Life In Greenland

The settlements, such as Brattahlið, thrived for centuries but disappeared some time in the 15th century, perhaps at the onset of the Little Ice Age. Interpretation of ice core and clam shell data suggests that between 800 and 1300 CE the regions around the fjords of southern Greenland experienced a relatively mild climate several degrees Celsius higher than usual in the North Atlantic, with trees and herbaceous plants growing and livestock being farmed. Barley was grown as a crop up to the 70th degree. What is verifiable is that the ice cores indicate Greenland has experienced dramatic temperature shifts many times over the past 100,000 years. Similarly the Norse Book of Settlements records famines during the winters in which "the old and helpless were killed and thrown over cliffs". (Arnold 2010)
These Icelandic settlements vanished during the 14th and 15th centuries, probably as a result of famine and increasing conflicts with the Inuit. The condition of human bones from this period indicates that the Norse population was malnourished, probably because of
- soil erosion resulting from the Norsemen's destruction of natural vegetation in the course of farming, turf-cutting, and wood-cutting,