Climate Change Linked to Social Collapses in Greenland Since 800 B.C.
Monday, May 30, 2011 - 14:30
in Earth & Climate
The Norse came to a new land around the end of the first millennium, borne on the backs of their Viking long ships and lured away from Iceland by the promise of Erik the Red's Greenland. The land was indeed green when they landed--and stayed that way for several centuries until natural variations in the planet's climate cooled the world's largest island by 4 degrees Celsius. Years of such cool summers doomed the Greenland Norse, and their outpost froze to death by 1500. [More]