Ice Blink - 1. Story

It is often taught that Columbus was the first European to discover the new world in 1492, but that is unequivocally wrong.

The first Europeans known to have set foot in North America were the Norse. In the waning days of the eighth century, they launched the first of their overseas raids. In the year 793, Norse Longships descended upon the monastery on the island of Lindisfarne, off the east coast of England. With that raid began the long reign of the ‘Terror of the North’, which was what the Britons called the Norse, a people better known as the Vikings.

The Viking Sagas described the voyages and settlements, but were long dismissed as legend. In retrospect, this was foolhardy of the historians, for they knew without doubt that a Viking colony thrived in Greenland for nearly five hundred years. The route from Greenland to the Labrador coast of North America is but a short journey across the Davis Straits. That distance in its northerly reaches is less than two hundred miles from Greenland to Baffin Island. A direct route from the Eastern Settlement to the Labrador coast is under five hundred miles. Yet, both of these distances are shorter than that from Eastern Settlement to Iceland, and shorter still than the distance from Iceland to Norway, a route that ships plied often in the first centuries of the Greenland colony’s existence. Yet, it was assumed for generations that the Norse could not have crossed the Davis Straits. Historians dismissed the stories in the Sagas as legend and fabrication. However, facts have proven those selfsame historians to be quite wrong.

The Viking Sagas are epic stories, written mainly in Iceland, set down from verbal accounts from the era of the Norse expansion. They are largely historical, and sometimes dealt with Greenland. It was from these sagas that the mention of lands west of Greenland was first seen. One of the people who by some accounts journeyed to Iceland and read the Sagas was a young Christopher Columbus. Many believe that these stories of lands to the west were in large part responsible for his belief that by sailing west from Europe, he would reach Asia. In that hope, based upon that promise, he sailed from Spain in 1492.

When Columbus reached the new world, he believed, at first, that he was in Asia. Did the Viking Sagas thus provide the impetus for Columbus’ voyage? We will likely never know, but the argument that they did is a strong one.

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The history of the discovery of North America by Europeans is thus a story of the Norse. Originating from their ancestral homelands in Scandinavia, especially Norway, the Norse spread out, first in raids seeking plunder, and later in colonizing expeditions.

Their infamous Longships were fast and maneuverable, and were more importantly of shallow draft, perfect for the beach landings that raids required.

The Norse who settled the uninhabited islands of the North Atlantic were not the warrior raiders we so often assume. Their colonizers were instead livestock farmers, and they spread out, planting permanent settlements in the Orkney and Shetland islands, in the Faeroes, and then in Iceland. From there, they pushed on westward, to Greenland, and finally to the land they named Vinland. Today, we call it North America.

Greenland was explored and charted in 982 by Erik the Red. Greenland today is much as it was then; largely barren ice, miles thick in places. However, the south-west coast has much in common with northern Norway; the ice is far inland, and the land is divided by fjords. The costal hills provide some shelter from the sea, and the fjords are often separated only by low, rolling hills. Further inland, mountains separate them from the glacial ice cap that covers most of Greenland. Along these fjords are inland sheltered areas with rich soil, and it was to these that the Vikings came, and there they thrived.

The first settlement expedition to Greenland, consisting of twenty-five ships, was launched from Iceland by Erik the Red. Erik had little choice; he’d been asked to leave Iceland due to the small matter of his having committed an inconvenient murder. It was he who most likely gave Greenland its name, for Erik is said to have thought that an attractive name would lure settlers. He was proven right, but his penchant for choosing misleading names gives Erik the Red a strong claim to the dubious distinction of bearing the title of ‘The first Real Estate Developer’.

First arriving in 985 AD, the colonists, led by Erik the Red, founded the first settlements in the Greenland fjords, centered around a farmstead he named Brattahlid just west of Cape Farewell on the southern tip of Greenland. The fjord itself was named Eriksfjord, and soon its southern reaches, along with neighboring fjords to the south, became the misleadingly named Eastern Settlement, eventually home to over three hundred farms and four thousand Norse. Gardar, the cathedral where the Bishop of Greenland had his seat, was located in the heart of the Eastern Settlement.

The Greenland Norse arrived during the early years of the Global Climate Optimum, when earth’s climate was warmer than it is today. The difference was slight, but enough to make the area viable for an Iron Age pastoral society.

Further north on the west coast, another sheltered area had been discovered. The farming potential was even more marginal, but it was convenient to the hunting grounds around Disko Bay. This became the Western Settlement, home to over a thousand people.

These populations might not seem significant to us today, but at the turn of the first millennium, they were significant indeed. For comparison, consider that the population of London in that era was less than twice that of the two Greenland settlements.

The Norse in Greenland did not live in cities, but on farms. These were communal farms, often holding an entire clan and centered around a longhouse that served as home for, in many cases, dozens of people. Their society was pastoral, centered on grazing goats, sheep, and cows. They supplemented their diets by hunting. The climate dictated a meat-based diet, for the land was only suitable for hay, not grain.

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During the early years of the Greenland Colony, at least one trade ship from Iceland was blown off course, reaching the shores of North America. The reports of a rich and fertile land to the west were of great interest to the Greenland Norse when the ship finally arrived at its destination, and they sent out an exploratory expedition of their own.

They charted the coast, from Baffin Island to Newfoundland, and perhaps even further south. The Sagas claim that they did go further south, but the exact locations were not clearly recorded, and so remain unknown to us. They named the new land ‘Vinland’, due to the grape vines they found growing there. Today, grape vines do not grow as far north as Newfoundland or Maine, but in that era, when the global climate was warmer than today, they may well have done so. Today, you can find wild grape vines as far north as Massachusetts. Perhaps the Norse ventured that far south, or perhaps the vines then were growing further to the north. We do not know, but we do know for certain that the Norse reached Labrador and Newfoundland, and may well have explored further south.

Sometime during these initial explorations of the North American coast, the Norse first encountered Indians. The exact time, place, and circumstance is lost to history, but that meeting is one of the most significant milestones in human history. For tens of thousands of years, humanity had been spreading both east and west. At that unrecorded meeting, the circle was closed; east and west met, and mankind, for the first time in its history, had circled the globe.

Within twenty years of its founding, Norse Greenland could afford to send out expeditions of its own. One was organized under the command of Lief Erikson, Erik the Red’s son. This expedition set sail in the year 999 from the Eastern Settlement, and founded the first European colony in North America, at Las Aux Meadows, in present-day Newfoundland. This site is known to us today, having been rediscovered in 1962 and confirmed for what it is over the ensuing years. It was there, a year later, that the first child of European decent was born in North America. It would be nearly six hundred years before there was another; Virginia Dare, at the Roanoke colony in present day North Carolina.

The Norse colony in Newfoundland was abandoned after ten years due to recurring conflict with the local Indians. The Vikings, unlike later colonists with firearms, had no significant military advantage over the Indians, so they were vulnerable to attack due to lack of numbers.

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The colony Erik the Red founded in Greenland endured, and often thrived, for nearly half a millennium. Then it vanished. This much is known, but the enduring mystery of the lost colony remains. What actually happened to them, and where, if anywhere, did they go?

The mystery of the lost colony of Roanoke Island draws far more attention. The Roanoke colony consisted of one hundred and twenty eight people, and disappeared after a span of three years. The Viking colony in Greenland is estimated to have attained a population in excess of five thousand, and survived for almost five centuries before vanishing.

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There are many mysteries regarding the Greenland Norse. One of the greatest involves fishing. Their Viking brethren in Iceland, Ireland, the Faeroe Islands, and elsewhere, all garnered a significant part of their diet from the sea. The fjords of Greenland, then as now, were teeming with fish, as were many of the local creeks. In other areas of the Viking World, the garbage middens that archeologists have examined contain an abundance of fish bones. In Greenland, not one has ever been found. Spectrographic analysis of Greenland Norse skeletons confirms that, contrary to all logic, the Greenland Norse did not eat fish. The reason for this is yet another of the enduring mysteries of Viking Greenland.

Why did the Greenland colony thrive for so long, only to fail? We cannot know with certitude, but we can discern at least some of the proximate causes. Climate change was likely the strongest cause; by the 1300’s, earth’s climate was cooling, entering an era that would become known as the Little Ice Age. The climate in Greenland, already marginal, became even less conducive to the Norse. This cooling had an impact on the vital trade routes to Labrador, Iceland, and Norway; the sea lanes became clogged with ice and in many years were impassable, especially near the entrances to the Greenland fjords.

It was in some ways the society itself that sowed the first seeds of its own destruction. Within a few generations, trees became scarce. Once the large trees were gone, heavy timbers for roof beams and ship building were scarce; the only remaining sources were driftwood, and lumber imported from neighboring Labrador.

With the loss of navigable seas, the Norse were cut off from their supply of timber in Labrador. The willows and birch of Greenland were unsuitable for shipbuilding, and soon the Greenland Norse were without seagoing ships. That alone did not doom them, but it was a factor.

Many essentials, such as iron, were obtained via trade with Norway. The Greenlander’s chief export was walrus ivory, then in heavy demand for carving in Europe. This trade largely ended during the 1200’s, when the Crusades opened up trade routes to supplies of elephant ivory. With the loss of this trade, the Greenlander’s were left without their major source of iron, their primary workable metal.

Still, the colony continued.

When the Norse first landed in Greenland, it was uninhabited. That had not always been true; they found signs of past inhabitants. However, that population, most likely related to the Dorset peoples of Canada, had died out centuries before. The warming climate proved a mixed blessing for the Norse, as a new wave of immigrants from present-day northern Canada followed past migrations, and a new culture arrived; the Eskimo – also known as the Inuit. They arrived far to the north, and over time spread southwards towards Disko Bay, and the area around it which the Norse called the Nordsetta; the Northern Hunting Grounds. The first meeting between the Eskimos and the Norse occurred around 1170, as the Eskimos continued their southward expansion.

The Eskimos and the Norse did not get along. Open conflict often raged, and the Norse found themselves at an ever-increasing disadvantage. The records are sketchy, but it appears that by the late 1200’s, the Norse had to abandon their yearly hunting expeditions to Disko Bay. Those expeditions had provided most of Greenland’s exportable goods. This included walrus ivory, but also exotic live animals such as polar bears and gyrfalcons. The animals were shipped to Europe, where those that survived the journey became the prized possessions of nobility. With the loss of the northern hunting grounds, the Greenland Norse lost their main source of trade goods.

Losing the Northern Hunting Grounds around Disko Bay hurt the more northerly Western Settlement the most. Sometime in the mid 1300’s, it suddenly vanished. We don’t know why. The only records are overly brief; all that survives is this third-hand account, “In the Western Settlement stands a large church, named Sandness, Church. That church was for a time the cathedral and bishop’s seat. Now the Skraelings have the entire Western Settlement.... All the forgoing was told to us by Ivar Bardarson, Greenlander, who was the superintendent of the bishop’s establishment at Gardar in Greenland for many years, that he had seen all this, and he was one of those that the lawmen had appointed to go to the Western Settlement to fight against the Skraelings, in order to drive the Skraelings out of the Western Settlement. On their arrival they found no men, either Christian or heathen.”

This is all that we have in the written record. Bardarson wrote it in an account called ‘Description of Greenland’ upon returning to his native Norway. The original text is lost; all that remain are perhaps-inaccurate or incomplete copies. We have no idea if there were any signs of fighting, or for that matter what became of the dead. Did they die of starvation due to a bad summer? This seems likely based on the archaeological evidence, but then why did the lawmen ­– high officials – of the Eastern Settlement send an expedition with the intent to fight off the Eskimos?

No bodies from the final days of the Western Settlement have been found. If they died there, it would be expected that some would have been found in the ruins of their farm buildings, or buried nearby. However, so far, no human remains have been found from that timeframe. The other part of the mystery is that valuable items such as tools remained in the ruins, which speaks against an evacuation. What really happened? No one knows.

The Eastern Settlement persisted for over a century more. The last known record that we have is from a ship that arrived in 1406. It was the first in nearly twenty years. It stayed for four years, perhaps prevented from departing by the persistent sea ice that was becoming more and more prevalent. By that time, suffering from the ravages of the Little Ice Age and the Plague, Europe was in decline. Even trade with Iceland fell off to near nothing; in some years, no ships arrived where half a century before there would have been dozens. In the case of Greenland, the isolation was even more severe; the sea ice made the journey difficult, and contact was lost. It would prove to be a very final parting.

From that point on, the written record is silent. The archeological record is little better. The remains of a woman’s dress from a cemetery were carbon-dated to 1435, but the variances with carbon dating are sufficient that this could be off by a decade or more. We do not know when the last of the Greenland Norse vanished. What we do know is that in the Eastern Settlement, the decline was gradual; the northern fjords were abandoned first, with the final signs of the Norse coming from the cemetery at Herjofsnes, at the southernmost extremity of the Eastern Settlement.

One thing that the bones from Herjofsnes tell us is that any starvation was sudden; the corpses lack any sign of protracted malnutrition.

We know most if not all of the reasons for their decline; climate change, resource exhaustion, isolation, and conflict with sometimes-hostile newcomers (the Eskimos). A further cause was the inability or unwillingness to learn from the Eskimos, who were better able to eke out a living from the harsh land.

We also know that in 1607 a Danish expedition set out to make contact with their long-lost cousins in Greenland. Due to the confusion over the settlement’s names, they searched along Greenland’s eastern coast for the Eastern Settlement, finding no sign of the Greenland Norse. Of course, they never found it, for it was located on the south-western coast. It was not until 1721 that the Eskimos showed a Danish Missionary the ruins of the Eastern Settlement, and the Danes finally learned that the Norse Greenlanders were no more.

What we do not know, and may never know, is what happened to the last of the Greenland Norse.

Trapped by the sea ice, possessing at most only a few decaying skiffs, some may have attempted a desperate journey to the west, striking out for the coast of Labrador. Towing their boats by hand over the frozen sea, they may have hoped to encounter a stretch of open water. Perhaps they did, and perhaps they succeeded. There are legends as far west as Minnesota of Norse visitors, though as yet no confirmed archaeological proof.

The Greenland Norse were trapped, and slowly dying out. Did they make a last, desperate bid to escape? We cannot know, we can only speculate....

A bitter wind, born of the arctic gales blowing down from the north, howled around the sod walls of the longhouse at Herjofsnes . Thirty years had passed since the last ship from Europe had sailed in from the ice-choked sea. Thirty long and difficult years, where the last remaining Greenland Norse had fought to eke out a meager existence in the ever-worsening weather. The summer hay crops grew ever less plentiful, and each winter, more Norse starved. The last winter had been the most brutal of all; most of the sheep and goats had been consumed by the starving Norse during the long wait for spring.

Thorvald Jonsson listened to the howling wind, knowing that it was the mournful sound of Death. He knew that even if the coming summer produced a bounty of hay, the few remaining livestock could never feed the remaining people through the coming winter. Even with a bountiful harvest such as had eluded them for decades, they would starve, as so many already had. Donning his fur jacket and leggings, Thorvald pulled aside the heavy skins that sealed the door.

Stepping out into the cold, clear air, bracing himself against the bitter winds, Thorvald looked to the west, down the fjord, towards the distant sea. He glanced at the low clouds scudding across the horizon, and saw the whitish light shining from past the distant hills. Thorvald grunted in dismay; Ice blink; the reflection from fields of ice shining up to light the bases of low clouds. Thorvald knew its cause; the sea ice around the mouths of the fjords, and far out to sea, was solid, an unbroken barrier to ships. It had remained unbroken for twenty years, and he had no reason to believe that would ever change. Staring at the sky, he saw it for what it was, a barrier, to both rescue and flight.

He returned inside, huddling for warmth with his clansmen around the tiny, guttering fire. By unspoken agreement, no one spoke of the future, for they all knew what it held. They could discern no means of escape; all that remained were a few worm-eaten skiffs used on the fjords, incapable of the long voyage to Iceland even if the sea ice cleared.

On the scattered farms of the Eastern Settlement less than five hundred people remained alive, mainly in the southernmost reaches. Of those that remained, most were weak from malnutrition. They were all that was left of the once thriving settlement that had numbered in the thousands.

With the death of Thorvald’s father the previous winter, he had become the chieftain of his dwindling clan. By tradition more than anything else, the other farms looked to the chief of Brattahlid for leadership, but Brattahlid, in the northern part of the Eastern Settlement, had succumbed five years before. Thorveld’s clan had assumed the leadership role, though there was less and less to lead with every passing year. Thorvald wished that he had some way of providing the miracle they were hoping for, but he did not. He stared at the guttering embers, seeing in them the reflection of his people; dying out, dwindling to nothing, struggling for the privilege of being the last to starve.

Thorvald looked at the broadsword that had been in his family for generations. Countless sharpenings had reduced it to a thin and fragile blade, and now he was almost too weak to wield it. If the Skraelings attacked again, he doubted they could be driven off. The thought of the Skraelings burdened his mind for a few minutes; they, along with the frozen wastelands, barred the way north. The ice-bound sea barred the way south and west, and to the east lay only the endless fields of ice. A hundred times, he’d sought some idea, some means by which to save his people, but it eluded him, as it had eluded them all.

Within a month, the snows receded, and the first bladed of grass greened the hills and pastures. The few remaining livestock were carried outside to graze, by men and women almost too weak to move. There were so few, barely enough to get them through the summer. The coming winter, they knew, would be the end of them all.

As spring turned to summer, Thorvald sought the isolation of the seal hunt. The seals often provided food, but few were to be found. Alone, near the mouth of the fjord, Thorvald listened to the growl of the ice as it echoed off the cold hills. His seasoned eye told him that the ice was too thick and fast to break that year. With that fact died the last, forlorn hope; sailing west in the skiffs, on the chance that a few might survive on that hostile shore. The growl of the ice sounded the death knell for even that desperate hope.

Thorvald returned to his farm near Herjofsnes in the late summer, hauling just a few pounds of seal meat. The last of the goats had been eaten earlier in the season, leaving only three sheep. With no chance to survive the winter, they would meet their fate at the fall solstice feast. It had been decided, by silent accord, that there was no point in conserving anything for the winter, for there could never be enough.

Three young men, the only ones who retained the strength to do so, outfitted a skiff, and with rations for less than two weeks they set out, dragging it by hand across the sea ice, striking west for the distant shores of Vinland. Their one hope was to reach a lead of open water, and as Thorvald watched them set out across the ice not long after Summer Solstice, he knew that he could never know their story, or their fate.

A hard man, Thorvald had seen death countless times. It had taken his son, and then his wife. In the depths of winter it had come, stealing away his people one by one. He found himself hoping that it would soon come for him.

At the end, in the winter gloom, Thorvald held out an emaciated arm to add the last few scraggly twigs to the glowing embers of the fire. Around him lay the dead bodies of the penultimate survivors, who had succumbed to starvation over the prior weeks. The other farms had met a similar fate, leaving Thorvald as the last of the Greenland Norse.

Through cracked lips Thorvald muttered a prayer, one remembered from his youth; a requiem for the dead.

Outside, the wind howled, driving a blowing snow, as inside, the last of the fire guttered and died. Summoning the last of his feeble strength, Thorvald struggled from the longhouse, staggering out into the dark and snowy night. He had not troubled himself to don his furs; they were unneeded for his intended purpose. Alone and lightly dressed, Thorvald, the last of his people, walked forth into the cold and snowy arctic night, hearing the distant sound of his dead child’s laughter; a sound which warmed his heart against the embrace of the blizzard, as he sought its proffered final peace.