In the case of the Vikings, too, the societies that they created on the North Atlantic islands were modeled on the continental Viking societies that the immigrants had left behind. That legacy of cultural history was especially important in the areas of agriculture, iron production, class structure, and religion.
While we think of Vikings as raiders and seafarers, they thought of themselves as farmers. The particular animals and crops that grew well in southern Norway became an important consideration in overseas Viking history, not only because those were the animal and plant species available for Viking colonists to carry with them to Iceland and Greenland, but also because those species were involved in the Vikings’ social values. Different foods and lifestyles have different status among different peoples: for instance, cattle ranked high but goats ranked low in the values of ranchers in the western United States. Problems arise when the agricultural practices of immigrants in their land of origin prove ill-matched to their new homeland. Australians, for example, are struggling today with the question of whether the sheep that they brought with them from Britain have really done more harm than good in Australian environments. As we shall see, a similar mismatch between what was suitable in old and new landscapes had heavy consequences for the Greenland Norse.
Livestock grew better than crops in Norway’s cool climate. The livestock were the same five species that had provided the basis of Fertile Crescent and European food production for thousands of years: cows, sheep, goats, pigs, and horses. Of those species, the ones considered of highest status by Vikings were pigs bred for meat, cows for milk products such as cheese, and horses used for transport and prestige. In Old Norse sagas, pork was the meat on which warriors of the Norse war god Odin feasted daily in Valhalla after their deaths. Much lower in prestige, but still useful economically, were sheep and goats, kept more for milk products and wool or hair than for meat.
Counts of bones in an archaeologically excavated garbage heap at a 9th-century chieftain’s farm in southern Norway revealed the relative numbers of different animal species that the chieftain’s household consumed. Nearly half of all livestock bones in the midden were of cows, and one-third were of the prized pigs, while only one-fifth belonged to sheep and goats. Presumably an ambitious Viking chief setting up a farm overseas would have aspired to that same mix of species. Indeed, a similar mix is found in garbage heaps from the earliest Viking farms in Greenland and Iceland. However, the bone proportions differed on later farms there, because some of those species proved less well adapted than others to Greenland and Iceland conditions: cow numbers decreased with time, and pigs almost vanished, but the numbers of sheep and goats increased.
The farther north that one lives in Norway, the more essential it becomes in the winter to bring livestock indoors into stalls and to provide them with food there, instead of leaving them outdoors to forage for themselves. Hence those heroic Viking warriors actually had to spend much of their time during the summer and fall at the homely tasks of cutting, drying, and gathering hay for winter livestock feed, rather than fighting the battles for which they were more famous.
In areas where the climate was mild enough to permit gardening, Vikings also grew cold-tolerant crops, especially barley. Other crops less important than barley (because they are less hardy) were the cereals oats, wheat, and rye; the vegetables cabbage, onions, peas, and beans; flax, to make linen cloth; and hops, to brew beer. At sites progressively farther north in Norway, crops receded in importance compared to livestock. Wild meat was a major supplement to domestic livestock as a source of protein—especially fish, which account for half or more of the animal bones in Norwegian Viking middens. Hunted animals included seals and other marine mammals, reindeer and moose and small land mammals, seabirds taken on their breeding colonies, and ducks and other waterfowl.
Iron implements discovered at Viking sites by archaeologists tell us that Vikings used iron for many purposes: for heavy agricultural tools such as plows, shovels, axes, and sickles; small household tools, including knives, scissors, and sewing needles; nails, rivets, and other construction hardware; and, of course, military tools, especially swords, spears, battle-axes, and armor. The remains of slag heaps and charcoal-producing pits at iron-processing sites let us reconstruct how Vikings obtained their iron. It was not mined on an industrial scale at centralized factories, but at small-scale mom-and-pop operations on each individual farm. The starting material was so-called bog iron widespread in Scandinavia: i.e., iron oxide that has become dissolved in water and then precipitated by acidic conditions or bacteria in bogs and lake sediments. Whereas modern iron-mining companies select ores containing between 30 and 95% iron oxide, Viking smiths accepted far poorer ores, with as little as 1% iron oxide. Once such an “iron-rich” sediment had been identified, the ore was dried, heated to melting temperature in a furnace in order to separate the iron from impurities (the slag), hammered to remove more impurities, and then forged into the desired shape.
Burning wood itself does not yield a temperature high enough for working with iron. Instead, the wood must first be burned to form charcoal, which does sustain a sufficiently hot fire. Measurements in several countries show that it takes on the average about four pounds of wood to make one pound of charcoal. Because of that requirement, plus the low iron content of bog iron, Viking iron extraction and tool production and even the repair of iron tools consumed enormous quantities of wood, which became a limiting factor in the history of Viking Greenland, where trees were in short supply.
As for the social system that Vikings brought overseas with them from the Scandinavian mainland, it was hierarchical, with classes ranging at the lowest level from slaves captured in raids, through free men, up to chiefs. Large unified kingdoms (as opposed to small local chiefdoms under chiefs who might assume a title of “king”) were just emerging in Scandinavia during the Viking expansion, and overseas Viking settlers eventually had to deal with kings of Norway and (later) of Denmark. However, the settlers had emigrated in part to escape the emerging power of would-be Norwegian kings, so that neither Iceland nor Greenland societies ever developed kings of their own. Instead, the power there remained in the hands of a military aristocracy of chiefs. Only they could afford their own boat and a full set of livestock, including the prized and hard-to-maintain cows as well as the less esteemed low-maintenance sheep and goats. The chief’s dependents, retainers, and supporters included slaves, free laborers, tenant farmers, and independent free farmers.
Chiefs constantly competed with one another both by peaceful means and by war. The peaceful competition involved chiefs seeking to outdo each other in giving gifts and holding feasts, so as to gain prestige, reward followers, and attract allies. Chiefs accumulated the necessary wealth through trading, raiding, and the production of their own farms. But Viking society was also a violent one, in which chiefs and their retainers fought each other at home as well as fighting other peoples overseas. The losers in those internecine struggles were the ones who had the most to gain by trying their luck overseas. For instance, in the A.D. 980s, when an Icelander named Erik the Red was defeated and exiled, he explored Greenland and led a band of followers to settle the best farm sites there.
Key decisions of Viking society were made by the chiefs, who were motivated to increase their own prestige, even in cases where that might conflict with the good of the current society as a whole and of the next generation. We already encountered those same conflicts of interest for Easter Island chiefs and Maya kings (Chapters 2 and 5), and they also had heavy consequences for the fate of Greenland Norse society (Chapter 8).
When the Vikings began their overseas expansion in the A.D. 800s, they still were “pagans” worshipping gods traditional in Germanic religion, such as the fertility god Frey, the sky god Thor, and the war god Odin. What most horrified European societies targeted by Viking raiders was that Vikings were not Christians and did not observe the taboos of a Christian society. Quite the opposite: they seemed to take sadistic pl
easure in targeting churches and monasteries for attack. For instance, when in A.D. 843 a large Viking fleet went plundering up the Loire River in France, the raiders began by capturing the cathedral of Nantes at the river’s mouth and killing the bishop and all the priests. Actually, though, the Vikings had no sadistic special fondness for plundering churches, nor any prejudice against secular sources of booty. While the undefended wealth of churches and monasteries was an obvious source of easy rich pickings, the Vikings were also pleased to attack rich trading centers whenever the opportunity presented itself.
Once established overseas in Christian lands, Vikings were quite prepared to intermarry and adapt to local customs, and that included embracing Christianity. Conversions of Vikings overseas contributed to the emergence of Christianity at home in Scandinavia, as overseas Vikings returning on visits brought information about the new religion, and as chiefs and kings in Scandinavia began to recognize the political advantages that Christianity could bring them. Some Scandinavian chiefs adopted Christianity informally, even before their kings did. Decisive events in Christianity’s establishment in Scandinavia were the “official” conversion of Denmark under its king Harold Bluetooth around A.D. 960, of Norway beginning around A.D. 995, and of Sweden during the following century.
When Norway began to convert, the overseas Viking colonies of Orkney, Shetland, Faeroe, Iceland, and Greenland followed suit. That was partly because the colonies had few ships of their own, depended on Norwegian shipping for trade, and had to recognize the impossibility of remaining pagan after Norway became Christian. For instance, when Norway’s King Olaf I converted, he banned pagan Icelanders from trading with Norway, captured Icelanders visiting Norway (including relatives of leading Iceland pagans), and threatened to mutilate or kill those hostages unless Iceland renounced paganism. At the meeting of Iceland’s national assembly in the summer of A.D. 999, Icelanders accepted the inevitable and declared themselves Christian. Around that same year, Leif Eriksson, the son of that Erik the Red who founded the Greenland colony, supposedly introduced Christianity to Greenland.
The Christian churches that were created in Iceland and Greenland after A.D. 1000 were not independent entities owning their own land and buildings, as are modern churches. Instead, they were built and owned by a leading local farmer/chief on his own land, and the farmer was entitled to a share of the taxes collected as tithes by that church from other local people. It was as if the chief negotiated a franchise agreement with McDonald’s, under which he was granted a local monopoly by McDonald’s, erected a church building and supplied merchandise according to uniform McDonald’s standards, and kept a part of the proceeds for himself while sending the rest of the proceeds to central management—in this case, the pope in Rome via the archbishop in Nidaros (modern Trondheim). Naturally, the Catholic Church struggled to make its churches independent of the farmers/ owners. In 1297 the Church finally succeeded in forcing Iceland church owners to transfer ownership of many church farms to the bishop. No records have been preserved to show whether something similar also happened in Greenland, but Greenland’s acceptance (at least nominally) of Norwegian rule in 1261 probably put some pressure on Greenland church owners. We do know that in 1341 the bishop of Bergen sent to Greenland an overseer named Ivar Bardarson, who eventually returned to Norway with a detailed list and description of all Greenland churches, suggesting that the bishopric was trying to tighten its grip on its Greenland “franchises” as it did in Iceland.
The conversion to Christianity constituted a dramatic cultural break for the Viking overseas colonies. Christianity’s claims of exclusivity, as the sole true religion, meant abandoning pagan traditions. Art and architecture became Christian, based on continental models. Overseas Vikings built big churches and even cathedrals equal in size to those of much more populous mainland Scandinavia, and thus huge in relation to the size of the much smaller overseas populations supporting them. The colonies took Christianity seriously enough that they paid tithes to Rome: we have records of the crusade tithe that the Greenland bishop sent to the pope in 1282 (paid in walrus tusks and polar bear hides rather than in money), and also an official papal receipt in 1327 acknowledging the delivery of the six-years’ tithe from Greenland. The Church became a major vehicle for introducing the latest European ideas to Greenland, especially because every bishop appointed to Greenland was a mainland Scandinavian rather than a native Greenlander.
Perhaps the most important consequence of the colonists’ conversion to Christianity involved how they viewed themselves. The outcome reminds me of how Australians, long after the founding of Britain’s Australian colonies in 1788, continued to think of themselves not as an Asian and Pacific people but as overseas British, still prepared to die in 1915 at far-off Gallipoli fighting with the British against Turks irrelevant to Australia’s national interests. In the same way, Viking colonists on the North Atlantic islands thought of themselves as European Christians. They kept in step with mainland changes in church architecture, burial customs, and units of measurement. That shared identity enabled a few thousand Greenlanders to cooperate with each other, withstand hardships, and maintain their existence in a harsh environment for four centuries. As we shall see, it also prevented them from learning from the Inuit, and from modifying their identity in ways that might have permitted them to survive beyond four centuries.
The six Viking colonies on North Atlantic islands constitute six parallel experiments in establishing societies derived from the same ancestral source. As I mentioned at the beginning of this chapter, those six experiments resulted in different outcomes: the Orkney, Shetland, and Faeroe colonies have continued to exist for more than a thousand years without their survival ever being in serious doubt; the Iceland colony also persisted but had to overcome poverty and serious political difficulties; the Greenland Norse died out after about 450 years; and the Vinland colony was abandoned within the first decade. Those differing outcomes are clearly related to environmental differences among the colonies. The four main environmental variables responsible for the different outcomes appear to be: ocean distances or sailing times by ship from Norway and Britain; resistance offered by non-Viking inhabitants, if there were any; suitability for agriculture, depending especially on latitude and local climate; and environmental fragility, especially susceptibility to soil erosion and deforestation.
With only six experimental outcomes but four variables that might explain those outcomes, we cannot hope to proceed in our search for explanations as we did in the Pacific, where we had 81 outcomes (81 islands) compared to only nine explanatory variables. For statistical correlational analysis to have any chance of succeeding, one needs many more separate experimental outcomes than there are variables to be tested. Hence, in the Pacific, with so many islands available, statistical analysis alone sufficed to determine the relative importance of those independent variables. In the North Atlantic, there are not nearly enough separate natural experiments to achieve that aim. A statistician, presented only with that information, would declare the Viking problem to be insoluble. This will be a frequent dilemma for historians trying to apply the comparative method to problems of human history: apparently too many potentially independent variables, and far too few separate outcomes to establish those variables’ importance statistically.
But historians know much more about human societies than just the initial environmental conditions and the final outcomes: they also have huge quantities of information about the sequence of steps connecting initial conditions to outcomes. Specifically, Viking scholars can test the importance of ocean sailing times by counting recorded numbers of ship sailings and reported cargos of the ships; they can test effects of indigenous resistance by historical accounts of fighting between Viking invaders and the locals; they can test suitability for agriculture by records of what plant and livestock species were actually grown; and they can test environmental fragility by historical signs of deforestation and soil erosion (such as pollen counts and fossili
zed pieces of plants), and by identification of wood and other building materials. Drawing on this knowledge of intervening steps as well as of outcomes, let us now briefly examine five of the six North Atlantic colonies in sequence of increasing isolation and decreasing wealth: Orkney, Shetland, Faeroe, Iceland, and Vinland. The next two chapters will discuss in detail the fate of Viking Greenland.
The Orkneys are an island archipelago just off the northern tip of Britain, wrapped around the large sheltered harbor of Scapa Flow that served as the main base for the British navy in both world wars. From John O’Groats, the northernmost point of the Scottish mainland, to the nearest Orkney Island is only 11 miles, and from the Orkneys to Norway barely a 24-hour sail in Viking ships. That made it easy for Norwegian Vikings to invade the Orkneys, to import whatever they needed from Norway or the British Isles, and to ship out their own exports cheaply. The Orkneys are so-called continental islands, really just a piece of the British mainland that became separated only when sea levels rose around the world with glacial melting at the end of the Ice Ages 14,000 years ago. Over that land bridge, many species of land mammals, including elk (alias red deer in Britain), otters, and hares, immigrated and provided good hunting. Viking invaders quickly subdued the indigenous population, known as the Picts.
Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed Page 25