Why Did the Vikings Leave Greenland?

NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA—According to a Live Science report, rising sea levels may have contributed to the abandonment of Viking settlements in southern Greenland. Marisa Julia Borreggine of Harvard University and her colleagues modeled estimated ice growth in southwestern Greenland between the time of the arrival of the Norse, around A.D. 985, and their departure in the fifteenth century. The study suggests that during the cooler temperatures of the Litte Ice Age, which began in the fourteenth century, the ice sheet advancing over most of Greenland grew heavier and weighed down the substrate underneath it, making coastal areas more prone to flooding. Gravitational attraction between the ice sheet and masses of sea ice would have pushed more sea water over the coast, Borreggine said, resulting in the flooding of Viking settlements by as much as 16 feet over an area of about 54 square miles. “A combination of climate and environmental change, the shifting resource landscape, the flux of supply and demand of exclusive products for the foreign market, and interactions with Inuit in the North all could have contributed to this out-migration,” Borreggine concluded. For more, go to "World Roundup: Greenland."