Traders of the North Pole
Elllesmere Island is the tenth largest island in the world at 75,567 square miles. Over 500 miles long, north to south, and three hundred miles widest, east to west, it’s northern tip is the most northerly point of the Canadian Archipelago, only 478 miles from the North Pole. Only the northern tip of Greenland, comes closer, at 440 miles to the North pole.
Ellesmere differs from many islands of the Canadian archipelago in being quite mountainous. It is the northernmost part of the Arctic Corderilla, a mountain range which includes the eastern half of Baffin Island and the northern part of Labrador. The mountains are no great shakes. The two tallest mountains on Ellesmere are 8,600 and 8,200 feet respectively.
But the mountains and hills which shape Ellesmere’s geography lead to a complex dynamic. Their height and northerly latitude lead to extensive glaciation, including mountain glaciation. This in turn lead to seasonal run off and stable mountain rivers, which fed lakes. Lake Hazen is the largest Arctic lake in North America. Unlike many of the western Arctic Islands, which see so little rain or snow that they can technically be called deserts, Ellesmere is awash with water.
The mountain and hill slopes of Ellesmere meant that sunlight was an extremely variable commodity. Southern facing slopes received far more sunlight than northern facing slopes. The steeper the southern facing slopes, the more concentrated the sunlight. Shallow valleys, depending on their orientation, produced warm oasis in the middle of lifeless stone and gravel deserts, or sterile wastelands. Walking a few hundred yards could take you from landscapes that were like the surface of Mars, to blinding glacial sheets, to conventional arctic tundra, to wetland marshes occupied by migrating geese. Despite its extreme northern location, Ellesmere’s geography meant that it was a land of microclimates, filled with oasis far richer and more biologically productive than they had any right to be.
In the summer, of course. In the winter, it pretty much sucked, the whole thing being basically snow and ice.
Biologically, Ellesmere was the home of Musk Ox and Caribou. It’s inuit name was ‘Land of Musk Ox.’ It hosted migratory birds and supported wetlands. Species of bee demonstrated that it hosted a profusion of small flowering arctic plants. The lakes, frozen over ten months of the year, still supported fish like Arctic char.
Between Ellesmere and Greenland is the Nares Strait, a narrow water passage where the current flows strongly from north to south, roughly 25 miles wide at its narrowest point, and approximately 400 miles long, the strait amounts to a long interface point, traversible in winter when frozen solid, during summer awash with bergs and breaking ice. Arctic cultures have moved directly from Ellesmere, across the Nares strait into Greenland, the Thule culture being only the most recent.
The north of Greenland is ice free, and contiguous with relatively ice free eastern shores extending hundreds of miles inland. So overland, the natural direction of travel in Greenland is north along the top and then down the Eastern shores. On the west side, after the Nares Strait, the waters open up to Baffin Bay, and a stretch of several hundred miles where the glaciers approach the shores closely or actually march to the sea. Barely habitable, if habitable at all, a southern ocean current takes travellers past the glaciers to more hospitable shores further south. Thus, emigrants from Ellesmere would tend to pour down both sides of Greenland.
Off and on, Ellesmere was occupied by arctic cultures for some four or five thousand years, which in turn occupied Greenland. During cold spells, of course, it was a fairly lethal environment. But during the most recent medieval warm period, it was occupied by both the Dorset culture, and then the Thule. The medieval warm period brought enough warmth and enough energy to Ellesmere’s cold shores that water flowed freely, the glaciers retreated, and life flourished, supporting human habitation.
In this timeline, things went a little differently. The Thule in their hunter gatherer phase reached Ellesmere, at least fifty to a hundred years earlier and in greater population, displacing the Dorset culture even more decisively, and moving to Greenland. If anything, these Thule were more aggressive than the OTL Thule.
Agriculture, from the Baffin Island complex, came to Ellesmere even as the medieval warm period was giving its last gasps. Temperatures were notably lower across the Ellesmere, and while the Oasis remained warm, the productivity of much of the Tundra declined. The extremes of the landscape increased, and the Thule depended ever more strongly on the fertile natural microclimates. In this context, the Ellesmere Thule adopted agriculture rapidly and developed it with a desperate intensity.
It was probably on the slopes of Ellesmere that the peculiar ‘feng shui’ of Thule Agriculture developed most strongly, with careful attention being paid to orientation and pitch of slopes. An island of natural microclimates, landscape engineering built on the lessons of nature, extending growing seasons. Throughout the Thule range, microclimate engineering paid dividends. But in Ellesmere, a land made for microclimates, engineering could pay off hugely. Ellesmere works were the most sophisticated and ambitious in the Thule world. The Ellesmere Thule even added a new cultivar to the Thule basket in the form of Dwarf Fireweed. As climate cooled, agriculture spread and intensified, leaping easily to Greenland.
In OTL the Little Ice Age eventually drove even the hardy Thule from the Ellesmere and the northern reaches of Greenland, isolating the Greenland Thule from most contact with the rest of the Thule culture.
Here, however, things proceeded differently. This Ellesmere was much more heavily populated, its works ambitious, its people resilient. The Ellesmere subculture was perhaps the most technically sophisticated in the Thule range. But even this was hardly a defense against the Little Ice Age. Winters lengthened, conditions worsened, temperatures dropped. Productive microclimates deteriorated, producing smaller crops, taking longer to do so, or losing the ability to sustain human crops.
The Ellesmere Thule adapted as best they could. Increasing desperation made their engineering ever more sophisticated. They looked for ways to use water or air currents to transfer heat from steep slopes, to preserve and pond water, to accelerate summer melting and slow winter freezing, to enhance microclimates any way they could. More cold tolerant varieties of sweetvetch and bistort, claytonia and roseroot emerged, smaller, slower growing, but still hanging on. Agriculture shifted from the usual three year Thule cycle to a four year cycle, but it held on. Dwarf Fireweed replaced Fireweed. Fernweed was introduced to marginal areas. Ptarmigan and Hare were imported. Microclimates that could no longer sustain human agriculture were given over to Musk Ox and Caribou herding, and microclimate engineering devoted itself to preserving and extending the sustenance of their animals. Where agriculture was no longer sustainable, they shifted intensely to herding or fishing, refining techniques and technologies. Groups traded or warred for lands, for resources, for opportunity.
Despite all these efforts, Ellesmere simply could not sustain the population that had developed. The result was outmigration. Groups of the Ellesmere Thule fled. They fled to Greenland, moving down both east and west slopes, moving south until their hardy brand of Agriculture could flourish, displacing their kin as savagely as their kin had displaced the Dorset. They fled south to Baffin and the other Islands, and from there to the mainlands.
The Southern Thule also fled from the Little Ice Age, a population movement that spelled disaster for the Dene and Cree populations to the south of them as the Thule pushed into their territory.
But the Thule of the far north region of Ellesmere had nowhere to go but to other Thule territories, into lands that, Greenland aside, were as sophisticated and even more densely populated than they were. The Ellesmere Thule might overwhelm the Thule of Greenland and come as conquerers. But on Baffin Island and the mainland, they came as refugees.
But they were sophisticated refugees. They were the most talented microclimate engineers the Thule had produced. Moving into populated areas already under stress, the Ellesmere Thule could not find a ready welcome anywhere. It was hard to concentrate. Instead, they were forced to disperse widely, some of them reaching as far as Alaska, carrying the intellectual skills and abilities with them.
Ellesmere had not been abandoned however. Agriculture continued, crops were produced, microlivestock raised and livestock herded. The population dropped but did not vanish. Ellesmere society hung on. The result was occasional reversals of population movement. The refugee Ellesmere Thule still had relatives and clans back in the homeland, they still had at least the prospect of support and kinship networks there. Often they had lands or herds there, fields that they could claim as birthright, shares of resources. Although they Ellesmere Thule had valuable skills and expertise that allowed many to make their way in the south, they weren’t welcome. So during the intermittent warm spells, many would head home.
Intermittent fluctuations in climate moved people back and forth. Ellesmere’s population pulsed, its members sometimes spreading south through the Thule world, and then returning. Not everyone returned of course, many found homes, or niches. The Ellesmere diaspora became a network, a pulsing, living, network of people moving back and forth, connecting up with each other. And through this network trade items began to move. Not just a specialty trade of ceremonial or small portable high value items, but a more ambitious economic trading network which moved goods of all sorts, ranging from flint, to bone, sinew and fur, agricultural surpluses, man-made artifacts and products, both objects of cultural innovation, and the skills of innovation, tools, metal, plants and animals.
Much of this trade moved through and between Thule lands. Ellesmere itself had relatively little to offer in trade. It’s principal benefit came from being the home land of various clans and tribes which were traders, some small share of that wealth inevitably funneled home. And so it went, for the period roughly stretching from 1300 to 1400 CE.
But something interesting was in the works. Despite the Little Ice Age, the new Thule in Greenland, the Agricultural Thule had held on in the north, maintaining contact with their brethren as they moved south, and maintaining intermittent contact with Ellesmere. Far more tenuous and fragmentary, the Ellesmere diaspora into Greenland also sustained an intermittent network back to the homeland. In the south of Greenland, something very interesting was waiting to be discovered.