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.To us in our secular modern society, thepredicament in which the Greenlanders found themselves is difficult tofathom.To them, however, concerned with their social survival as much aswith their biological survival, it was out of the question to invest less inchurches, to imitate or intermarry with the Inuit, and thereby to face aneternity in Hell just in order to survive another winter on Earth.The Green-landers' clinging to their European Christian image may have been a factorin their conservatism that I mentioned above: more European than Euro-peans themselves, and thereby culturally hampered in making the drasticlifestyle changes that could have helped them survive.CHAPTER 8Norse Greenland's EndIntroduction to the end Deforestation Soil and turf damageThe Inuit's predecessors Inuit subsistence Inuit/Norse relationsThe end Ultimate causes of the endn the previous chapter we saw how the Norse initially prospered inGreenland, due to a fortunate set of circumstances surrounding theirIarrival.They had the good luck to discover a virgin landscape thathad never been logged or grazed, and that was suitable for use as pasture.They arrived at a time of relatively mild climate, when hay productionwas sufficient in most years, when the sea lanes to Europe were free ofice, when there was European demand for their exports of walrus ivory,and when there were no Native Americans anywhere near the Norsesettlements or hunting grounds.All of those initial advantages gradually turned against the Norse, inways for which they bore some responsibility.While climate change, Eu-rope's changing demand for ivory, and the arrival of the Inuit were beyondtheir control, how the Norse dealt with those changes was up to them.Theirimpact on the landscape was a factor entirely of their own making.In thischapter we shall see how the shifts in those advantages, and the Norse reac-tions to them, combined to bring an end to the Norse Greenland colony.The Greenland Norse damaged their environment in at least three ways: bydestroying the natural vegetation, by causing soil erosion, and by cuttingturf.As soon as they arrived, they burned woodlands to clear land for pas-ture, then cut down some of the remaining trees for purposes such as lum-ber and firewood.Trees were prevented from regenerating by livestockgrazing and trampling, especially in the winter, when plants were most vul-nerable because of not growing then.The effects of those impacts on the natural vegetation have been gaugedby our friends the palynologists examining radiocarbon-dated slices of sedi-ments collected from the bottoms of lakes and bogs.In those sediments oc-cur at least five environmental indicators: whole plant parts such as leaves,and plant pollen, both of which serve to identify the plant species growingnear the lake at that time; charcoal particles, proof of fires nearby; magneticsusceptibility measurements, which in Greenland reflect mainly the amountsof magnetic iron minerals in the sediment, arising from topsoil washed orblown into the lake's basin; and sand similarly washed or blown in.These studies of lake sediments yield the following picture of vegeta-tional history around the Norse farms.As temperatures warmed up at theend of the last Ice Age, pollen counts show that grasses and sedges becamereplaced by trees.For the next 8,000 years there were few further changes inthe vegetation, and few or no signs of deforestation and erosion until theVikings arrived.That event was signaled by a layer of charcoal from Vikingfires to clear pastures for their livestock.Pollen of willow and birch trees de-creased, while pollen of grasses, sedges, weeds, and pasture plants intro-duced by the Norse for animal feed rose.Increased magnetic susceptibilityvalues show that topsoil was carried into lakes, the topsoil having lost theplant cover that had previously protected it from erosion by wind and wa-ter [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]