[Sca-cooks] Greenland/Iceland

[Mark S. Harris]

Nanna said:
>>How many generations before they called it quits- two? three? Maybe four?
>
> More like fifteen or so. Greenland was settled from Iceland around AD 985;
> contact was last made with the settlements there in the early 15th century,

Thank you for the correction.


> IIRC. A century later, they had probably disappeared completely. And they
> didn't call it quits, they stayed to the end, probably because they had
> nowhere to go and no means to go anywhere.

Had they lost the skills to build the boats that brought them to Greenland?
Or had they cut down all the large trees needed? I don't remember the Greenland
forests being cleared like those on Iceland. More on this later.


>> Yes, the smaller population on Greenland would
>> have increased the problems compared to Iceland as well as problems
>> with the land suitable for agriculture being much less.
>
> Yes and no. The summers in Southern Greenland are actually warmer than the
> Icelandic summers but the winters are colder. And there were more animals to
> hunt.

I was thinking mainly of the comparative size of the two islands and
their topology. Iceland looks icy from the sea yet has a fair amount
of green space, even farmable space away from the sea, right? Whereas
Greenland is the opposite. Green looking from the sea, but an inner
area that is mostly ice and rock.

Maps of the northern areas are often distorted, but I thought Greenland

was north of Iceland. Or does this have more to do with the ocean currents
than the absolute latitude?


>> > The genetic pool on Iceland was influenced by mainland Scandanavia (at
>> > least if we are to trust the sagas, and I do) and some by northern
>> > Scotland.
>>
>> Do you mean after the initial settlement? Nanna, how much interaction
>> was there between Iceland and Scandanavia? Or was this something that
>> perhaps dropped off with time as the climate worsened or political
>> changes occurred?
>
> With the genetic pool, it is probably best to trust genetic research. Which
> has recently revealed that the sagas are more or less correct. The great
> majority of the male settlers did come from Scandinavia, probably mostly
> from Norway. Well over half of the women came from the British Isles, which
> is rather more than people had thought earlier.

Oh! Interesting. Do we know whether these women came to Iceland voluntarily
or not? Was Iceland a stopping off point from raids into the British Isles?
Or perhaps these women came from the British Isles to Iceland by way of
the Shetlands and Faroes? and the other islands between the two?

Now, there is a storyline for all those SCAers that like complicated,
unlikely persona stories. :-) Only this one might have some basis.


> There was some interaction, of course, but I doubt it had much effect on the
> genetic pool after the initial settlement period. Keep in mind that Iceland
> was considered fully settled in around 930 so there would have been little
> room for newcomers (there were no towns or villages for them to settle in
> either);

It sure was settled fast.

> that the journey to Iceland was difficult and could take months or
> years - medieval sources often mention that in a particular year, no ship
> could make the journey to Iceland so there were no imported goods to be had.
>
>> > But Greenland is another story entirely, given the length and
>> > difficulty of the journey.
>
> Maybe not another story entirely - more like a particularily difficult
> chapter of the same story. Ships did sail to Greenland from Scandinavia and
> from mainland Europe. Up until the 13th century (I think, don't have a book
> at hand to look up dates) the Greenland trade was very lucrative - furs,
> walrus teeth, etc., and merchants went there on a regular basis. Then the
> trade dropped off - I can't remember why at the moment - and merchants lost
> their interest in Greenland. So did everybody else, except maybe Icelanders,
> who did consider the Greenlanders as their cousins. But by then we had no
> ships left to risk on such a dangerous journey and any contact with the
> settlements in Greenland after the mid-14th century or so was mostly
> accidental.


Again, what happened to the ships? or at least the ship building

skills? Was Iceland not doing much fishing at this time, such that
seamanship and shipbuilding would be kept up? Or was it being done
much more on a small-scale coastal only arrangement?


It sort of sounds like Greenland and Iceland were the typical
colonial arrangements with the technological skills staying back
in the homeland. But was there really enough contact for this to
really be an appropriate model?

Thank you Nanna for all the neat details and information. Quite
interesting.
--
THLord Stefan li Rous    Barony of Bryn Gwlad    Kingdom of Ansteorra
    Mark S. Harris            Austin, Texas          stefan at texas.net
**** See Stefan's Florilegium files at:  http://www.florilegium.org ****