Monthly Archives: January 2022

The Greenland Norse

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The Greenland Norse were the Norwegian settlers who lived in Greenland from the 980s to c.1450. They scratched out a living on the island’s southern end, traded with Inuit and sold ivory to Europe. By the 15th century, their society had collapsed. What became of it may never be known.

Greenland is the world’s second-largest ice sheet and largest island. It is an Arctic climate with only a few trees growing along its southern coast. Temperatures never surpass 10ºC, even in summer. 70% of Greenland is pack ice and its main inhabitants are seals, caribou, walrus and polar bears.

The name ‘Greenland’ comes from Erik the Red, a Viking explorer who wanted to attract settlers. To con them into thinking it was anything but an Arctic waste, he gave it the ‘favourable name’ of Greenland. His native Iceland was, and is, far greener than Greenland has ever been.

The Norse built two colonies – the Western and Eastern Settlements. The Greenland colonies peaked at 2,000 people around the year 1250. They brought cows from Iceland to farm and grew barley in scarce ice-free soil along the coast. The journey from Iceland was perilous – of Eric the Red’s 24 ships, only 14 survived.

The Greenland colony was never self-sufficient. It relied on regular shipments of iron and other goods from Norway. The Norse killed walrus for their ivory. As it was in high demand in Europe, the colonies could sustain themselves through trade with the Norwegians who visited every year. The royal crown of Austria, allegedly of unicorn horn, is actually narwhal.

Erik the Red’s father, Thorvald, left Norway for Iceland when he murdered his neighbour. Similar circumstances forced Eric to flee west, where he found Greenland. Erik’s son Leif sailed further west and landed in Newfoundland, Canada. He, not Colombus, was the first European to set foot in the Americas. The Norse clashed with the indigenous tribes, who drove them back to the sea. 

Inuit (Thule) whom Norse called Skraelings, settled Greenland in the 13th century from the north. They were better adapted for Arctic life – Inuit hunted instead of farmed, wore sealskins and burned blubber instead of wood. Norse and Inuit accounts record violence between the two peoples. The Norse also traded with their neighbours but never adapted to their way of life.

In the 1360s, the smaller ‘western settlement’ stopped sending tribute to Norway. When Ivar Bardsson investigated, he found abandoned houses and animals running free but no human bodies. Its people’s fate remains a mystery.

By 1400, the eastern settlement too, was in decline. The reasons are many:

  • The Medieval Warm Period ended in 1200, and the Little Ice Age (c.1350 – 1800) lowered world temperatures. Farming in Greenland was no longer sustainable. The Norse suffered while the Inuit prevailed. 
  • The Black Death wiped out 60% of Norway’s population. It did not spare Bergen – the port where merchants sailed for Greenland, and German pirates sacked it in 1393.
  • As the Portuguese opened trade with Africa and India in the 1500s, demand for walrus ivory plummeted and with it the Greenland economy.

The collapse of the Greenland Norse was not immediate. Younger people left, while the older remained and starved. When Norwegian missionary Hans Egede arrived in 1721, he met only Inuit hunters. The Norse left only ruins.

Sources: Fall of Civilizations Podcast, Pulitzer Centre, World History Encyclopedia

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The Irish Rebellion of 1798

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The United Irish Rebellion of 1798 was Ireland’s first attempt at forming an independent republic. Both Protestants and Catholics took up arms against the British Crown. Though crushed, their struggle forever changed the nature of Irish nationalism.

Ireland was Britain’s first colony– the blueprint for its empire. The English conquered the island in 1171 and again in the 1680s. They dispossessed the natives and gave their land to settlers. By the 17th century, there were three populations:

  • Irish Catholics – native majority population, Irish and English speaking, Catholic.
  • Ulster-Scots – Scottish settlers and their descendants, concentrated in Northern Ireland, English speaking, Presbyterian.
  • Anglo-Irish – English settlers and their descendants based in Dublin, English speaking, Anglican.

Ireland had a parliament but only landed Protestants could stand or vote, meaning the Anglo-Irish minority had control. Catholics could not purchase or inherit land.

The Irish had supported the exiled King James II, a Catholic, at the Battle of the Boyne in 1691. By the 1780s, a new ideology was afoot – republicanism. It would be the dominant expression of Irish nationalism until the present day. Inspired by the American and French revolutions, activists promoted an Irish republic – independent, democratic and without a king.

The Society of United Irishmen was a republican movement founded in 1791. At first, they demanded greater autonomy for the Irish parliament and political rights for Presbyterians and Catholics but by 1794 they sought independence from Britain. Most of the Society’s leadership were Protestant, its rank and file Catholic.

Portrait of Theobald Wolfe Tone (1763-98)

Wolfe Tone (above) allied Presbyterians and Catholics against their common enemy. He was exiled and spent the 1790s lobbying support from France and the USA. Across the country, rebels formed cells and armed themselves with pikes.

In 1798, the ‘United Irishmen’ rose. Word had slipped to the British, however who arrested or murdered the uprising’s leaders, leaving it uncoordinated. The rebels’ only success was in Wexford and Ulster where they captured a few towns, only to be defeated by better-armed British forces. There were massacres on both sides. Wolfe Tone landed in County Mayo with 1,000 French troops, met defeat and cut his own throat before his hanging. After only a few months, British troops and Protestant militias had crushed the rebellion.

10,000-70,000 died – mainly rebels. Thousands more were exiled to Australian penal colonies. The Irish parliament dissolved itself and until 1922 Ireland was ruled directly from London. Sectarian differences hardened: Ulster Presbyterians aligned with the British while republicanism became an increasingly Catholic movement. The seeds of later tensions were sown.

Most of the rebels were poorly equipped. They fought with pikes and carried pocket sacks full of barley seeds to eat. After the battles, the British piled the dead into mass graves across the country, nicknamed ‘croppy holes’. At springtime, shoots of barley grew, fertilised by the rebel dead. When cut down, they resurfaced the following spring. To the Irish, the barley symbolised the tenacity of their struggle – though beaten and cut down they would rise again and again.

Sources: 1916 Walking Tours, Irish History, National Army Museum UK