In my distant youth, I had heard (from a teacher no less) that Erik the Red called Greenland “green” to trick settlers into coming over, one of the grandest bait-and-switches in history. I still hear that from time to time, although amazingly, the subject of Viking colonization in the New World rarely comes up in casual conversation.
Some years ago I read an article that asserted than back during the time of Viking settlement, Greenland WAS green…sort of. It was at least mild enough for the settlers to grow crops and sustain themselves for generations. That all changed, the article says, when the “Little Ice Age” set in. The article went on to site evidence of incresingly shallow graves (due to rising permafrost), refuse pits going form crop leftovers to cattle to dogs and such, and ice bergs preventing safe travel to the colony. Starvation, hostile natives, or disease probably finished them off.
So what gives? Was Greenland more mild when the Vikings got there than it is now and it’s my burnout teacher who was deluded, or is the article FOS?
Believe it or not they may both be correct. The idea that Erik named the region as a gimmick is widespread and while I’m not certain if it is apocryphal or not, it certainly isn’t beyond the realm of possibility. Greenland was warmer and more habitable at that point, but not vastly so.
What you had in the Middle Ages was what was known as the Medieval Warm Period, where tempertures were elevated by a couple of degrees ( on average ). This wasn’t such a big deal elsewhere, but in very marginal Greenland apparently it was enough to make a difference. This series of articles goes into some depth on this discussion:
Yes, parts of Iceland were green. About 85% of the island is covered by glaciers, which still leaves 15% of 840,000 sq. mi. as ice-free at least part of the year. The ice-free area is thus more than three times larger than the entire island of Iceland where almost all the Norse settlers came from. Of course not all this ice-free area was suitable to the agricultural lifestyle of the early Norse, but a considerable amount of it was. Eirik of course took the best land for himself, but that left an awful lot of prime pasturage available free for the taking in Greenland at a time when Iceland was fully settled and decent land there was expensive.
The climate of Greenland when it was settled by the norse is similar to what it is today, but quite a bit warmer than it was in the intervening centuries.
