[Sca-cooks] Re: Greenland/Iceland

[Ciorstan]

Sorry I am late in the conversation-- I get the digest at home and I've
been at work all day.

Stefan writes:

> 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?

Stefan, they stopped coming to Greenland most likely due to the severe
weather. Greenland and Iceland did not have the timber to build boats--
Iceland's native woods were not suitable and Greenland just didn't have
any wood at all.

> 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?


When I originally laid my hands on NESAT V, which is the journal of the
North European Symposium on Archaeological Textiles, I was very
interested in the article outlining the discovery of the warp weighted
loom that was found in the western settlement of Greenland. In 1990, two
Inuit hunters had found a piece of wood floating in a river-- and
knowing that wood is not native to Greenland, they brought it to the
museum in Nuuk and turning it in to the museum sparked the search for
the find later named the Farm Under the Sand. The article discussed in
some length the assertion there is and has been no native wood in
Greenland. The piece of wood they found in the river was one of the
beams of a warp weighted loom, later excavated and found to have fallen,
abandoned, with cloth and weights still on it. The farm's middens have
been examined at length and evidence suggests that the last residents of
the farm ate every source of protein they could find as even the dog's
bones were split for marrow.

The saga talking about the expedition to Vinland says that the reasons
for exploration were economic. Iceland and Greenland needed timber, as
did Norway-- and Vinland was indeed a lucrative source of timber though
impractical due to sheer distance.

At any rate, the theory amongst these scientists is that the Greenland
settlements starved to death, forgotten and marooned in a cooling
climate they did not understand or adapt to due to cultural
restrictions.

I wrote this in response to a different issue, though related, to the
Rialto a while back (1998). You might find it of interest:

A near-complete warp-weighted loom was discovered in the ruins of a
farm on the western side of Greenland-- that farm is numbered 555 by the
Greenland National Museum in Nuuk. That seems to imply, to me, at least,
that there were likely far more people in the western settlement alone
that could have been waiting for a rescue expedition from Iceland that
never came. The warp weighted loom in the "Garden under Sandet" (Farm
under Sand) apparently fell with cloth and weights still dressed to the
loom-- and given the amount of sheer work invested in spinning and
weaving wool by hand, I don't believe a weaver in her right mind would
have walked away from that loom with 2/2 twill still on it.

Greenland never had any native wood. It still doesn't. Think about the
implications of that... In fact the very reason this particular farm was
found was due to two pieces of warp-weighted loom wood washing out to
sea down a small river found by a pair of caribou hunters. They knew the
scarcity of wood and brought the wood to the museum, who investigated
the find further the following two summers.

"Clustered around the complete loom beam were found the bulk of 81 loom
weights of soapstone that were gathered in the room.  Some of the
weights still fitted with the woolen threads by which they had been tied
to the warp. A small wooden stick (25 cm long) also found close to the
loom beam was tentatively identified as a pin beater (Mus.no.1950 x
283). 8 spindle whorls of soapstone scattered around show that besides
weaving also spinning took place in room 1. So far, the area here hasn't
been excavated methodically, for which reason it's too early to place
the find in room 1 or in room 3."

And from further on in the article:

"On the basis of the written accounts landam in the Norse Western
Settlement took place c. 1000 AD. When the Norwegian clergyman Iva
Bardsson visited the Western Settlement around 1360 AD he afterwards
reported that he didn't meet any people there, and in the history of the
Greenlandic Norsement the time of Bardsson's visit has been generally
accepted as the dating of the final depopulation of the Western
Settlement.

"However, radiocarbon datings from "Garden under Sandet" suggest that
maybe this date need a slight correction. A peat layer thought to have
been formed shortly after room 2 came out of use (Malmros 1982) is dated
1485 AD Cal. (1485 - 1625 AD Cal. +-1 stand.dev.)(K-5821; Calibrated
Suiver and Pearson, 1986). And local Saliz from room 1 is dated 1430 AD
Cal. 1410 - 1445 AD Cal. +-1 stand.dev.)(K-5907; Calibrated Suiver and
Pearson, 1986).

"Archaeologically dated artifacts and radiocarbon datings assign the use
of room 1 at "Garden under Sandet" to the period after c. 1200 - 1250 AD
(Adreasen & Arneborg 1992b).  On basis of the above mentioned the finds
from room 1 are therefore dated c. 1200-1250 AD to 1360-1400 AD.  The
finds from room 3 are very likely from the same period."

Jette Arneborg and Else Ostergard, "Notes on Archaeological finds of
textiles and textile equipment from the Norse Western Settlement in
Greenland (a preliminary report)", Achaeologische Textilfunde -
Archaological Textiles , proceedings from the Textilsymposium
Neumuenster 4. - 7.5.1993 (NESAT V).

The English of the quoted text is perhaps a little odd as the writers of
the article don't speak or write it as their first.

ciorstan