Vikings' mysterious abandonment of Greenland was not due to climate change, study suggests

The Washington Post via Alaska Dispatch News ^ | December 7, 2015 | Chris Mooney

[skeptoid]

It has often been cited as one of the classic examples of how changes in climate have shaped human history.

Circa the year 985, Erik the Red led 25 ships from Iceland to Greenland, launching a Norse settlement there and giving the vast ice continent the name "Greenland." Within just a few decades, the Norse -- sometimes also dubbed Vikings -- would make it to Newfoundland as well. They maintained settlements of up to a few thousand people in southwest Greenland for several centuries, keeping livestock and hunting seals, building churches whose ruins still stand today, and sending back valuable walrus tusks and other prizes for trade -- until, that is, these settlements were abandoned by the mid-1400s.

[Defiant]

That’s a Jewish guy. He can play a good Roman slave, but not a very convincing Viking.

[Celtic Conservative]

I prefer the latin “bubulum stercus”

plus the initial letters are the same as in the modern version.

BS

CC

[yarddog]

He was pretty good as an able seaman in Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. That was when Disney made good movies.

[Insigne123]

If Ernest Borgnine & Tont Curtis can play vikings, anyone can audition

[Defiant]

I loved him in lots of movies. Never saw him in this one as a Viking, though. He looks a little ridiculous.

[skeptoid]

Good one!

Took me a minute, though.

[Defiant]

I could see Borgnine as a Viking. The Borgnine in From Here to Eternity. Not Tony Curtis. I can’t think of too many guys from that era who fit the bill. They weren’t into Nordic types in Hollywood back then.

[IronJack]

Bookmark

[Jack Hammer]

Abandonment of Greenland....

No cable?

[matthew fuller]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gays7kImkT4

Thanks for posting that scene from one of the all time greatest movies.

[ASA Vet]

You beat me to it.

[chopperman]

Greenland is not a continent.

[Paladin2]

Seals can obviouly be trained. That the Vikings did it is amazing. Those Mannly scientists are gods.....

[The Great RJ]

The Viking settlements were wiped out your manbearpig...just ask Al Gore

[BlueNgold]

A brazen effort to incrementally chip away at the medieval warming period, which period in and of itself provides sufficient variation to destroy Mann’s hockey stick.

Explain away the mwp, because people can’t forget it, and you can justify treating it as noise and not normal variation.

Of course they can’t explain the little ice age either, but they like to include it because it lowers the baseline and skews normal temperatures to look warmer.

[Buckeye Battle Cry]

My guess is that the Vikings looked at each other and said “Damn it’s F+*&$#@g COLD here! Let’s blow this popstand!”

[skeptoid]

Hear, hear!!

[SunkenCiv]

More crap... without a worldwide warming, the sealevels wouldn’t have risen as they are known to have done, based on contemporary written records, and farmsteads at higher latitudes and altitudes than are feasible today wouldn’t exist. IOW, another piece of agitprop pretending to be scientific.

[SunkenCiv]

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[SunkenCiv]