Did Cows Doom The Norse Colony On Greenland?

Get MagellanTV here: try.magellantv.com/historywit... & get an exclusive offer extended to our viewers: an extra month FREE. MagellanTV is a new kind of streaming service run by filmmakers with 2,000+ documentaries! Check out our personal recommendation and MagellanTV’s exclusive playlists: www.magellantv.com/explore/hi...
Norse explorers sited the landmass of Greenland already early on in the 10th Century, though the first permanent colony was founded there by Erik the Red in 985, after which it continued to be inhabited by Scandinavians into the 15th Century when the settlement disappeared. In this video I put forward the theory that the Norse obsession and cultural prestige attached to the rearing of cattle played a role in their demise.
Go Fund My Windmills (Patreon):
/ historywithhilbert
Join in the Banter on Twitter:
/ historywhilbert
Enter the Fray on Facebook:
/ historywhilbert
Indulge in some Instagram..?(the alliteration needs to stop):
/ historywithhilbert
Music Used:
"Dub Feral" - Kevin MacLeod
"Echoes of Time" - Kevin MacLeod
"Lost Frontier" - Kevin MacLeod
"Expeditionary" - Kevin MacLeod
"Ritual” - Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 License
Send me an email if you'd be interested in doing a collaboration! [e-mail]
#Vikings #Norse #Greenland

[@gavinparks5386]

Very interesting . I spent my life rearing and milking cattle on an upland farm in the West of Scotland. The summers got steadily wetter , and shorter. The winters though much milder , stormier and wetter got longer and longer. The more acres devoted to winter feed , the fewer cows could graze in summer , and the more costly to produce the milk became! I can sympathise with those vikings! I've retired and left the farm , after my family were there for 151 years.

[@historywithhilbert146]

That's a really interesting perspective actually thank you for sharing!

[@francescoazzoni3445]

Sad story, here in northern Italy all the farm in inhospitable terrain are being abandoned and so the alpine pastoral traditions and the alpine grassland are disappearing very fast.

[@gavinparks5386]

@@historywithhilbert146 Thanks. I think I might be watching more of your videos soon , in isolation!

[@stevep5408]

sorry for your loss of the family homestead. Nature is remorseless and economics heartless!

[@gavinparks5386]

@@HerneHunter Is this comment to me? I've been lucky to retire and moved downhill to a country bungalow, near a big river. Spring comes a lot earlier here , but now I think about flooding - which we never had on top of the hill!

[@reecev2087]

I’m really intrigued about those two different groups of “native” greenlanders. Please do a video on it

[@stumccabe]

Cutting down forests to allow animals to graze also happened on Dartmoor, I believe, In the Neolithic period. The forests have never recovered in the several thousand years since they were destroyed.

[@historywithhilbert146]

Yeah that's a good comparison, I think there the soil acidified as well and so you got a lot of bogs and peat as well as the open moor.

[@Simonsvids]

Not surprised since there has been continuously sheep roaming around there eating every grass blade and shoot that grows. Remove the animals, plant the right seeds and trees would grow back.

[@francescoazzoni3445]

I once read that probably the Scottish Highlands used to be dense forest but neolithic/bronze age farmer cut the trees down and wind/poor weather/poor soil made it impossible for trees to grow back when humans leaved the area. Unfortunately i have found no info about that, do you know anything about the matter?

[@stumccabe]

Francesco Azzoni . I don't know anything about Scotland, but it seems that this sort of thing happened throughout Britain.

[@kaloarepo288]

The whole of the Mediterranean region -Greece,Turkey,Italy,Spain,the Balkans etc about three thousand years ago was all heavily forested with broadleaf trees like oaks,beech etc etc -most got cut down and voracious goats did the rest -now we have nothing but rocky slopes thanks to erosion -your typical Mediterranean maqui landscape -it was not always like this.

[@daisybrain9423]

0:00 I thought this was a painting of some crooked winter trees next to a snowy road tilted 90°.

[@mortache]

Saw a Veritasium video about the "vikings" eating cod liver oil for the vitamin D because above 42 latitude there isn't enough sunlight in winters to make any. But Greenland settlements didn't do that, and exhumed bones show signs of rickets

[@Orphen42O]

With little sunlight, the Norse probably had a Vitamin D deficiency. Also, without the influx of people, people intermarried within their small community, making negative genetic conditions more prevalent.

[@mortache]

@@Orphen42O I'm not sure if low genetic diversity was all that unique there compared to the rest of the remote small villages.

[@edgelord8337]

Cows: we successfully ruined humans attempt to enslave us for generations and stopped the colonization of the North for a couple hundred years. Viking: do you think those cows have it out for us? Other viking: nah I think you are thinking to deep.

[@francescoazzoni3445]

Always cows: pass smallpox to humans giving Europeans the deadliest weapon to conquer America

[@slappy8941]

To and too and different words with different meanings.

[@tommy-er6hh]

@@francescoazzoni3445 cow do not pass small pox, they pass cow pox - which immunizes AGAINST small pox. Perhaps your are thinking of tuberculosis, which cows pass in the milk to humans, and contaminate the ground with their manure for the next cow generation .....

[@Depipro]

@@slappy8941 Don't be cowed by that.

[@RRW359]

@@tommy-er6hh It immunizes against Smallpox because it's a milder version of the same virus which came from Cows. At one point Cows passed either Smallpox to Humans or passed Cowpox which mutated into Smallpox over time. Either way Cows ultimately gave us Smallpox.

[@LuvBorderCollies]

What did the archeologists find......sheep bones. I doubt the Norse on Greenland had enough cows to make a difference. Cows are a pain to transport because of their size and amount of feed. Cows grow slower. Baby calves die if you look cross-eyed at them, but seriously they are hard to keep alive and you lose a distressing percentage of your calves. But sheep are a different story as are goats. Smaller size, eat stuff that cows reject, produce wool every year, they pop out twin babies very common and even triplets. Problem with sheep/goats is they eat the grass down to the dirt which can kill the grass. Cows don't do that. So if you're in a deteriorating climate situation where the grass has less and less ability to re-grow, the sheep are going to be a BIG liability as sooner or later the pastures will be nothing but dirt. I grew up on a working livestock and grain farm so I've got a pretty good grasp of the topic. Also there's some really good documentaries and papers about the Norse decline in Greenland. The Medieval Warm Period was great from the 900's to the 1400's but all good things come to an end.

[@historywithhilbert146]

Actually cattle bones are found more frequently even on the poorer farms (but in smaller numbers hence their designation as poorer). Strontium analysis of two early cow bones found on Greenland were shown to have been born on Iceland and it's not unfeasible that before the Denmark Straight was filled with ice bergs year-round the knarr-style ships could transport several animals from one to the other. That's interesting about sheep and goats destroying the ground - that's why on Iceland they rotated which fields they allowed them to graze so they didn't destroy their environment completely. Thanks for sharing this with me! If you're interested in the findings from Greenland: www.researchgate.net/publication/317175979_Zooarchaeology_of_the_Scandinavian_settlements_in_Iceland_and_Greenland_diverging_pathways

[@LuvBorderCollies]

@@historywithhilbert146 Thanks for the paper link, hadn't seen that one. Here's a good article from Archeology Magazine archive.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/ I think it was a PBS documentary where the archeologists discovered bones of a lamb that had been eaten right after being born. This fit the emerging scenario the remaining Norse were starving at the time(at the end). So my question was...why didn't they fish? Don't recall where I got this but apparently their boat fleet had dwindled severely over time. With little wood available to fix ships they cannibalized other ships for parts. I wonder what their supply of fishing nets looked like? The archeologists haven't found any starvation victims, not yet anyway. So the current plausible theory is the Norse survivors packed up and left by boat, then disappeared from history probably at sea. If I find those videos I'll post links to them.

[@LuvBorderCollies]

Here's the PBS show from their series Secrets of the Dead kzbin.info/www/bejne/aZXUf56aj8llkMU

[@kamielheeres8687]

What about pigs? They also eat almost anything, reproduce incredibly fast and their ploughing of the ground with their snouts during foraging might even improve the growth of vegetation.

[@abcjuniormilton]

@@LuvBorderCollies I just have one question: baby calves really die if you look cross-eyed at them? How can merely looking at them kill them?

[@thomasraahauge5231]

I lived in Greenland fron '79 to '84, and we went to visit Brattahlíð when our class went of field trip to Qassiarsuk (the nearby settlement), so this was a trip down memory lane. Thank you for sharing 😊

[@mikesands4681]

Narrator: “... and no one would think of farming on an iceberg right?” Me: “ of Norse they would! They would grow iceberg lettuce!”

[@georgeptolemy7260]

👏

[@grubbybum3614]

@12:00 "The native people" - Hilbert I'm 80% sure that Scandinavians arrived first, at least within Southern Greenland.

[@grubbybum3614]

... in fact, it might be that the Vikings never picked up on the Inuits mastery of the environment, because the Vikings simply never met the Inuit (or were so far apart that they couldn't observe the way they fished or used seal oil).

[@mikesands4681]

@@grubbybum3614 the inuits were late comers to the Canadian Arctic, perhaps 600 to 1300, replacing less maritime adapted indigenous peoples in the islands and Greenland . Yes there was some distance between their original settlements but likely bumped into each other a few times

[@ThatIcelandicDude]

Describing Skallagrím as being a poor farmer is pretty ridiculous, He was one of the wealthiest chieftains in the country at the time, Being one of the earliest settlers in the country he was able to lay claim to a huge amount of territory, Claiming the entirety of Borgarfjörður as his own, A fjord in the west that happens to be home to some of the best farmland in the country and it also hold's a very strategic position in the country, Connecting the west, North and south together virtually all traffic between those points had to go through his land. He also had a large number of men loyal to him, who were allowed to settle his land. So yeah put it simply Skallagrímur was wealthy, very wealthy. Also, Fé in old Icelandic/Norse (and modern-day Icelandic) Means sheep, not cattle. And I feel like the claim that Iceland was covered in a forest from shore to shore needs a bit of a situation, As yes it is technically correct that it was, I would argue that most people would not consider the trees native to Iceland proper tree's, The only tree native to the country is "Ilmbjörk" a type of Birch that although can grow pretty big, in the wast majority of cases can more accurately be described as a bush rather than a tree, It also happens that this type of tree does not grow in a straight line, rather all over the place and thus is useless for building out of. Which is also thought to be one of the main reasons why the Norse were so eager to get rid of it, As it was useless as a building material and occupied land that could otherwise be used for farming, There was no reason to keep it around and therefore it is likely that they just chopped it down to make way space for agriculture instead of actually using it all for fuel. What seems to support that theory is the fact that the few still remaining native forests in the country survive only in places that would have otherwise been useless for agriculture, such as Lava fields and if there really was such a high demand for fuel, it would seem likely they would have gone for them too. Anyway, I just wanted to point that out, Still a fantastic video as always.

[@toade1583]

Sauður means sheep in Old Norse and Rowan and Poplar trees are also found in Iceland, not to mention Ilmbjörk is certainly a tree, it's a type of Birch tree, it looks nothing like a bush. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betula_pubescens

[@ThatIcelandicDude]

@@toade1583 Lad there are many terms for sheep in old Norse. Such as Fé, rollur and Kindur. Sauður means ram and so does Hrútur. Also you don't need to tell me what Ilmbjörk looks like as I grew around it, I've even planted a few. Ilmjörk is the only native tree to Iceland everything else was later imported and unless it grows under perfect conditions it usually recembles a bush far more than it does a tree. But more importantly even in ideal circumstances it still doesn't grow in a straight line and so it is useless for building with.

[@RealitiesCookiejar]

the word 'cattle' actually refers to all animals kept as livestock, although in the modern day it is typically used exclusively for cows. Therefore stickily speaking, the translation is correct. Also the birch you are describing for iceland sounds like downy birch which can actually grow really big and be of sufficient size with protruding limbs of sufficient quality for building materials however it takes a very long time and requires specific conditions. I wouldnt rule out that the native trees were not cut down for building use, its quite possible.

[@skipperson4077]

to the point: I doubt Vikings could have adapted/made a living off seals and the handful of other fauna (but surely would have been better off with reindeer... friends of mine were in a band that got a gig playing in an Alaskan Inuit community north of the Arctic Circle. They were mostly Japanese-American from Hawaii thus way into fishing and eating raw fish but when they were given gifts of seal and beluga whale oil they said trying to eat/drink same was really rough, only one in the group could hold it down and reported 'fish-oil burps'. It's really an acquired taste to put it mildly but it holds a key to Inuit life in the Arctic and I've read that Inuits can tolerate a much high cholesterol level than average humans, an likely long-term adaption to this high-oil diet, nasty but essential calories and nutrients including Vitamin D which we otherwise get from the sun. This is quite valuable to Inuits and they probably watched their seal hunting areas in the same way the Vikings watched their fields and cattle. Seals are mostly ambushed by hunters, thus Inuits would have been both armed and hidden in these areas.

[@historywithhilbert146]

That's a really interesting story - thank you for sharing that with me! I can definitely see how generations upon generations of the practice would breed a greater tolerance within the Inuit population. The Norse did hunt seals as well but just seasonally and in large boats - once the forests were gone they had little access to wood and couldn't A. build more and B. repair these ships while the Inuit all hunted in individual kayaks and could do this all year round.

[@lakrids-pibe]

I have friends from the Faroe Islands, and they served pilot whale (grindahvalur) for me once. It has a really strong fishy odor. I could eat horse meat again, but whale meat needs a lot of help.

[@Sutorenja]

we norwegians still eat seal, whale and drink fishoil (if you are a health nut)

[@thomasraahauge5231]

Reindeer hunting requires a lot of skill, co-ordination, and suited weapons. I have no knowledge of Norse hunting of reindeer. Some of my cousins are avid reindeer hunters, but acquiring a permit for reindeer hunting in Greenland is not easy. Reindeer is a delicacy, unlike seal which tastes . . . a lot less delicate.

[@piperar2014]

Sven: Think we could tame a musk ox? Ole: Good luck with that, Sven.

[@justbecause3187]

There are interesting parallels with the Easter Islanders here I think. The cows and deforestation make for an interesting and scary story of a people desperately clinging to life in an isolated and failing settlement.

[@chubbymoth5810]

Cool,.. I never realised the Greenland colony was more than just a few settlers. I makes one wonder if tales of this venture had reached the later explorers.

[@thomasraahauge5231]

The contact with the Norse settlement withered away in the 14th century, but the tales lived on. The Norwegian colonists (Denmark and Norway was unified in 1536 following the demise of the Kalmar Union) that went forth in the 18th century were indeed looking for their long lost relatives. They were also keen whale hunters, as whale oil was just as hard cash as oil is today.

[@siggiAg86]

Fé in Icelandic litteraly means sheeps, but it actually means money :) The english word Fee probably comes from fé. Cattle was hearded and used in Iceland through the Middle Ages. Rich Goðar owned lot of cattle. Actually wealth was meadured by how much cattle you had. But after 1300, it started to get colder. The little ice age began and cattle hearding was not as feasable. So people resorted more to sheeps. If we'd kept the cattle, the word for money would today perhaps be cattle (I. nautgripir) lolz...

[@olafur2463]

The word Fé has two meanings in Modern Icelandic, sheep and money. There is another word for sheep in Modern Icelandic which is Kind, and there is also another word in Modern Icelandic for money which is peningur.

[@unnamedchannel2202]

me: Nice, a picture of trees in winter rotated 90° counterclockwise. Hilbert: This is Greenland ...

[@ibbi30]

5:15 Skallagrímur was not a poorer farmer. He was in fact a chieftain and among the richest men in Iceland. He just happens to have sheep, most probably in addition to cattle and other animals. In the sagas he is said to have settled a vast area, hundreds of square kilometers in size, but like other "super-settlers" of the settlement period, he gives out tracts of lands to friends and followers. After his day his family had a chieftainship (goðorð) for a while.

[@robertnoonan9555]

Excellent video, thanks

[@volkerwendt3061]

well, very good video. Some remarks/questions though: First German word for cattle is Vieh (pronounced "fee";)) and in the region were I come from, "our" part of Frisisa, the older farmers still keep this cattle=wealth equation alive, as stupid as this may be in our days. Second, I know Greenland was way warmer back in the day, but forests? Came as a great surprise. Third, I learned some years ago they were supplying hay and wood from America, hence the names of Helluland and Markland. Oh, and before I forget, I'd love to watch more stuff about norse Greenland. Thanks a lot

[@thomasraahauge5231]

The forests of Greenland were of arctic birch, similar to the one found in Iceland. Not suited for building anything but the crudest huts and dinghies, and in most places more of a shrubbery than a forest. I don't think modern day Europeans would call it "forest". Leif Ericson (aka Leif the Fortunate) called his new found land Vinland ~ vine land. Maybe as a form of propaganda to attract more prospectors and settlers.

[@toade1583]

I remember watching a video of a Englishman trying to get milk from a Elderly West Frisian man(this was in the Netherlands) by speaking to him in Old English. Farming is their livelihood so it somewhat makes sense why they would they would have that mindset. Their money comes from their farms and livestock so the more, the better for them.

[@butterman0007]

This was fascinating!!!

[@MatthewDoye]

Until relatively recently cutting browse from trees for feeding cattle was a vital rural task, it's only with the advent of contemporary soil improvement and artificial feeding practices that grass based feeding becomes possible. Even now cows will naturally browse from hedgerows and field trees whenever they have the opportunity, they will descend on storm blown trees and strip all the leaves and shoots within reach. Once the tree cover on Greenland shrank to a tipping point there would no longer have been enough nutrients available for the cattle no matter how much grass and hay they ate. A similar thing happened to much of upland Britain in the bronze age converting forest to Moor and peat bog.

[@secolerice]

Have you ever read the novel "The Greenlanders" by Jane Smiley? It goes over a lot of this and other causes of their demise. Very well researched. Also there is a book that went with the traveling exhibit Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga that has a section on Greenland with pictures and maps of those areas you discussed. I am very fascinated by Iceland and Greenland, both from a geological and historical perspective. My family are cattle ranchers in Wyoming. The cattle graze in the mountain forests in the summer so that the hay fields on the flat land can grow the cash crop and their winter food. I can see how not being able to do that would destroy the land. However, sheep eat the grass all the way down including the roots whereas cattle and goats do not. So sheep would not be the answer and you also would not have milk or milk products if you went that route.

[@ajrwilde14]

sheep can be milked

[@micahistory]

I had no idea how cows had such a large impact on Greenland

[@thomasraahauge5231]

There's a reason why Greenland imports it's milk and dairy products 😊

[@micahistory]

@@thomasraahauge5231 yes

[@RobertKaucher]

The etymology of the word cattle in English should be pointed out.

[@dcmccann11]

Cattle comes from chattel meaning (property with a head?), including sheep, goats, horse, cattle and slaves.

[@historywithhilbert146]

Could've been added but didn't think of it at the time.

[@Nabium]

Yeah, but it's from French so I don't know the relevance when he was talking about the Germanic word fehu.

[@thomasraahauge5231]

The roman latin word for money was _pecunia_ - derived from pecu ~ cattle. One of the proto currencies of ancient Rome was bronze ingots with a relief of a cow. Other proto currencies included ingots cast in a shape similar to the outline of a cow's pelt (with head, tail, and hoof removed) or ingots with a crude outline of a cow (full figure or just the head including horns) stamped into the ingot.

[@MaxSluiman]

Interessant!

[@harriehausenman8623]

nice one! 👍

[@HS-su3cf]

Cattle is not only portable wealth, it is also potable wealth.

[@thomasraahauge5231]

Grossly underrated comment! 🤪🤪🤪

[@mver191]

They also perhaps needed the cows to work the land with plows. Ground gets pretty hard in colder temperatures. Because they plowed the land and cut trees, the upper layers got loose and blown away. At some point nothing could be grown except grasses, and they started to breed and feed on their cows. Until it got too cold for the cows and retreated back to Iceland/Scandinavia.

[@Orphen42O]

I doubt that cows were used to pull plows. Oxen are better for plowing and pulling carts. I do not think the Vikings had oxen. Cattle were a luxury because sheep and goats were better suited to the climate. Did the sheep have to graze just on the farmer's land or could they wander around on any land?

[@francescoazzoni3445]

J. Diamond points out that the difference between this early form of colonialism and later european colonialism is the fact that later Europeans started to learn from natives and so they managed to survive in any kind of inhospitable land. In fact when danish settler came back to greenland in the XVII century they started to copy the locals hunting whales and seals instead of trying to recreate Denmark in Greenland

[@maligjokica]

if you liked colaps od civilisation from Diamond you will definatly like even more this podcast about greenland(it has very good episodes for estern island also) kzbin.info/www/bejne/mpbTZ2x3h6eBpqc

[@thomasraahauge5231]

Norwegian, not Danish. The Kingdom of Norway was under Danish sovereignty from 1536 to 1814. To be fair, this is a common misconception, since the (Norwegian) settlements/colonies in the Northern Atlantic (Greenland, Iceland, and the Faeroe Islands) were ceded to Denmark, following the peace treaty of Kiel in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars.

[@adorabasilwinterpock6035]

Thomas Raahauge Denmark ruled norway, norway was basically just a danish colony. Denmark annexed greenland again in 1721

[@lmlmd2714]

I've been going down a Norse Greenland rabbit hole recently, and read about the theory of the cattle focused economy leading to soil erosion, but I had no idea of the scale of these barn systems. 160 animals is an insane burden for such a marginal ecosystem. You have to wonder if and at what point they realised the setup they had was seriously threatening the future of their community and what they tried to do... as well as what their final steps were? Did the young and able see little future and over time drift back to Iceland or mainland Europe (My personal take is this seems most likely, based on what we see of modern depopulation of remote, marginal areas - such as the slow death of small regional towns in rural Spain, Italy and Australia)? Reach a communal decision that it was unsustainable or make several voyages out en-masse, leaving a few stragglers behind (an inuit oral history reports this happened after the norse settlements suffered repeated raids)? Disintegrate and dissolve into the Inuit population? Or cling on desperately and literally die out en-masse? I do believe they hung on longer than the last attested date of the 1408 wedding. We know of a captain Thorsteinn Ólafsson, an Icelander, whose ship arrived in 1046, and left Greenland in 1410, having had his own wedding on the island to a fellow Icelander, and his report doesn't mention any apparent desperation or mass emigration on his vessel - though there is a curious mention of a witch trial, which suggests maybe some religious unrest or internal strife? Claudius Claussøn mapped much of the coast not long afterwards (1420s) which suggests European contact was still ongoing at this point, and again doesn't seem to have reported any catastrophic situation. There's an apocryphal account of seafarers making supposedly "annual" journeys to Greenland to trade with Norse there up until the early 1480s (reported in Hans Egede's 1818 book "A Description of Greenland") but he regards that as unlikely. There seems to be a more reliable report of an Icelandic vessel arriving in the 1540s (having landed in Greenland unintentionally following a storm) to find a body on the beach of a fjord with Norse wollen clothing and metal knife, but no one else. I've tried to find more on those source but couldn't find any reports about the state of the body. Given the climate preserves such items extremely well, it's possible the body of our unfortunate viking holdout could have been dead for a century or more. It seems that at some point after the 1420s, things wrapped up one way or another, and certainly by 1540 it was all over.... centuries of effort were, in the end, all for nought :(

[@avus-kw2f213]

I think I better stop going down the Rabbit hole while I still can

[@gyorkshire257]

Great video, but is it not correct to say there was no indigenous population in southern Greenland upon the arrival of the Norse? The Dorset were there but a long, long way away from the greenlanders.

[@micahistory]

I never thought about how many resources were needed to sustain Greenland's cows

[@Orphen42O]

I think that the reason the Norse went to the New World in search of timber. The cattle needed to be housed in barns made of wood. As the cows munched on grass, they ingested the increasing amount of sand which was detrimental. Were the huge barns built to house one landowner's herd or did they house the cows of all the landowners in a community? Were some of the Greenlanders slaves? Was there any positive interaction with the Inuit? My theory of what happened to Greenland is analogous to the Rust Belt cities of the United States. As the economy deteriorated, the young and ambitious left for other Norse communities, leaving behind a disproportionate population of the sick and elderly. When the young people left, they took ships that never came back. With a dwindling supply of wood and labor, it became increasingly difficult to build and repair ships. Greenland may have been like parts of the Wild West that were once Boom Towns and then became Ghost Towns.

[@micahistory]

@@Orphen42O good point

[@NoirL.A.]

excellent vid. years ago i read a book about this exact subject and in summary it said that over and beyond the obsession with the cow the vikings were just way too european and set in their ways to even think to make such a radical culture shift as learning anything from the inuit. plus that though they may have taken some of their land the vikings never "conquered" the inuit nor did they have the resources on greenland to do so and so the two groups really just avoided each other and neither tried to conquer or mix which would have made even going to the inuit for help rather akward and difficult.

[@billbirkett7166]

That's where the English word 'fee' comes from, from the old English 'feoh' and 'Das Vieh' to mean cattle in German. Though it turns to får in Scandinavian languages, which refers to sheep.

[@annamosier1950]

very good

[@WarDogMadness]

there wouldn't be many if any dung beetles that could have cleaned up after the cows and there would have been a lot of crap and disease. the clearing of land and rapid environmental change would have made it almost impossible for them to stabilise they move around making the situation worse were ever they go and they don't know there doing it sounds like a perfects storm and as you said not learning to change cultural practice would doom them .

[@Harrier_DuBois]

We come from the land of the ice and snow, From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow

[@hodiehere7295]

Please make a shirt featuring this cow image from your thumbnail. It's brilliant.

[@PewPewPlasmagun]

If you let milk be in a bucket... it will turn to sour milk (speed of convertion depending on the temperature). Which is ABSOLUTELY SALUTABLE.

[@myothersoul1953]

.... except for Irish hermits ... ?? .... now that's interesting

[@thomasraahauge5231]

Since hermits don't reproduce, I think it is a far stretch to call them "natives".

[@LuvBorderCollies]

Volcanoes are a prime suspect in bringing the Medieval Warm Period to an end. There's a suspicion there may have been several volcano eruptions spaced out over a few years. This would have the effect of slowly changing climate instead of one drastic hit. The eruption of 1257 Samalas on Lombok Island may have been one of these. I never heard of it until today but its power was 8 times worse than Krakatoa which is very impressive. Its one of the 7 most powerful eruptions in the past 12,000 years!! Wow!! The poor Norse in Greenland and poor everyone else probably would not have been alarmed at such slow changes. Small changes even today would be viewed as one of those things that happen seasonally, until you get 5 years down the road and its getting worse. Today we have the huge advantage of technology but tech can only do so much, its pretty limited in ability to raising crops large enough to feed hundreds of millions.

[@jimbobarooney2861]

Great video and very informative, a couple of thing I would add, the cattle at the time were much smaller than modern breeds, probably something akin to the Irish dexter breed or the native shorthorns here, also Western settlement for example Brattihlid is roughly 61 degrees north as apposed to southern greenland roughly 64 degrees north, even here in Ireland at 54 degrees cattle are housed for roughly 6 months of the year, even with a relatively mild climate

[@kingkuroneko7253]

Skallagrim?

[@Le_GingerBeardMan]

Careful, or thou shalt be ended rightly.

[@thomasraahauge5231]

Skalla ~ skull/cranium/head Grim ~ grim/ugly/hideous

[@malthevlds9667]

0:44 haha nice

[@Andvare]

Greenland is not "more northerly" than Iceland, at least not where the settlements were. Both the Eastern and Middle settlements were south of Iceland, with the Western settlement being about the same latitude as Reykjavik. Greenland is both to the north and south of Iceland.

[@rawlsrules]

I like this, but why do you have to have music in the background?

[@charlesrb3898]

No music or drums please.

[@historywithhilbert146]

Do you prefer without music? I might do a bit of polling and see what people think!

[@charlesrb3898]

@@historywithhilbert146 Music or drums are totally irritating and distracting.

[@thomasraahauge5231]

@@historywithhilbert146 Please drop the music 😯

[@micahistory]

Cows literally made Greenland unsustainable

[@wafalme851]

0:07 big woolly bois

[@micahistory]

Cows basically stretched Greenland's supply lines

[@micahistory]

I had no idea there were even cows on Greenland

[@12345678900987659101]

All the Vikings needed to do was keep their diesel engines on longer.

[@Hfil66]

Although you compare the Norse with the native people's, and suggest that had the Norse learnt from the native people they might have survived, I would ask whether they could have sustained the population densities that they were used to? The Intuits, as far as I am aware, had a very low population density, and a very nomadic lifestyle (and even female infanticide in order to keep population levels low). The Norse were looking and a more settled lifestyle in larger communities. Would using native technologies not have required a total breakdown of the Norse social order? You may be right that the Norse farming methods contributed to their demise, but I have not been convinced that adopting native technologies would have been sustainable for them either.

[@jpdj2715]

Greenland much to the North of Iceland? Reykjavik: 64N; Arctic circle: 66.5N; Prins Christianssund, Greenland: 60N; Etah, Greenland: 78N (Greenland goes farther North there still). In short: no. At best: it depends. Every degree latitude is about 111km or 69 miles. Or, Greenland goes some 450 km farther South than Reykjavik.

[@bl5752]

And why can't you clean the buckets with cold water?

[@ecurewitz]

why haven't we learned from the Greenland Vikings and Rapa Nui as well. Fuck that, let's increase corporate profits and the expense of everything else

[@micahistory]

The first problem was that Greenland was hard to settle

[@micahistory]

Please visit Micahistory 2, it would mean a lot!

[@BellumCarroll]

What makes a 'native'? Getting there first or time? Not trying to start shit, just interesting because it changes dramatically depending where the area is.

[@kingkuroneko7253]

I would like to know that 2.

[@adityanawani8134]

Both. Getting there first,living there for a long time,and creating bonds with the soil.

[@ajrwilde14]

first to cultivate the land

[@jameshickok2349]

Some archeologists believe the Inuits arrived on Greenland after the Norse. They were separated since Unuits were on the north end while Norse were south-enders.

[@puppetguy8726]

In Sweden goats are traditionally known as the poor man's cow.

[@PhilipK100]

Any chance that you'll do an informative video of the Viking invasions of North America! I've never seen a full on proper documentary on such a subject!

[@historywithhilbert146]

I've got a few on the topic: How Did the Norse Discover North America: kzbin.info/www/bejne/joe9d4yhYthrmZY Why Didn't The Norse Colonise North America: kzbin.info/www/bejne/iYXPinaomZ2qh9U

[@Xaiff]

Wait. How did you spell Skallagrim in Icelandic pronunciation?? I heard it as something like "Skathlagrim". Is that correct?

[@ibbi30]

His Icelandic pronounciation of Skallagrím was correct (source: I am an Icelander), with a little bit of an accent but major error. In Icelandic you might however refer to Skallagrím as Skallagrímur, Skallagrím, Skallagrími and Skallagríms, depending on the position of the word within the sentence.

[@kloppite1967]

Ad finishes at 2:03

[@garygartenzwerg9870]

The hero I was waiting for!

[@trimdinbusk]

I though the Vikings were long gone when the inuits came along

[@aviancypress5181]

This is very interesting, can you make more videos on how human civilization contributed to climate change? Like how asian rice cultivation started thousands of years ago and how we would be in the ice age by if humans didn't alter the environment

[@strawberryseason]

With a very sparse and spread out population, why would anyone need several dozen cows?

[@viracocha6093]

Would it be accurate to say some of the Inuit in Greenland have some Norse admixture?

[@thomasraahauge5231]

To some extend, but not due to the Viking era Norse settlers. Whalers, tradesmen, clergymen, and later on state officials have all contributed to the present day lineages in Greenland. But this took place from mid 17th century and onward.

[@Orphen42O]

Was a barn that could hold 160 cows a communal barn where farmers could shelter their animals or was it a barn intended to shelter the cows of one landowner? Could this have been a barn for animals held by the Church or could it have been a tithe barn where animals were stored before being shipped to pay taxes and church fees?

[@johnkilmartin5101]

Does this have anything to do with the Norse habit of drinking blaand?

[@historywithhilbert146]

I mean I think the drink blaand fits in with the whole cultural milieu of their relationship with the cow yes.

[@ecurewitz]

DoomCows!

[@arnoldhau1]

As far as I can see, Greenland is not further north than Iceland, but rather starts further south and ends way further north? And the settlemnts where in the south. The eastern settlement was actually south of the latiude of Reykjavik and indeed south of any point in Iceland), and the eastern settement about on the same latiude? Even some citiles in Norway like Trondheim or of course Narvik are further north than the eastern settlement. So either I am really confused (which is quite possible) or you did confuse the effects of the Gulf stream with "being north" to a degree?

[@thomasraahauge5231]

The Gulf stream plays a huge role in the climate of Northern Europe. The Gulf stream mildens the climate in Scandinavia to an extend that roughly equals that of moving at least 500 km to the south. It ju-u-ust bypasses Greenland, though a small branch of the stream does mildens the climate a tiny little bit.

[@ChrissieBear]

Should you go for the Icelandic pronunciation for such an old text? Wouldn't reconstructed Old Norse be more accurate?

[@thomasraahauge5231]

Either way, still much better than hollywoodian english 😊

[@JuanMatteoReal]

That's another cursed thumbnail Good video though

[@igeljaeger]

Fie in german can mean cattle which makes the english word Fee kind of weird to me

[@dukesandwich3183]

Eigl was a war lord

[@adityanawani8134]

200th comment! Love Cows!😊😊😊

[@alen-bm4ej]

It would be interesting to see a video on the natives living there at the arrival of the Norse and their role in the demise of the Norse colony.

[@Sk0lzky]

Word meaning wealth and cattle isn't a dychotomy, they're not opposites, this fact proves that quite the contrary - they were to some degree synonymous. Same with celts and the few confirmed informations about slavic beliefs where the god of wealth was the god of cattle

[@thomasraahauge5231]

Still an issue in parts of Africa. There was this program on a German TV channel about a successful miner in some African country. Sorry, but I don't remember which country. We was just about the richest man in his country, but because he didn't own any cows, people thought nothing of him. He didn't want to buy any cows, because he was a miner and knew nothing about livestock. Cows would merely be an unnecessary expense. He ended up buying a giant herd of cattle, which pretty much just walked about, costing him a fortune. Why? Because without cows he had no _reputation_ and without a _reputation_ it became almost impossible to operate as a business man.

[@ajrwilde14]

@@thomasraahauge5231 wow that's fascinating!

[@davidchurch3472]

Female kine beast are cows; but not all cattle are kine beast; sheep and goats could be cattle as well. Indeed, chattells could include iron tools and wooden weaving-frames and bed-steads, although I am not sure if fowl ever counted as cattle, because they could fly away; in a similar way to how dogs could be owned by humans, but cats were independent, or could own humans (maybe) because they could leave at any time.

[@David-pf3he]

Norway

[@thomasraahauge5231]

Yes. Norwegian, not Danish. The Kingdom of Norway was under Danish sovereignty from 1536 to 1814. To be fair, this is a common misconception, since the (Norwegian) settlements/colonies in the Northern Atlantic (Greenland, Iceland, and the Faeroe Islands) were ceded to Denmark, following the peace treaty of Kiel in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars 😊

[@annamosier1950]

what is a boon

[@GHST995]

BEEF its whats for dinna!

[@josemartinezgonzalez2450]

Astutos jefes, a través de promesas y engaños arrastraban a los incultos e ingenuos Vikingos, a poblar zonas de hielo y nieve

[@pspdude2316]

how long does your family have to live somewhere to be considered native

[@thomasraahauge5231]

That depends on whether or not someone else lives there. Native Inuits are now considered natives because they have been living there for roughly a thousand years, after replacing (or extincting) the Dorset culture and the Norse settlers. Iceland was home to a very low number of hermit munks, but since munks don't reproduce (at least not on their own), they didn't count that much, so the Norwegian settlers became native Icelanders fairly quickly. White Americans tend to refer to themselves as "real" Americans and Latino emigrants as "Aliens". Following _this_ logic, it takes a few centuries to become "native", even if the previous natives still live there.

[@pspdude2316]

@@thomasraahauge5231 i thought both inuits and norse started setteling greenalnd at roughly the same time

[@williamlinley1402]

Imagine Norse Florida 🤤

[@fabiansw8]

Får also mean sheep

[@DieterHageman]

You are completely about wrong sheep or goats Being better... they are worse they love all the young threes en plants... It's about management... They didnt have the right skills... More adventure and entrepreneur tegen farmers

[@chimdor8503]

Top soils washed away by rain seems more likely than blown away as you say in the video

[@thomasraahauge5231]

Both things happened, but the relatively low rainfall and the harsh wind makes the top soil more vulnerable to wind than water. The Dust Bowl of the 1930ies is another example.

[@vigilantsycamore8750]

I literally JUST posted in a Discord server about a D&D spell I made that summons a random amount of cows and then I go to youtube and I see this in my recommended Who's snitching on me to KZbin? Come on, fess up

[@BellumCarroll]

Hilbert's just spying on you.

[@olekristianbendiksen1246]

Fehue is a word meaning idiot in modern Norwegian

[@plexusranger]

Jared Diamond fanboy detected.

[@dukesandwich3183]

Fé is a word wich mens lifestok

[@thomasraahauge5231]

In some languages and dialects. In other, it means sheep. Or moron.

[@alexandrub8786]

Don't tell to hindus.

[@oiudatropen9548]

Interesting material, but poorly presented- painful to try to follow.

[@kscottwebster]

wasn't the cows. it was the little ice age. same time the dutch invited ice skating. and as a matter of fact the vikings were dairy farmers.

[@historywithhilbert146]

I mean it's also a major driver for the collapse but if they'd been invested in rearing sheep and goats it wouldn't have hit them nearly as hard as it did with cattle.

[@thomasraahauge5231]

@@historywithhilbert146 So very true.

[@charliebrown5755]

Cattle was important to Germanic people, DUH!!!!!

[@mikesands4681]

And of course cows did them in but so did their inability to adapt to fishing , crabbing, and sealing which were lower-food in their opinion. Finicky eaters perished after a few generations.

[@historywithhilbert146]

Quite possibly!

[@coltonross5414]

From what I’ve read about the last Norse in Greenland, their diet near the end of their extinction was almost entirely meat based. I don’t think it’s so much an issue of not being able to adapt culturally, though that may very well have been a factor. I think the issue was more that North Europeans aren’t adapted to a heavy meat diet like the Inuit are.

[@ajrwilde14]

@@coltonross5414 the Inuit mostly fished, and everybody is adapted to meat

[@coltonross5414]

@@ajrwilde14 I’m aware of that. I’m Canadian and I was friends with an Inuit boy growing up. I should have said the Norse weren’t adapt for a raw meat diet. Inuit are able to eat raw meat almost exclusively while the rest of us need to cook our food.

[@XX-gy7ue]

you completely overlook the relationship of these horrid people with the place that they came from - they in many cases were just doing time in Iceland and Greenland , or actually ' doing time ' as in what happened to Australia much later on !

[@luxborealis]

I think it is a bit simplified to see all the settlers as outlaws, many emigrated for political or economic reasons

[@XX-gy7ue]

@@luxborealis , I'm sure people do many things for many reasons , but basically many take what they are running from with them !

[@thomasraahauge5231]

Iceland was to some extend settled by Norwegians who could not abide to the solidified monarchy that arose in Norway prior to the Landnám. Before this, the local magnates bend their knees to no one, and those who settled in Iceland where the ones who would rather leave their homeland than bend their knees to a king that lived far, far away. But they were not convicts. There were criminals on the run, too. But they were a minority, and not well thought of. Some settlers came to find land, since the Norwegian population was outgrowing sustainable numbers.

[@wulfherecyning1282]

I've tried watching this video but I couldn't get through it. Hearing Daddy Hilbert talk about milking gives me the big gay and I can't concentrate.

[@archeofutura_4606]

Do you think it’s possible to reforest southern greenland? Also, Icelandic pronounciation? Ngl that’s pretty cringe bro

[@LuvBorderCollies]

Greenland was green during the Medieval Warm Period which ended in the 1400's. The climate would have to warm up to duplicate the conditions that once made it green.

[@archeofutura_4606]

LuvBorderCollies it’s as warm now as it was during the medieval warm period

[@mver191]

@@archeofutura_4606 no

[@ls200076]

@@archeofutura_4606 no

[@jameshickok2349]

@@archeofutura_4606 NO its not.!! LOL Please do real research instead of parroting climate confusion. For starters watch the PBS Secrets of the Dead on the Greenland Vikings. There you will get real scientists and archeologists finding real evidence to determine what really happened after the Norse flourished for over 400 years on Greenland.

[@gunarsmiezis9321]

Stop refering to north americans as native greenlanders.

[@thomasraahauge5231]

The native Greenlanders ~ the Inuits are descendants of the North American native peoples. Inuits inhabit the Circumpolar world from Greenland to Canada, Alaska, and Siberia. They share ancestry with the Native peoples of all of the American Continents.