History

The Norse colonisation of Greenland began around 985 AD when Erik the Red led settlers from Iceland to establish two communities on the southwestern coast: the Western Settlement (near modern Nuuk) and the Eastern Settlement (near modern Qaqortoq). At its peak in the 12th and 13th centuries, the Eastern Settlement contained an estimated 4,000-5,000 people distributed across some 450 farms, twelve parish churches, one cathedral (at Gardar), and an Augustinian monastery. Hvalsey farm and its church were among the larger establishments: the surrounding ruins include a great hall measuring approximately 18 x 7 metres, byres for livestock, and several smaller structures, suggesting a prosperous household within the Norse Greenlandic economy of hunting, pastoralism, and trade in walrus ivory and furs with mainland Europe.

The church was probably built around 1300 AD, during the late period of Norse Greenland’s existence, when the colony was already under stress: the global cooling of the early Little Ice Age was shortening growing seasons; the market for walrus ivory was collapsing as elephant ivory from Africa re-entered European markets; and the Thule Inuit people had been expanding southward from Arctic Canada since approximately 1200 AD, gradually occupying Norse hunting territories. The last unambiguous documentary evidence of the colony is the wedding at Hvalsey Church on 16 September 1408 — recorded by three independent Icelandic annals. After that date, nothing. The fate of the approximately 2,000-3,000 people estimated to have been living in the Eastern Settlement remains one of the most contested questions in North Atlantic historical archaeology. Climate deterioration, starvation, Thule Inuit conflict, plague, and emigration to Iceland or Scandinavia have all been proposed; the evidence supports combinations of several factors.