills in some farms in the eastern settlement suggest that grain was also grown to a small extent in favored locations.

The already not very productive smelting of iron ore quickly reached its limits due to the lack of suitable fuel (charcoal), so that the settlements were almost entirely dependent on imports.

The Greenland settlements carried on a trade with Europe in ivory from walrus tusks, as well as exporting rope, sheep, seals, wool and cattle hides (according to one 13th-century account).

Captain Þórsteinn Óláfsson (Thorstein Olafsson) stayed in Greenland for a few years and married Sigríðr Bjarnardóttir (Sigrid Björnsdottir) in the church of Hvalsey in 1408.

[32] In 1585, the English explorer John Davis passed through Greenland in search of the Northwest Passage and came into contact with the Inuit near Godthåb, but found no living Europeans.

From today's perspective, it is likely that there was a combination of various unfavorable factors, the interaction of which destabilized society at the time to such an extent that its survival was no longer assured after the 15th century.

Archaeological excavations by Danish scientists (2013) revealed that the Grænlendingar people had adapted well to the worsening climate by switching to seal fishing.

Walrus teeth and seal skins were hardly in demand anymore; as a result, hardly any merchant ships came to the island with urgently needed timber and iron tools.

The Black Death and rural exodus severely depopulated large parts of Iceland and Norway, so that sufficient better settlement land was available for the emigrants.

When the pastor Hans Egede, who came from the Lofoten Islands, heard about this, he set out to missionize the Christian settlers who, as he thought, had fallen away from the faith.