They Found 80 Vikings Buried in Greenland — Then the Young Women Vanished

September 1408. Inside the stone walls of Hvalsey Church in southern Greenland, Thorstein Olafsson marries Sigrid Björnsdóttir. It is the last event ever recorded in Norse Greenland, and by 1410 the couple had left for Iceland. What happened to the descendants of the Vikings who followed Erik the Red to Greenland around 985? For decades the accepted answer was simple. Proud farmers refused to live like their Inuit neighbors and starved as the Little Ice Age set in, a picture popularized by Jared Diamond's Collapse. A 2012 analysis of 80 Norse skeletons by Danish and Canadian scientists challenged it. By the 1300s, seals supplied 50–80% of the colonists' food. And in the colony's final graves, young women were in short supply, a sign that the next generation may have been quietly sailing away. The seven links behind the collapse: A sales-pitch name promising a green land A culture where cattle and land meant power Wealth built on walrus ivory, until elephant ivory flooded European markets The 1261 pledge to Norway's king, which left trade dependent on royal permission A cooling climate, and a sea that rose by up to 3.3 meters as the ice sheet grew The Western Settlement, which emptied first and was reportedly found deserted by Ivar Bardarson Ships that carried the young away, until the royal trading ship sank in 1369 Along the way, you'll meet: • Niels Lynnerup, the University of Copenhagen anthropologist who read the bones • Jette Arneborg, the archaeologist who argues identity limited how far the colonists could change • Kolgrim, burned at the stake in 1407 for alleged sorcery • Hans Egede, the missionary who arrived in 1721 to find the Norse and found only the Inuit The documentary also weighs the case against the emigration theory. And it looks at a modern parallel: rural eastern Germany after reunification, where young women were the first to leave. Key References & Sources Scientific research • Nelson, Heinemeier, Lynnerup, Arneborg et al. (2012), "An Isotopic Analysis of the Diet of the Greenland Norse," Journal of the North Atlantic, Special Volume 3 • Lynnerup, N. (1998), The Greenland Norse: A Biological-Anthropological Study • Ancient walrus DNA and the medieval ivory trade, University of Oslo and University of Cambridge, Proceedings of the Royal Society B (2018) • Barrett and colleagues (2020), walrus over-hunting and the decline of Norse Greenland • Borreggine et al. (2023), sea-level rise in Southwest Greenland, PNAS • Kröhnert & Vollmer, research on gender-specific migration from eastern Germany Historical records • Ivar Bardarson's 14th-century account of the Western Settlement, which survives in later copies • Icelandic annals and letters on the 1407 Kolgrim trial and the 1408 Hvalsey wedding • Pope Alexander VI's 1492 letter on Greenland's isolation • Accounts of Hans Egede's 1721 mission Books and experts • Jared Diamond, Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed (2005) • Jette Arneborg, National Museum of Denmark Know someone who still thinks the Greenland Vikings simply froze to death? Send them this documentary. Then tell us below which of the seven links you think did the most damage, and turn on notifications so you don't miss our next deep dive into the medieval world. #VikingHistory #NorseGreenland #ErikTheRed #MedievalHistory #lostcivilizations