Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 12

Klavs Randsborg
abandoned in the mid-fourteenth century,
the area subsequently being occupied by
the Inuit/Eskimos, possibly after clashes
with the Norse, probably over hunting
rights (cf. Ameborg & Gullov 1998, 7ff.
with 80ff.). The terminal carbon-14 dates
(on archaeological material) are of the
late- fourteenth century and might sug-
gest a somewhat later date for the aban-
donment, possibly even around 1400, but
problems with the standard deviations
remain (Ameborg et al. 1999; Appelt
2000). Some re-use, perhaps seasonal, of
abandoned farmsteads cannot be mled
out either.
The Norse settlement was not
insignificant, having in its heyday its
own bishop, a monastery, a nunnery, and
many small churches, but it was also a
highly marginal enterprise dependent on
regular links across the huge North
Atlantic - the "European Ocean" - for
trading contacts (to sell the Greenland
products of walms tooth and narwhal
tusk, furs, white falcons, etc.) and to pro-
vide timbers, metals, and other critical
resources, including information.
Lumber was also acquired from America.
The last vessel, incidentally Greenland-
built, to set sail for "Markland" (North
America) departed as late as 1347.
According to written sources, at the same
time that the British began sailing into
the Davis Strait. A small, possibly
Campbell, coat of arms (dress omament)
actually comes from a farm in the
Westem Settlement (Seaver 1996, 120f.).
The Greenland "cash crops" were initial-
ly in high demand, but ivory, likely from
Africa, started to replace North Atlantic
walras tooth in European art already in
the later High Middle Ages.
A farming economy, however mdi-
mentary and fully dependent on the cli-
mate, was needed to sustain this culture,
including domesticated sheep to provide
fíne wools for the garments. The latter
include early fifteenth century male and
female dresses, the latest ones dated to
about 1430 according to high quality car-
bon-14 dates (Arneborg 1996; cf.
Norlund 1924; Seaver 1996, cf. 171 &
231, is wrong about the dates of the gar-
ments). Incidentally, carbon-14 dates of
Norse skeletons give similar terminal
dates, around 1430 or in the 1430’s (cf.
Ameborg et al. 1999). In addition, the
skeletal data (carbon-13 isotopes) indi-
cate an increasingly marine diet over
time, no doubt the result of a declining
cattle husbandry, possibly due to a wors-
ening of the climate. This did not, how-
ever, alter the general cultural picture. To
judge from the finds of textiles in the
famous, semi-permafrost cemetery of
Herjolfsnes in the far South of Greenland
- with Sandhavn, a potential port of tran-
sit to Europe - the Norse seem to have
been wearing fashionable European-style
clothing until the very end of their settle-
ment. Notably, there are no traces of an
Inuit/Eskimo impact on the Norse culture
in Greenland, and the Inuit/Eskimos only
very rarely squatted in abandoned Norse
stmctures.
In fact, the Norse Greenlanders may
even have left the country or otherwise
disappeared before the historical
Inuit/Eskimo - the so-called Thule cul-
ture, with whom they were in trading
contact in the North - expanded into the
Western and Eastern Settlement.
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