Isolation Forced Viking Departure

Ruins of the Viking church in Qaqortoq, Greenland

Archaeologists now suspect the economic and identity issues ~ not starvation and disease ~ caused Vikings to abandon Greenland in the 15^th century, something that has puzzled researchers for centuries. According to Spiegel Online:

Until now, many experts had assumed that the cooling of the climate and the resulting crop failures and famines had ushered in the end of the Scandinavian colony. But now a Danish-Canadian team of scientists believes that it can refute this theory of decline. 

The scientists suspect that a combination of causes made life there unbearable for the Scandinavian immigrants. For instance, there was hardly any demand anymore for walrus tusks and seal skins, the colony's most important export items. What's more, by the mid-14th century, regular ship traffic with Norway and Iceland had ceased. 

As a result, Greenland's residents were increasingly isolated from their mother countries. Although they urgently needed building lumber and iron tools, they could now only get their hands on them sporadically. 

"It became more and more difficult for the Greenlanders to attract merchants from Europe to the island," speculates Jette Arneborg, an archeologist at the National Museum of Denmark, in Copenhagen. "But, without trade, they couldn't survive in the long run."

Speculation is that the settlers probably also worried about loss of their Scandinavian identity. They saw themselves as farmers and ranchers rather than fishermen and hunters, with their social status based on the land and livestock they owned.

Click here for the article.

Vikings Valued Personal Cleanliness

Historians have studied the 11th century Bayeux Tapestry for details.

Vikings are often thought to be filthy, roughhewn warriors, but the contrary seems to be closer to the truth ~ some were borderline fastidious. 

“Several archaeological finds have revealed tweezers, combs, nail cleaners, ear cleaners and toothpicks from the Viking Age," says Louise Kæmpe Henriksen, a curator at the Viking Ship Museum in Roskilde.

According to ScienceNordic.com:

The finds suggest that cleanliness meant a lot to the Vikings. Written sources from medieval England also back up this view. In his chronicle from 1220 – a couple of centuries after the Vikings had ravaged England – John of Wallingford described the Vikings as well-groomed heartbreakers: 

”They had also conquered, or planned to conquer, all the country’s best cities and caused many hardships for the country’s original citizens, for they were – according to their country’s customs – in the habit of combing their hair every day, to bathe every Saturday, to change their clothes frequently and to draw attention to themselves by means of many such frivolous whims. In this way, they sieged the married women’s virtue and persuaded the daughters of even noble men to become their mistresses,” wrote Wallingford.

Cleanliness was one of five discussions ScienceNordic.com has presented to refute the top five popular myths regarding Vikings. Others include that Vikings wore horned helmets, looked like we do today, wore clothing admired throughout the world, and were scarred by battle wounds.

Click here for the complete article.

Onset of Cold Likely Drove Vikings from Greenland

Ruins of a Norse church in Greenland.

New research shows that a “Little Ice Age” likely prompted Norse Vikings to vacate their settlements in Greenland ~ which they had established around 980 AD ~ around the year 1100.

Researchers have recreated the climate during a span of 5,600 years, through the mid-1300s, using data from lakes near the Norse settlement in western Greenland. Cooling started around the year 1100, dropping 7 degrees Fahrenheit in 80 years. The change could have shortened the crop growing season and increased sea-ice levels enough to impede sea travel.

"This is the first quantitative temperature record from the area they were living in,” study researcher William D'Andrea, now at the University of Massachusetts–Amherst, said in a statement. “So we can say there is a definite cooling trend in the region right before the Norse disappear.” 

“Suddenly, year after year, you go into this cooling trend, and the summers are getting shorter and colder and you can't make as much hay. You can imagine how that particular lifestyle may not be able to make it,” D'Andrea said.

Disappearance of the Norse from Greenland could also be due to other factors, including their dependence on trade, combative relationships with their neighbors and sedentary lifestyle, the researchers said.

Click here for the complete article.

Nordic Petroglyphs Present Burial Mystery

Footprint petroglyphs found beneath tomb.

During a recent, routine excavation of a Norwegian burial mound, archaeologists unexpectedly unearthed a group of Bronze Age petroglyphs. "We believe these are very special in a Norwegian context," says project manager Anne Haug of the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

First found were the remains of two cremations, a burnt layer that contained fragments of bone. Underneath, archaeologists found petroglyphs, including eight drawings showing the soles of feet, with cross hatching and five shallow depressions. Two boat drawings and several other drawings of feet soles with toes were also found just south of the burial mound.

“This is a special discovery, and we are not aware of similar findings from Trøndelag County,” Haug says. “The tomb might have been deliberately constructed over the petroglyphs as part of funeral ritual.  Based on the type of petroglyphs and especially the drawings of the foot soles, we have dated the artwork to the Bronze Age, about 1800 to 500 BCE.” 

“Why there are foot sole drawings beneath the tomb is a puzzle. But if we interpret the find in terms of a fertility cult, it may be that the soles represent God and life-giving power. That means that you can have both life and death represented in one place,” she says.

Haug says that there was a similar discovery in Østlandet, an area called Jong in Bærum, where petroglyphs illustrating foot soles were found under a tomb that dated back to the Bronze Age.

Click here for the article.

Did Vikings Navigate with Polarized Sunlight?

Viking navigators may have employed a sølarsteinn, or “sunstone,” capable of tracking polarized light to help them establish sailing directions even when the sun was hidden from view.

Early mention of such a practice is in the Icelandic sage of Sigurd and is now being researched to determine if polarized light did play a role in the wide-ranging journeys of Viking explorers. According to Nature News:

The saga describes how, during cloudy, snowy weather, King Olaf consulted Sigurd on the location of the Sun. To check Sigurd's answer, Olaf “grabbed a sunstone, looked at the sky and saw from where the light came, from which he guessed the position of the invisible Sun.” In 1967, Thorkild Ramskou, a Danish archaeologist, suggested that this stone could have been a polarizing crystal such as Icelandic spar, a transparent form of calcite, which is common in Scandinavia.

Scattering by air molecules in the atmosphere causes sunlight to become polarized, with the line of polarization tangential to circles centered on the Sun. So Ramskou argued that by holding a crystal such as calcite up to the sky and rotating it to check the direction of polarization of the light passing through it, the Vikings could have deduced the position of the Sun, even when it was hidden behind clouds or fog, or was just beneath the horizon.

Researchers now are updating studies done in 2005 on the potential use of a sunstone and polarized light.

Click here for the article.

Irish Monks in Iceland Even Before Vikings?

Cross carved inside Icelandic cave similar to Scottish ones.

New archaeological discoveries show that Iceland was inhabited around 800 AD, nearly 70 years before the usual dating of its Viking settlement. Researchers believe these early inhabitants may have come from Irish monastic communities found throughout the Scottish islands at that time and described in Viking-Age and medieval texts.

“Questions surrounding Iceland’s first settlement in the early medieval period have been of longstanding interest for scholars,” says Professor Kristjan Ahronson of Prifysgol Bangor University in Wales. He led the team that made the discoveries.

As an example of the longstanding interest in this topic, Ahronson pointed to the University of Toronto’s Sir Daniel Wilson, who argued in 1851 that “when Norseman first visited Iceland in the latter half of the 9th century, it was uninhabited, but they discovered traces of the former presence of Irish monks.”

One discovery was made at Kverkarhellir cave, on the land of Seljaland farm in southern Iceland. Nearly 200 of these artificial caves have been found on the island. “Tool marks on the cave walls vividly illustrate the artificial nature of these sites,” said Professor Ahronson.

Click here for the complete article.

Triskaidekaphobia Has Several Ancient Sources

Norse god Loki from 17th century Icelandic manuscript.

For sufferers of triskaidekaphobia ~ dread of the numeral 13 ~ last Friday was the 2010’s most unlucky day. But it was the only Friday the 13^th for the entire year, while 2009 had nine of them, the highest number of Friday the 13ths possible on the Gregorian calendar.

National Geographic News explores the topic in an article quoting from the book Holiday Folklore, Phobias and Fun by folklore historian Donald Dossey. In his book, Dossey explores both the origins of the unlucky sentiments regarding the number 13 and of Fridays.

According to National Geographic News:

Dossey traces the fear of the number 13 ~ aka, triskaidekaphobia ~ to a Norse myth about 12 gods having a dinner party at Valhalla, Norse mythology's heaven. In walked the uninvited 13th guest, the mischievous god Loki. Once there, Loki arranged for Hoder, the blind god of darkness, to shoot Balder the Beautiful, the god of joy and gladness, with a mistletoe-tipped arrow. "Balder died, and the whole Earth got dark. The whole Earth mourned. It was a bad, unlucky day," Dossey said.

There is also a biblical reference to the unlucky number 13. Judas, the apostle said to have betrayed Jesus, was the 13th guest to the Last Supper.

As for Friday, it's well known among Christians as the day Jesus was crucified. Some biblical scholars believe Eve tempted Adam with the forbidden fruit on Friday. Perhaps most significant is a belief that Abel was slain by his brother Cain on Friday the 13th.

Meanwhile, in ancient Rome, witches reportedly gathered in groups of 12. The 13th was believed to be the devil.

Some people are so paralyzed by Friday the 13th superstitions that they refuse to fly, buy a house, or act on a hot stock tip, the article states. "It's been estimated that $800 or $900 million is lost in business on this day because people will not fly or do business they would normally do," said Dossey.

Click here for the complete National Geographic article.

Greenland's Vikings Mostly Celtic, Not Norse

Presumed Viking ruins in southern Greenland.

Analysis of DNA from a Viking gravesite near a 1,000-year-old church in Greenland reveals that those buried there had strong Celtic bloodlines, probably originating from the British Isles.

Danish archaeologists are currently conducting the first regional study of southern Greenland’s original settlers, whose colonies date back to the year 985. The skeletons disinterred outside the old church also date back to just a few years after that period.

“Initial results somewhat surprisingly suggest that the people in the graves were more Celtic than Nordic,” says Jette Arneborg, curator and senior scientist at the National Museum. “We’ve always known that Norsemen travelled a lot and we also know that the early inhabitants of the Faroe Islands and Iceland had traces of Celtic genes. But now we also have evidence of this in Greenland as well.”

Although the DNA analysis reveals the inhabitants had Celtic blood in their veins, Arneborg said there was no question that the settlers were Nordic. “Everything these people did ~ their culture, means of nourishment and so on ~ was clearly Scandinavian,” she said.

Click here for complete article.

Beheaded Vikings Buried in English Pit

The burial pit with the remains of 51 warriors, presumably Vikings.

Archaeologists are pondering the discovery of 51 beheaded warriors in a burial pit in southern England, dating back at least 1,000 years. The slain men’s heads were found stacked neatly on one side of the pit.

The dead are thought to have been war captives, possibly Vikings, whose heads were hacked off with swords or axes, according to excavation leader David Score of Oxford Archaeology, an archaeological-services company.

Many of the skeletons have deep cut marks to the skull and jaw as well as the neck. "The majority seem to have taken multiple blows," Score said.

Unusually, no trace of clothing has been found, indicating the men were buried naked. Even if their weapons and valuables had been taken "we should have found bone buttons and things like that, but to date we've got absolutely nothing," Score said.

"They look like a healthy, robust, very strong, very masculine group of young males," he added. "It's your classic sort of warrior."

Click here for the complete National Geographic article.

Old Vinland Map Deemed Authentic

The earliest map to show part of America before Columbus landed here is genuine, according to a Danish expert.

The 15th century Vinland Map has been controversial since it came to light in the 1950s. Some scholars figured it was a hoax meant to prove that Vikings were the first Europeans to land in North America ~ a claim later confirmed by a 1960 archaeological find. But doubts about the map lingered even after carbon dating established the age of an object.

"All the tests that we have done over the past five years ~ on the materials and other aspects ~ do not show any signs of forgery," Rene Larsen, rector of the School of Conservation under the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts, told Reuters this past Friday.

The map shows both Greenland and a western Atlantic island "Vinilanda Insula," the Vinland of the Icelandic sagas, now linked by scholars to Newfoundland where Norsemen under Leif Eriksson settled around 1000 AD.

Larsen said his team carried out studies of the ink, writing, wormholes and parchment of the map, which is housed at Yale University in the United States.

Wormholes, caused by wood beetles, were consistent with wormholes in the books with which the map was bound.

Larsen said claims the ink was too recent because it contained a substance called anatase titanium dioxide could be rejected because medieval maps have been found with the same substance, which probably came from sand used to dry wet ink.

American scholars have carbon dated the map to about 1440, about 50 years before Columbus "discovered" the New World in 1492. Scholars believe it was produced for a 1440 church council at Basel, Switzerland.

The Vinland Map is not a "Viking map" and does not alter the historical understanding of who first sailed to North America. But if it is genuine, it shows that the New World was known not only to Norsemen but also to other Europeans at least half a century before Columbus's voyage.

Click here for the complete Reuters article.

Second Viking Site Found in Canada

The site on Baffin Island where the Viking dwelling has been unearthed.

Remnants of a stone-and-sod wall unearthed on Canada’s Baffin Island may be traces of a shelter built more than 700 years ago by Norse seafarers. If so, it would be just the second location in the New World with evidence of a Viking-built structure.

Northern Newfoundland's L'Anse aux Meadows ~ about 900 miles southeast of the Nanook dig ~ is the only confirmed location of a Viking settlement in North America. There, about 1,000 years ago, a party of Norse voyagers from Greenland built sod-and-wood dwellings before abandoning their colony under threat from hostile natives.

However, over the past 10 years, research teams led by the Canadian Museum of Civilization's chief of Arctic archeology, Pat Sutherland, have compiled evidence that strongly suggests the Norse presence in northern Canada didn't end with the retreat from Newfoundland.

At three sites on Baffin Island, which the Norse called "Helluland" or "land of stone slabs," and another in northern Labrador, researchers have documented dozens of suspected Norse artifacts such as Scandinavian-style spun yarn, distinctively notched and decorated wood objects and whetstones for sharpening knives and axes. Among the new artifacts found near the sod-and-stone features at Nanook is a whalebone spade, consistent with tools found at Norse sites in Greenland, and which might have been used to cut sections of turf for the shelter. 

There is also evidence at Nanook of what appears to be a rock-lined drainage system comparable to others found at proven Viking sites.

Click here for the Canada.com article.

New Scholarship Shows Kinder Vikings

Odin's Wild Hunt, by P.N. Arbo, 1872.

Revisionist scholarship portrays Vikings as cultured settlers of faraway lands who were good at “immigrant assimilation.” A conference last week at Cambridge University discussed more than 20 studies that reveal how the Vikings “shared technology, swapped ideas and often lived side-by-side in relative harmony with their Anglo-Saxon and Celtic contemporaries."

"Some may have come, plundered and left, but those Vikings who decided to settle rather than return to Scandinavia learned the language, inter-married, converted to Christianity and even had ‘praise poetry’ written about them by the Brits,” according to the experts. 

Says the British newspaper, the Independent:

They were prolific seafaring explorers, warriors and merchants from Denmark, Norway and Sweden who colonized swathes of Europe from the late 800s to the 12th century. In Norse, the word Viking means piracy and therefore the Vikings have become known as raiders who terrorised Europe instead of disciplined conquerors who established settlements as far afield as Constantinople, Greenland and Newfoundland.

There is archaeological evidence they discovered the Americas 500 years before Christopher Columbus. Their famed narrow longships allowed them to enter countries through rivers and it is this access which allowed them to settle and trade throughout Europe. A stereotyped image as a noble savage emerged in 17th century British texts and then again during the Victorian era. This image later turned into a cartoonish caricature of Vikings as barbarian invaders.

"What is clear is that the popular picture of Vikings is not quite as it seems, and when viewing their long-term presence, it is quite untrue," says Dr. Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, a conference organizer. "The communities were mutually transformed in the process. Of course, there was plundering and pillaging, but those who started to build camps and started to settle began interacting in a very different way."

Click here for the complete article in the Independent online.

Viking Burial Rituals Were Highly Theatrical

Viking grave in longboat shape in Sweden.

A study of thousands of excavated Viking graves suggests that rituals were performed at the graveside in which stories about life and death were presented as theatre, with live performances designed to help the passage of the deceased from this world into the next.

Neil Price, head of archaeology at the University of Aberdeen, believes these rituals may have been the early beginnings of the Norse sagas, telling stories about men and gods in the pagan world. He says a close study of the graves and the artifacts they contained ~ as well as contemporary accounts of Viking funerals ~ presents a far more complex picture of their lives than the simple myth of the Viking raider.

Price said that the burial rituals suggested the Vikings had no defined religion, but instead made up a set of spiritual beliefs, which were then acted out at the graveside. “There seem to have been something like stage directions dictating how these rituals were to be enacted,” he said. “Eyewitness accounts suggest that there were as many as ten days of ritual, with enormous time and effort put into the performances.”

Many Artifacts

Detailed analysis of the burials revealed a remarkable variety of objects found alongside the bodies, from everyday items to great longships, wagons and sledges, together with animals of many different species and even human sacrifices.

“No two graves were the same,” Price says. Some bore evidence of a military career, with whole ships containing the corpse left open. Other graves were found to have had animal remains ~ one had no fewer than 20 decapitated horses ~ and occasionally there were human remains as well. Some Vikings were buried with their wives and families, others were laid to rest in more simple single graves.

Sophisticated Pagans

“What emerges from these studies is that these were an immensely sophisticated people, with a complex set of beliefs, and a strong interest in poetry. It was an utterly different world from ours,” Price says. “They were aggressively pagan, and strongly anti-Christian, perhaps as a reaction to the Christian missionaries. But there is great richness in this non-Christian world.”

Most of the existing records on Norse mythology date from the 11th to 18th centuries, having gone through more than two centuries of oral tradition that is thought to carry the seeds of Germanic legends such as the Valkyrie, the Niebelungen and Siegfried.

Click here for the London Times article.