Most of us hear the story of how the Vikings, or Norse, sailed across the stormy Atlantic and settled Iceland. Many times we hear about the Vikings in Vinland. But too often, history discussions skip over the Norse in Greenland. These communities were long-lived outposts at the edge of an ice sheet 12,000 feet tall—they were not, however, alone. Today we dive briefly into the story of how the Norse and Thule people settled a vicious icy domain, and survived for centuries.

Image Sources:

Canadian Museum of History

Google Earth

Wikipedia Commons

Flickr

Elfshot Archaeology http://elfshotgallery.blogspot.com/2009/03/what-is-elfshot.html

Information Sources:

Canadian Museum of History

https://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/

Greenlanders, Whales, and Whaling: Sustainability and Self-Determination in the Arctic. By Richard A. Caulfield

Handbook of Climatology, Part 1. By Julius von Hann, Robert DeCourcy Ward

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http://nsidc.org/arcticseaicenews/2020/03/

https://www.pnas.org/content/109/10/3658

Archaeology of Frontiers & Boundaries. By J ROBINSON

https://archive.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/

https://www.heritage.nf.ca/articles/aboriginal/thule.php

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https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspb.2018.0978

https://www.jstor.org/stable/23006521

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Lepus arcticus (Arctic hare), Animal Diversity Web, University of Michigan Museum of Zoology.

Bennike, Ole; Andreasen, Claus (2005). "New dates of musk-ox (Ovibos moschatus) remains from northwest Greenland". Polar Record. 41 (2): 125–129.

Gunn, A. (2016). "Rangifer tarandus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2016

Thomas, Henry; Dana Lee Thomas (1972). Living Adventures in Science. Ayer Publishing. pp. 196–201.

The Wave Energy Concentration at the Agulhas Current off South Africa

I. V. Lavrenov. Natural Hazards volume 17, pages 117–127 (1998)