Greenland Norse

if they had assimilated into the inuit culture, or at the very least borrowed what could be borrowed from them. Learning how to build their boats, learning how to fish and navigate in them etc.

They held stubbornly onto their argicultural package which depended on barley, cows and pigs, which even in Scandinavia could be argued to be at the edge of where it would be a good package, it was merely used because it was the least bad package they knew, and they didn't bother to learn and accept the 'devolution' into accepting their neighbours hunter/gatherer package
 

Sir Chaos

Banned
if they had assimilated into the inuit culture, or at the very least borrowed what could be borrowed from them. Learning how to build their boats, learning how to fish and navigate in them etc.

They held stubbornly onto their argicultural package which depended on barley, cows and pigs, which even in Scandinavia could be argued to be at the edge of where it would be a good package, it was merely used because it was the least bad package they knew, and they didn't bother to learn and accept the 'devolution' into accepting their neighbours hunter/gatherer package

That... or relocated to Newfoundland, or even further south.
 
The main problem I have read (I can't remember where) with Norse Greenland is that some of the best hunting grounds were controlled by the local bishops in order to maximise the generation of wealth based around exporting goods such as walrus irony for the Catholic church rather than to preserve the settlements population. There is also some evidence based on excavations of the local Inuit archeological sites of some Norse just becoming Inuit to survive. Without this stranglehold and more willingness to use Native American practices would mean they could still preserve their culture along with limited contact with Europe. Possibly in ships built from timber logged in Vinland, fishing the Grand Banks could feed the population and provide an ideal trade item in return for manufactured goods from europe.
 
That... or relocated to Newfoundland, or even further south.

Which would mean that they would get so isolated from Iceland and further on to Scandinavia that they might as well assimilate an idenity as Native Armerican, only distinctive being a unusual creation mythos
 
Please, let us not repeat Jared Diamond's bad research here; the Greenland Norse did trade with the Inuit and Dorset, they did eat Fish (isotopes from Seafood can be found in their bones), and there's a case to be made that it was European Pirates that finally did them in, according to AH.Com's other threads itself.

Not accusing anyone of using Jared Diamond, btw, just taking precautions.
 
Yes, Jared Diamonds research have a reputation for being somewhere between bad and outright wrong ... in this case he gets to the right result with tons of wrong calculations. Greenlander Norse did fish, but they was unable to get enough good lumber to replace and maintain their fishing fleet, and they had a very ill fitting agriculutral package, specially when accounting for the end of the medieval warm period (which also decimated Iceland which have slightly better climate).

From what we can tell, while they did have some kind of semi-presistent trade relations with Dorset-Culture, with the more aggessive Thule-Culture peaceful trade seems to have largely stopped, and the Norse had previously failed to inherit the Dorset technology to forage after the forementioned lumber shortage, cut down on available ships (which also cut down on access to Walrus Ivory, which in turn cut down the profit for going there for icelandic traders, together with a royal monopolisaiton and African Ivory through the Sahara trade routes becoming more common), and the Trade seems to have been Food from the Dorset for luxury goods or knowledge from the Norse (selling out of their smaller and smaller iron supplies for one).
 
Yes, Jared Diamonds research have a reputation for being somewhere between bad and outright wrong ... in this case he gets to the right result with tons of wrong calculations. Greenlander Norse did fish, but they was unable to get enough good lumber to replace and maintain their fishing fleet, and they had a very ill fitting agriculutral package, specially when accounting for the end of the medieval warm period (which also decimated Iceland which have slightly better climate).

From what we can tell, while they did have some kind of semi-presistent trade relations with Dorset-Culture, with the more aggessive Thule-Culture peaceful trade seems to have largely stopped, and the Norse had previously failed to inherit the Dorset technology to forage after the forementioned lumber shortage, cut down on available ships (which also cut down on access to Walrus Ivory, which in turn cut down the profit for going there for icelandic traders, together with a royal monopolisaiton and African Ivory through the Sahara trade routes becoming more common), and the Trade seems to have been Food from the Dorset for luxury goods or knowledge from the Norse (selling out of their smaller and smaller iron supplies for one).

I see. So, what about butterflying away the Thule, or making them less aggressive?
 
Competition with "Thuleans" (is that a word?) and decline of native relations as with "Dorsetans" wouldn't have been compensated or supported trough European/Scandinavian contacts, which would have made their situation already fragile, and with the climatic changes (that touched most of medieval societies, with different outcomes) may have hemped to unbalance the situation.

That the colony was unable to pay tithe as soon as the late XIVth century quite points a decline in this fragile balance, whom loss of what made the colony viable in trade matters, that is tusk (to replace ivory) made contacts less and less regulars, harming supply of important goods as wood.

Isolation and competition would be enough for any community to degenerate, even with less aggressive Inuits, IMO.

As for what they became, it's anybody guess. Slowly dying out? Some joining Northern America or Inuits (I wonder if they were genetic studies made on native populations on this regard). Joining Scandinavian settlements in Europe (the lack of historical sources on it make it perillous)...
 
What ended the colony was that the people of greenland didn't want to live like the inuits. What seems to have happened is that the people departed (or tried too) for warmer pastures. Such as the abandonment of the Western Settlement. Where these people went is another question because it wasn't iceland or norway or the like.

It's not so much of them "dying out" (though some stubborn folk did), as they "moved out", slowly. With most of the young ones leaving for better lands. And without enough young people the colony declined and then vacated.
 
What ended the colony was that the people of greenland didn't want to live like the inuits. What seems to have happened is that the people departed (or tried too) for warmer pastures. Such as the abandonment of the Western Settlement. Where these people went is another question because it wasn't iceland or norway or the like.

It's not so much of them "dying out" (though some stubborn folk did), as they "moved out", slowly. With most of the young ones leaving for better lands. And without enough young people the colony declined and then vacated.
Could inbreeding have been a factor? The colony never grew much beyond 5000 people (some sources say only 3000). That seems very small, considering that the colony lasted nearly 500 years. And later gravesites contained a large number of young women.
 
if they had assimilated into the inuit culture, or at the very least borrowed what could be borrowed from them. Learning how to build their boats, learning how to fish and navigate in them etc.

Wouldn't work. Even as small as the Greenland Norse were, they were committed to an agricultural lifestyle and the population densities that came with that agricultural lifestyle. They could not have converted over to a wholly subsistence hunter/gatherer lifestyle. It couldn't sustain their population.

As to fishing - the skin boats of the Dorset and Thule simply would not have sustained the sort of fishery of the wooden boats. They simply were not structurally strong enough in the necessary ways. There was no option of replacement.


They held stubbornly onto their argicultural package which depended on barley, cows and pigs, which even in Scandinavia could be argued to be at the edge of where it would be a good package, it was merely used because it was the least bad package they knew,

It was pretty much the only package. There wasn't an alternate agricultural or animal husbandry subsistence package available to them. I'm not sure that either Caribou or Musk Ox were in southern Greenland at that time. My guess is that both species, if they had been there, would have been hunted out. They had no replacement domestic animals, and they had no replacement plants.

and they didn't bother to learn and accept the 'devolution' into accepting their neighbours hunter/gatherer package

Accepting devolution would have resulted in 90% mortality, so it all came out the same. They couldn't sustain the population they had with hunter/gathering.
 
Could inbreeding have been a factor? The colony never grew much beyond 5000 people (some sources say only 3000). That seems very small, considering that the colony lasted nearly 500 years. And later gravesites contained a large number of young women.

Its plausible that there was a certain ammount of inbreeding among them, but we don't know enough about the Greenlander Norse Genome to make any certain statements about such a thing
 
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