Download or read book Norse Greenland Viking Peasants in the Arctic written by Arnved Nedkvitne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How could a community of 2000–3000 Viking peasants survive in Arctic Greenland for 430 years (ca. 985–1415), and why did they finally disappear? European agriculture in an Arctic environment encountered serious ecological challenges. The Norse peasants faced these challenges by adapting agricultural practices they had learned from the Atlantic and North Sea coast of Norway. Norse Greenland was the stepping stone for the Europeans who first discovered America and settled briefly in Newfoundland ca. AD 1000. The community had a global significance which surpassed its modest size. In the last decades scholars have been nearly unanimous in emphasising that long-term climatic and environmental changes created a situation where Norse agriculture was no longer sustainable and the community was ruined. A secondary hypothesis has focused on ethnic confrontations between Norse peasants and Inuit hunters. In the last decades ethnic violence has been on the rise in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and parts of Africa. In some cases it has degenerated into ethnic cleansing. This has strengthened the interest in ethnic violence in past societies. Challenging traditional hypotheses is a source of progress in all science. The present book does this on the basis of relevant written and archaeological material respecting the methodology of both sciences.
Download or read book Norse Greenland written by Jared Diamond and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2012-12-11 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A timely and fascinating exploration of the collapse of prehistoric Norse society in Greenland—excerpted from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author Jared Diamond’s Collapse This excerpt from the New York Times–bestselling book Collapse takes a timely and fascinating look at prehistoric Norse Greenland—the closest approximation of a controlled experiment in collapse in history. One island, two unique societies (Norse and Inuit). Only one of these societies would succeed—the other would fail. But how? With his trademark accessibility and comprehensiveness, Diamond documents how environmental damage, climate change, loss of friendly contacts and the rise of hostile ones, and the unique political, economic, and social settings of prehistoric Greenland combine to demonstrate exactly why and how societies choose to fail or succeed. Jared Diamond's latest book, The World Until Yesterday: What Can We Learn from Traditional Societies?, is available from Viking.
Download or read book Woven Into the Earth written by Else Østergård and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the century's most spectacular archaeological finds occurred in 1921, a year before Howard Carter stumbled upon Tutankhamun's tomb, when Poul Norlund recovered dozens of garments from a graveyard in the Norse settlement of Herjolfsnaes, Greenland. Preserved intact for centuries by the permafrost, these mediaeval garments display remarkable similarities to western European costumes of the time. Previously, such costumes were known only from contemporary illustrations, and the Greenland finds provided the world with a close look at how ordinary Europeans dressed in the Middle Ages. Fortunately for Norlund's team, wood has always been extremely scarce in Greenland, and instead of caskets, many of the bodies were found swaddled in multiple layers of cast off clothing. When he wrote about the excavation later, Norlund also described how occasional thaws had permitted crowberry and dwarf willow to establish themselves in the top layers of soil. Their roots grew through coffins, clothing and corpses alike, binding them together in a vast network of thin fibers - as if, he wrote, the finds had been literally sewn in the earth. Eighty years of technical advances and subsequent excavations have greatly added to our understanding of the Herjolfsnaes discoveries. Woven into the Earth recounts the dramatic story of Norlund's excavation in the context of other Norse textile finds in Greenland. It then describes what the finds tell us about the materials and methods used in making the clothes. The weaving and sewing techniques detailed here are surprisingly sophisticated, and one can only admire the talent of the women who employed them, especially considering the harsh conditions they worked under. While Woven into the Earth will be invaluable to students of medieval archaeology, Norse society and textile history, both lay readers and scholars are sure to find the book's dig narratives and glimpses of life among the last Vikings fascinating.
Download or read book The Vikings in Greenland written by Charles River Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-09-19 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes medieval accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Over the centuries, the West has become fascinated by the Vikings, one of the most mysterious and interesting European civilizations. In addition to being perceived as a remarkably unique culture among its European counterparts, what's known and not known about the Vikings' accomplishments has added an intriguing aura to the historical narrative. Were they fierce and fearsome warriors? Were they the first Europeans to visit North America? It seems some of the legends are true, and some are just that, legend. Like many civilizations of past millennia, the Vikings are remembered in popular culture more for the fantastical accounts of their history than for reality. The written records of the history of the Viking period, consisting mostly of Norse sagas, metaphoric poems called skalds and monastic chronicles, were written down well after the events they described and tended to be lurid accounts rife with hyperbole. Furthermore, the most scathing tales of Viking raids are contained in the histories of monastic communities which were targets of Norse rapacity. These chronicles speak of the heathen Viking depredations of monastic treasuries and the ferocious torture and killing of Christian monks. The colorful bloody tales were certainly based on more than grains of truth, but they were also purposefully augmented to inject drama into history. Similarly Norse sagas written down in the post-Viking Age fixed what had hitherto been flexible oral tradition. They were often slanted to legitimize a clan or leader's authority by emphasizing an ancestor's bravery and skill in pillaging opponent's communities. However, the Vikings' reputation for ferocious seaborne attacks along the coasts of Northern Europe is no exaggeration. It is true that the Norsemen, who traded extensively throughout Europe, often increased the profits obtained from their nautical ventures through plunder, acquiring precious metals and slaves. Of course, the Vikings were not the only ones participating in this kind of income generation - between the 8th and the 11th centuries, European tribes, clans, kingdoms and monastic communities were quite adept at fighting with each other for the purpose of obtaining booty. The Vikings were simply more consistently successful than their contemporaries and thus became suitable symbols for the iniquity of the times. The Norsemen were also medieval Europe's greatest explorers, moving across the North Atlantic to settle in Iceland, Greenland, and even North America. Their settlements in Greenland were perhaps the most impressive, given that the bleak and unforgiving land was mostly uninhabited when they first made it there. Greenland is huge, measuring almost 840,000 square miles (1.35 million square kilometers). The interior is uninhabitable glacier and mountain, but the periphery is cut by countless fjords that shelter the inhabitants from some of the worst of the winds. The fjords in the western part of the island, especially the southwestern part, are made more temperate by relatively warm sea currents and can support grass and a diverse amount of wildlife. Even so, winters are harsh even in the southern latitudes, and ice clogs the northern reaches for much of the year. Remote, and subject to long winters during which pack ice would cut it off from the rest of the world, Greenland seemed an unlikely place to found a colony. In fact, Greenland was only circumnavigated in the early 20th century, and many of its further reaches were unmapped until the modern day. Nonetheless, the Norse managed to live there for about 450 years among some of their most remote outposts, and Greenland would maintain strong ties to the rest of Europe.
Download or read book The Frozen Echo written by Kirsten A. Seaver and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 1996 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using new archaeological, scientific, and documentary information this book confronts head-on many of the unanswered questions about early exploration and colonization along the shores of the Davis Strait.
Download or read book The Greenland Norse written by NIELS. LYNNERUP and published by Museum Tusculanum Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 156 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Viking Discovery of America written by Helge Ingstad and published by Breakwater Books. This book was released on 2000 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Faced with harsh conditions in their Greenland home, a group of Vikings took the reins of fate into their own hands. With incredible luck, skill and fortitude, they discovered lands filled with a profusion of wood, wild game and fertile land. In the sagas that grew from this discovery, the lands were given names that resonated with hope and promise. Almost 1000 years later, a husband and wife team united their talents. Intrigued by allusions in the ancient sagas to fabled Vinland, they considered the scholarship on Viking culture and technology; they studied maps and they researched intensively the prominent theories on Vinland's location. And finally their efforts bore fruit when a remote Newfoundland peninsula yielded up a soapstone spindle-whorl, a Viking ring pin, and what had to be the overgrown remnants of over a dozen Viking buildings.
Download or read book Viking Settlers in Greenland and Their Descendants During Five Hundred Years written by Poul Nørlund and published by London : Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1971 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Bibliography:p.156-7.
Download or read book Collapse written by Jared Diamond and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2013-03-21 with total page 608 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of Guns, Germs and Steel, Jared Diamond's Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive is a visionary study of the mysterious downfall of past civilizations. Now in a revised edition with a new afterword, Jared Diamond's Collapse uncovers the secret behind why some societies flourish, while others founder - and what this means for our future. What happened to the people who made the forlorn long-abandoned statues of Easter Island? What happened to the architects of the crumbling Maya pyramids? Will we go the same way, our skyscrapers one day standing derelict and overgrown like the temples at Angkor Wat? Bringing together new evidence from a startling range of sources and piecing together the myriad influences, from climate to culture, that make societies self-destruct, Jared Diamond's Collapse also shows how - unlike our ancestors - we can benefit from our knowledge of the past and learn to be survivors. 'A grand sweep from a master storyteller of the human race' - Daily Mail 'Riveting, superb, terrifying' - Observer 'Gripping ... the book fulfils its huge ambition, and Diamond is the only man who could have written it' - Economis 'This book shines like all Diamond's work' - Sunday Times
Download or read book Norse America written by Gordon Campbell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Vikings in North America as both fact and fiction, from the westward expansion of the Norse across the North Atlantic in the tenth and eleventh centuries to the myths and fabrications about their presence there that have developed in recent centuries. Tracking the saga of the Norse across the North Atlantic to America, Norse America sets the record straight about the idea that the Vikings 'discovered' America. The journey described is a continuum, with evidence-based history and archaeology at one end, and fake history and outright fraud at the other. In between there lies a huge expanse of uncertainty: sagas that may contain shards of truth, characters that may be partly historical, real archaeology that may be interpreted through the fictions of saga, and fragmentary evidence open to responsible and irresponsible interpretation. Norse America is a book that tells two stories. The first is the westward expansion of the Norse across the North Atlantic in the tenth and eleventh centuries, ending (but not culminating) in a fleeting and ill-documented presence on the shores of the North American mainland. The second is the appropriation and enhancement of the westward narrative by Canadians and Americans who want America to have had white North European origins, who therefore want the Vikings to have 'discovered' America, and who in the advancement of that thesis have been willing to twist and manufacture evidence in support of claims grounded in an ideology of racial superiority.
Download or read book The Vanished Settlers of Greenland written by Robert Rix and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2023-07-06 with total page 423 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping account of one of the most contested questions in colonial history: what became of Greenland's vanished Viking settlers?
Download or read book Westviking written by Farley Mowat and published by McClelland & Stewart. This book was released on 1965 with total page 520 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Mainly period 960-1010. New approach at variance with earlier theories.
Download or read book The Vikings in Greenland written by Charles River and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2018-09-19 with total page 98 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes medieval accounts *Includes online resources and a bibliography for further reading Over the centuries, the West has become fascinated by the Vikings, one of the most mysterious and interesting European civilizations. In addition to being perceived as a remarkably unique culture among its European counterparts, what's known and not known about the Vikings' accomplishments has added an intriguing aura to the historical narrative. Were they fierce and fearsome warriors? Were they the first Europeans to visit North America? It seems some of the legends are true, and some are just that, legend. Like many civilizations of past millennia, the Vikings are remembered in popular culture more for the fantastical accounts of their history than for reality. The written records of the history of the Viking period, consisting mostly of Norse sagas, metaphoric poems called skalds and monastic chronicles, were written down well after the events they described and tended to be lurid accounts rife with hyperbole. Furthermore, the most scathing tales of Viking raids are contained in the histories of monastic communities which were targets of Norse rapacity. These chronicles speak of the heathen Viking depredations of monastic treasuries and the ferocious torture and killing of Christian monks. The colorful bloody tales were certainly based on more than grains of truth, but they were also purposefully augmented to inject drama into history. Similarly Norse sagas written down in the post-Viking Age fixed what had hitherto been flexible oral tradition. They were often slanted to legitimize a clan or leader's authority by emphasizing an ancestor's bravery and skill in pillaging opponent's communities. However, the Vikings' reputation for ferocious seaborne attacks along the coasts of Northern Europe is no exaggeration. It is true that the Norsemen, who traded extensively throughout Europe, often increased the profits obtained from their nautical ventures through plunder, acquiring precious metals and slaves. Of course, the Vikings were not the only ones participating in this kind of income generation - between the 8th and the 11th centuries, European tribes, clans, kingdoms and monastic communities were quite adept at fighting with each other for the purpose of obtaining booty. The Vikings were simply more consistently successful than their contemporaries and thus became suitable symbols for the iniquity of the times. The Norsemen were also medieval Europe's greatest explorers, moving across the North Atlantic to settle in Iceland, Greenland, and even North America. Their settlements in Greenland were perhaps the most impressive, given that the bleak and unforgiving land was mostly uninhabited when they first made it there. Greenland is huge, measuring almost 840,000 square miles (1.35 million square kilometers). The interior is uninhabitable glacier and mountain, but the periphery is cut by countless fjords that shelter the inhabitants from some of the worst of the winds. The fjords in the western part of the island, especially the southwestern part, are made more temperate by relatively warm sea currents and can support grass and a diverse amount of wildlife. Even so, winters are harsh even in the southern latitudes, and ice clogs the northern reaches for much of the year. Remote, and subject to long winters during which pack ice would cut it off from the rest of the world, Greenland seemed an unlikely place to found a colony. In fact, Greenland was only circumnavigated in the early 20th century, and many of its further reaches were unmapped until the modern day. Nonetheless, the Norse managed to live there for about 450 years among some of their most remote outposts, and Greenland would maintain strong ties to the rest of Europe.
Download or read book The Vikings in North America written by Charles River Editors and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-02-09 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: *Includes pictures *Includes accounts of the Vikings' expeditions from medieval sagas *Includes a bibliography for further reading *Includes a table of contents Over the centuries, the West has become fascinated by the Vikings, one of the most mysterious and interesting European civilizations. In addition to being perceived as a remarkably unique culture among its European counterparts, what's known and not known about the Vikings' accomplishments has added an intriguing aura to the historical narrative. Were they fierce and fearsome warriors? Were they the first Europeans to visit North America? It seems some of the legends are true, and some are just that, legend. The ubiquitous picture of the Vikings as horn-helmeted, brutish, hairy giants that mercilessly marauded among the settlements of Northern Europe is based on a smattering of fact combined with an abundance of prejudicial historical writing by those who were on the receiving end of Viking depredations. At the same time, much of the popular picture of the Vikings is a result of the romantic imagination of novelists and artists. However, the Vikings' reputation for ferocious seaborne attacks along the coasts of Northern Europe is no exaggeration. It is true that the Norsemen, who traded extensively throughout Europe, often increased the profits obtained from their nautical ventures through plunder, acquiring precious metals and slaves. Of course, the Vikings were not the only ones participating in this kind of income generation; between the 8th and the 11th centuries, European tribes, clans, kingdoms and monastic communities were quite adept at fighting with each other for the purpose of obtaining booty. The Vikings were simply more consistently successful than their contemporaries and thus became suitable symbols for the iniquity of the times. Of course, the military reputation came about because the Vikings were the great mariners and explorers of medieval Europe. While many of their journeys were ones of conquest, they also had a deep love of exploration, and from their homeland in Scandinavia, they traveled as far as North America and became the first Europeans who are known to have set foot on what is now Canada. It was not until 1960 that the actual site of a Viking settlement in Vinland was found. At the tip of the Great Northern Peninsula in Newfoundland, Canada, a small Viking settlement at L'Anse aux Meadows was excavated, with the foundations of three residential halls have been found. These halls would have housed between 70 and 90 people. As well as the sod covered halls, a smithy where nails were made and a small boat repair building have been found. It is believed that this settlement, which may have had as many as 500 inhabitants, is one of two settlements called Straumfjord and Hop mentioned in the Saga of Erik the Red as being his Vinland bases. L'Anse aux Meadows is thought to be the former, and it is believed that Hop was a summer camp perhaps as far south as New Brunswick. The native inhabitants of the New World were called Skrellings by the Vikings, and there is evidence that they engaged in battle with the Beothuks at L'Anse aux Meadows and the Mi'kmaq people further south. While there is still debate over where exactly the Norse settled the land, there is no hard evidence that they ventured further south than Newfoundland, where remains of a settlement have been found. If they had rounded Cape Breton and crossed the Cabot Strait, they would have come to a markedly different environment that would probably have compelled the explorers to come up with a fourth name for the region south of Vinland. The Vikings in North America chronicles the historic voyages the Vikings made to North America and what's known and unknown about their pre-Columbian settlements. Along with pictures of important people, places, and events, you will learn about the Norse colonization of North America like never before, in no time at all.
Download or read book Norse in the North Atlantic written by Ryan Sines and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2019-10-10 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horned helmets. Pirates. Murderers. The Vikings are often depicted as fierce invaders who straddle the line between barbarians and civilized people. However, the Norse spread throughout Europe and Asia during the Middle Ages, taking with them new ideas. They discovered and settled the islands of Iceland and Greenland and tried to build their own idealized societies, free of the kings they left behind in Norway and Denmark. In Iceland the experiment worked and thrived while the settlement in Greenland failed. Using information gathered from archaeology and historical sources, Ryan Sines answers the question: What allowed Iceland to succeed while the last Greenlander died waiting for a supply ship that never came?
Download or read book Greenland written by Niels Elers Koch and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2023-11-15 with total page 425 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Greenland is a comprehensive full color book with a myriad of information about the country; it contains maps, and hundreds of photos. Crown Prince Frederik of Denmark is the patron of Greenland., and Greenlandic and Danish experts across the Unity of the Realm have helped to create a contemporary and detailed picture of Greenland.
Download or read book Norse America written by Gordon Campbell and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Vikings in North America as both fact and fiction, from the westward expansion of the Norse across the North Atlantic in the tenth and eleventh centuries to the myths and fabrications about their presence there that have developed in recent centuries. Tracking the saga of the Norse across the North Atlantic to America, Norse America sets the record straight about the idea that the Vikings 'discovered' America. The journey described is a continuum, with evidence-based history and archaeology at one end, and fake history and outright fraud at the other. In between there lies a huge expanse of uncertainty: sagas that may contain shards of truth, characters that may be partly historical, real archaeology that may be interpreted through the fictions of saga, and fragmentary evidence open to responsible and irresponsible interpretation. Norse America is a book that tells two stories. The first is the westward expansion of the Norse across the North Atlantic in the tenth and eleventh centuries, settling in Greenland and establishing a shore station at L'Anse aux Meadows in Newfoundland (to which a chapter of the book is devoted) and ending (but not culminating) in a fleeting and ill-documented presence on the shores of the North American mainland. The second is the appropriation and enhancement of the westward narrative by Canadians and Americans who want America to have had white North European origins, who therefore want the Vikings to have 'discovered' America, and who in the advancement of that thesis have been willing to twist and manufacture evidence in support of claims grounded in an ideology of racial superiority.
