Sometime before the year 1000, Norse settlers arrived in Greenland to continue the period of expansion and settlement that defined much of the Viking Age. For hundreds of years, a few thousand people lived along the southern coast of Greenland. Their stories were told in the Icelandic sagas and backed up by archaeological evidence. But why the descendants of the Norse settlers suddenly left Greenland in the 15th century has long puzzled historians. Many people assume cold was the decisive factor, but new scientific research suggests an alternative reason. American researchers did not find evidence of extreme cold or prolonged cold periods. Instead, they have discovered that long periods of drought may have driven the Norse people away. Over several years, the researchers investigated mud layers at the bottom of a lake in the south of Greenland, close to where the Norse lived. Led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the results were recently published in Science Advances. They were able to track how the biochemistry of bacteria reacted to temperature changes. Although this showed temperature fluctuations over time, researchers found no evidence of prolonged period of extreme cold. Once that was established, researchers turned their attention to grasses and leaves in the mud layers. They were able to track both temperature changes and the rate at which they lost water due to evaporation.“What we discovered is that, while the temperature barely changed over the course of the Norse settlement of southern Greenland, it became steadily drier over time,” said Boyang Zhao the lead author of the study.“In such a climate, one would not be able to grow grass. And thus the domestic animals would have starved to death during the long and cold winters,” he added. Greenland is known for its ice cap and glaciers, which cover some 80% of the country. Yet droughts remain a problem for farmers today. Farmer Elna Jensen cultivates land near where the American researchers did their study and confirmed to NRK that dry years are not uncommon. While droughts seem to have been a likely cause of difficulty for the Norse people, they may not have been the only reason.“I think there were many factors that led to the Norse disappearing, and not all were connected to the climate. Our study shows just one of many challenges the Vikings had to deal with,” said study participant Raymond Bradley from the University of Massachusetts.


All data is taken from the source: [ Ссылка ]
Article Link: [ Ссылка ]


#norse #newsfortoday #newstodayinusa #newsworld #cnnnewstoday #usnewsworldreport#

свернуть