INTERDISCIPLINARY INVESTIGATIONS OF THE END OF THE NORSE WESTERN SETTLEMENT IN GREENLAND

The loss of the Norse Western Settlement in Greenland around the mid f ourteenth century has long been taken as a prime example of the impact of changing climate on human populations. This study employs an inter disciplinary approach combining historical documents, detailed archaeo logical investigations, and a high-resolution proxy climate record fro m the Greenland Ice Sheet Project 2 (GISP2) to investigate possible ca uses for the end of this settlement. Historical climate records, mainl y from Iceland, contain evidence for lowered temperatures and severe w eather in the north Atlantic region around the mid-fourteenth century. Archaeological, palaeoecological and historical data specifically con cerning the Western Settlement suggest that Norse living conditions le ft little buffer fur unseasonable climate, and provide evidence for a sudden and catastrophic end around the mid-fourteenth century. Isotopi c data from the GISP2 ice core provide annual- and seasonal-scale prox y-temperature signals which suggest multiyear intervals of lowered tem peratures in the early and mid-fourteenth century. The research synthe sized here suggests that, while periods of unfavourable climatic fluct uations are likely to have played a role in the end of the Western Set tlement, it was their cultural vulnerabilities to environmental change that left the Norse far more subject to disaster than their Inuit nei ghbours.