How Nature Conquered the Vikings of Greenland

Greenland suffered a drastic climate change in the Middle Ages, where weather turned from warm to cold. Hunter anthropology professor Thomas McGovern looks to the ways Norse settlers adapted, buying an additional 200 years of survival by changing their way of life. As temperatures fell in the 1250s, the Norse adopted communal fishing and sealing to supplement their farms. But then, McGovern says, the weather became stormier, the North Atlantic more turbulent. The boats could no longer cope and the settlement perished.

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