Abstract
The fate of Norse farming settlements in southwest Greenland has often been seen as one of the great mysteries of North Atlantic colonization and expansion. Preservation of organic remains in the permafrost of the area of the Western Settlement, inland from the modern capital Nuuk, allowed very detailed study of the phases of occupation. Samples were taken from house floors and middens during the process of archaeological excavations and from insect remains were abstracted and identified in the laboratory. In this study, we present a new paleoecological approach principally examining the fossil fly faunas from house floors. The results of our study provide contrasting detailed pictures of the demise of two neighboring farms, Gården under Sandet and Nipaatsoq, one where abandonment appears as part of a normal process of site selection and desertion, and the other where the end was more traumatic. The level of detail, which was obtained by analysis of the dipterous (true fly) remains, exceeds all previous work and provides insights otherwise unobtainable.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Ágústsson H (1983) Rekonstruktionen af Stöng. In: Ólafsson G (ed.) Hus, Gård och Bebyggelse. Föredrag fran det XVI nordiska arkeologmötet, Island 1982. Reykjavík, Þjóðminjasafn Íslands, pp 13–20
Amorosi T, Buckland PC, Ólafsson G, Sadler, JP, Skidmore P (1992) Status and the palaeoecological record: a discussion of results from Bessastadir, Iceland. In: Morris C, Rackham J (eds) Norse and later settlement and subsistence in the North Atlantic. Department of Archaeology, University of Glasgow, Glasgow, pp 151–167
Andreasen C (1982) Nipaitsoq og Vesterbygden. Grønland 30:177–188
Arneborg J (2003) Norse Greenland: reflections on settlement and depopulation. In: Barrett JH (ed) Contact, continuity, and collapse. The Norse colonization of the North Atlantic. Turnhout, Brepols, pp 163–181
Arneborg J, Gulløv HK (1998) Man, culture and environment in ancient Greenland. The Danish National Museum and Danish Polar Center, Copenhagen
Arneborg J, Heinemeier J, Lynnerup N, Nielsen HL, Rud N, Sveinbjörnsdóttir AE (1999) Change of diet of the Greenland Vikings determined from stable isotope analysis and 14C dating of their bones. Radiocarbon 41(2):157–168
Barlow LK, Sadler JP, Ogilvie A, Buckland PC, Amorosi T, Ingimundarsson JH, Skidmore P, Dugmore AJ, McGovern TH (1998) Ice core and environmental evidence for the end of Norse Greenland. Holocene 7:489–499
Berglund J (1986) The decline of the Norse settlement in Greenland. Arc Anthropol 23:109–135
Berglund J (2000) The farm beneath the sand. In: Fitzhugh WW, Ward EI (eds) Vikings. The North Atlantic saga. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, pp 295–303
Böcher J, Fredskild B (1993) Plant and arthropod remains from the palaeo-Eskimo site on Qeqertasussuk, West Greenland. Medd Grønl Geosci 30:35
Buckland PC, Perry D (1989) Ectoparasites of sheep from Stóraborg, Iceland and their interpretation. Piss, parasites and people, a palaeoecological perspective. Hikuin 15:37–46
Buckland PC, Sveinbjarnardóttir G, Savory D, McGovern TH, Skidmore P, Andreasen C (1983) Norsemen at Nipaitsoq, Greenland. A palaeoecological investigation. Norw Archaeol Rev 16:86–98
Buckland PC, McGovern TH, Sadler JP, Skidmore, P (1994) Twig layers, floors and middens. Recent palaeoecological research in the Western Settlement, Greenland. In: Ambrosiani B, Clarke H (eds) Developments around the Baltic and the North Sea in the Viking Age (twelfth Viking congress). Birka Studies, Stockholm, pp 132–143
Buckland PC, Buckland PI, Skidmore P (1999) Insect remains from GUS: an interim report. In: Arneborg J, Gulløv HC (eds) Man, culture and environment in ancient Greenland. Copenhagen, Danish National Museum & Danish Polar Centre, Copenhagen, pp 74–79
Cordain L, Miller JB, Eaton SB, Mann N, Holt SHA, Speth JD (2000) Plant–animal subsistence ratios and macronutrient energy estimations in worldwide hunter–gatherer diets. Am J Clin Nutr 71:682–92
Diamond J (2005) Collapse. How societies choose to fail or survive. Penguin, London
Egede H (1925) Relationer fra Grønland 1721–36 og Det gamle Grønlands nye Perlustration. In: Bobè L (ed) Medd, Grøn 54: 1–458
Fredskild B (1992) Erosion and vegetation change in south Greenland caused by agriculture. Geogr Tidsskr 92:14–21
Halldórsson Ó (1978) Grønlands í miðaldaritum. Sögufélag, Reykjavík
Jansen HM (1972) A critical account of the written and archaeological sources’ evidence concerning the Norse settlements in Greenland. Medd Grønl 182(4):1–158
Jónsson F (1930) Det gamle Grønlands beskrivelse af Ivar Baardsson. Levin and Munksgaard, Copenhagen
Keller C (1991) Vikings in the West Atlantic: a model of Norse Greenlandic medieval society. Acta Archaeol 61:126–141
Lynnerup N (1998) The Greenland Norse. A biological–anthropological study. Medd Grønl Man Soc 24:1–149
Lynnerup N, Nørby S (2004) The Greenland Norse: bones, graves, computers, and DNA. Polar Rec 40: 107–114
Magnus O (1998) A Description of the Northern Peoples (book 17,4), 2nd series. In: Foote PG (ed) London, Hakluyt Society, London
McGovern TH (1979) Thule–Norse interaction in SW Greenland: a speculative model. In McCartney AP (ed) Thule Eskimo Culture: an anthropological retrospective. National Museum of Man Mercury Series, Archaeological Survey of Canada 88, Ottawa
McGovern TH (2000) The demise of Norse Greenland. In: Fitzhugh WW, Ward EI (eds) Vikings. The North Atlantic saga. Smithsonian Institution, Washington, pp 327–340
McGovern TH, Jordan R (1982) Settlement and land use in the Inner Fjords of Godthab District, West Greenland. Arc Anthropol 19:63–80
Osborne PJ (1983) An insect fauna from a modern cesspit and its Comparison with probable cesspit assemblages from archaeological sites. J Archaeol Sci 10:453–463
Outram AK (2003) Comparing levels of subsistence stress amongst Norse settlers in Iceland and Greenland using levels of bone fat exploitation as an indicator. Env Archaeol 8:119–128
Panagiotakopulu E (2004) Dipterous remains and archaeological interpretation. J Archaeol Sci 31:1675–1684
Rognes K (1991) Blowflies (Diptera, Calliphoridae) of Fennoscandia and Denmark Leiden, Brill Series Fauna entomologica Scandinavica
Sadler JP, Skidmore P (1995) Introductions, extinctions or continuity: faunal change in the North Atlantic. In: Butlin R, Roberts N (eds) Human impact and adaptation: ecological relations in historical time. Blackwell, Oxford, pp 206–225
Schweger CE (1998) Geoarchaeology of the GUS site: a preliminary framework. In: Arneborg J, Gulløv HK (eds) Man, culture and environment in Ancient Greenland. Danish National Museum and Danish Polar Center, Copenhagen, pp 14–18
Seaver KA (1996) The frozen echo. Greenland and the exploration of North America ca. AD 1000–1500. Stanford University Press, Stanford
Skidmore P (1992) Notes on the taxonomy of the puparia of British Sphaeroceridae. Dipterist’s Digest 13:6–22
Speth JD (1983) Bison kills and bone counts. Decision making by ancient hunters. University of Chicago Press, Chicago
Steffansson V (1956) The fat of the land. MacMillan, New York
Thórhallsdóttir AG, Thorsteinsson I (1993) Behaviour and plant selection. Icelandic Agric Sci 7:59–77
Vebæk CL (1992) Vatnahverfi—an inland district of the Eastern Settlement in Greenland. Medd Grønl Man Soc 17:1–132
Acknowledgements
The map and farm plan were redrawn by Anastasios Panagiotakopoulos to whom we are grateful. We would also like to thank Jette Arneborg, National Museum of Denmark, Joel Berglund, formerly codirector of the National Museum of Greenland, and Guðmundur Ólafsson, National Museum of Iceland, for providing samples and information on the sites. Thanks are also due to Phil Buckland and Julie Ross for much of the field sampling. Claus Andreasen, Tom McGovern, Jared Diamond, Christian Keller, and Kevin Edwards provided useful comments. The research was funded by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust (UK).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Electronic supplementary material
Below is the linked to the electronic supplementary material.
ESM S1
Gården under Sandet eight phases of occupation (table) (PDF 54 kb)
ESM S2
Diptera and other invertebrate groups from deposits at GUS. For the purposes of this paper the insects are split in three groups: Group A includes species that belong to the natural fauna and was brought into the farm accidentally with turf, roof or floor materials etc. Under group B are all species that are dependent on omnivorous animals and their food, including humans. Group C includes ectoparasites and flies, which are attached to sheep and goat. The reasoning behind the grouping is to show (S1) that herbivore presence is not always related to human occupation (table) (PDF 148 kb)
ESM S3
Diptera from deposits at Nipaatsoq. Diptera from four samples from the floors of living room (III), hall (IV), and bedroom (VI) at Nipaatsoq. Samples VIa and VIb come from the earlier and the last phase of the bedroom floor, respectively. Sample VIc is from the moss used as bedding (table) (PDF 16 kb)
ESM S4
Diptera and other invertebrate groups from deposits at GUS. Drop line chart of insect data (groups A, B, and C) presented in Table 2. The absence of synanthropic groups is noted in several phases (figure) (JPG 1631 kb)
ESM S5
Diptera from deposits at Nipaatsoq. Drop line chart of fly data from Nipaatsoq, presented in Table 3. Carrion feeding species appear in large numbers during the last phase in the bedroom (VIb) (figure) (JPG 1603 kb)
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Panagiotakopulu, E., Skidmore, P. & Buckland, P. Fossil insect evidence for the end of the Western Settlement in Norse Greenland. Naturwissenschaften 94, 300–306 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-006-0199-6
Received:
Revised:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-006-0199-6