The Greenland Vikings - Ancient Apocalypse | Documentary

[Music] [Applause] the Vikings fearsome Warriors and expert Sailors in the 8th Century CE the Vikings explode out of the Scandinavian countries of Norway Denmark and Sweden and set sail around Europe they raid and pillaged the rich Coastal settl of modern day Germany Britain and France but they don't stop there these Viking explorers colonize the remote Pharaoh Islands and are the first people to set foot on Iceland they even sail as far a field as New Finland in Canada they hit the North American Shore 500 years before Columbus and by 985 they established the Viking settlement of Greenland it is the most remote European colony in the world it's this forbidding hostile territory on the edge of their Known World further north than even they could imagine and they were the northmen this is one of the most remote locations on Earth but they make it work they rear cattle sheep and goats to feed their settlements with milk and cheese they build barns Villages even churches and they sustain their lives through trading one of the most precious Commodities of the time Ivory allowing the creation of some of the most refined art in Europe from this period for almost 500 years the Greek land Vikings flourish but then they disappear How could an entire Colony vanish and what was the cause of their ancient [Music] apocalypse the history of the Greenland Vikings begins with Eric the Red while no account written by the greenlanders themselves survive the story of this Viking colony and its founder are recorded in the 13th century Icelandic and Norwegian manuscripts The Saga of the greenlanders and The Saga of Eric the Red Eric the Red was born in Norway in the year 950 that's what the sagas tell us and while he's still a child his father kills someone and so the whole family ends up exiled to the back of Beyond to Viking Iceland now Iceland is basically the edge of the world for the Vikings at this point when Eric the Red grows older he follows in the footsteps of his father in 982 Eric the Red gets into a fight and kills two men himself and so he's exiled as punishment for the murders he's in the exact position that his father was so when his dad left Norway he went to the end of the world he went to isand where is Eric the Red going to go he sets sail and he heads West other Vikings have come back before and told Tales of land that they've spotted of a place where perhaps a man could remake his fortune reestablish himself and so Eric the Red takes his chance he sails West for 3 years the length of his Exile he explores the coast of a Barren ice covered Island and he spots in amongst the fields and the icebound Bays two areas which could potentially be habitable Eric returns and he tells the people of Iceland about this whole new place that he has discovered and cleverly he calls it Greenland with very little remaining Farmland available to them this new land pequs the interest of the Icelandic Vikings at that point in the 980s Iceland was effectively full so if you're a young Viking man and you want to establish your own household you can't really do it in Iceland however Greenland opens up the opportunity of your own Farm your own entire estate for a lot of Icelandic Vikings it was The Ultimate Dream 400 Icelandic Vikings follow Eric the Red this is 25 ships and they take the perilous journey across the North Atlantic only 14 ships arrive in greenlands 11 ships are sunk All Souls Lost undeterred these early Viking colonists led by Eric the Red settle in two areas the Eastern settlement on the southern tip of Greenland and the Western settlement 480 km further north and on the western coast these bases provide the Vikings with an opportunity to explore this foreign land for exotic riches to trade with Europe a new Trading Post to grow wealthy from at the time it's the most remote European SLE sement in the world and is by far the coldest North Atlantic settlement they have the harshest longest Winters it is not a place that you'd think would be easy it is certainly not a place deserving of the name Greenland this should be called cold Dark Death land how could any human survive here with with no written records left by the Greenland Vikings themselves it's up to archaeological investigators to uncover just how they could live in such a brutal climate in 1932 almost a thousand years on from the founding of Viking Greenland o usel searches for answers the Danish archaeologist excavates at the remains of the church Farm of sand in the western settlement as one of the first sites settled by the Vikings it may offer some Clues to their early existence while investigating the soil at some of the earliest occupation layers he uncovers pockets of charcoal spread throughout the farm the settlement experienced large scale burning but for rousel this isn't evidence of Destruction in fact it's the opposite his analysis shows that the early Viking settlers burned the landscape to promote grass growth when they arrived at SES they simply needed to get rid of the scrubs and the trees because grass was what they wanted for their animals they brought in sheep goats cattle so the first thing they did was burn off all the scrubs and the small trees to get the grass growing the Vikings brought with them their traditional pastoralist way of life and this means that they raised animals for the purpose of subsisting on their products so milk and cheese they've got to produce enough hay to keep those animals fed throughout the year and it works they transform the environment into a land they can Farm over the centuries more Scandinavian and Icelandic Vikings following the footsteps of Eric the Red sailing west in search of greener pastures at its height the north Greenland settlement reaches a population of up to 5,000 people most of the Vikings settle in the Eastern settlement because of these these high Cliffs these FS so that gives them some protection from the elements and the soil is better for agriculture but it's still tough and to survive in this harshest of climates they need more than just animals to live off the Vikings need a whole new way of living and a new way to trade Vikings living in the Scandinavian countries at this point are pretty much free they're allowed to trade they have Lords But ultimately they are in charge of their own destiny it's a very different situation to Greenland all power in Viking Society here is held by the landowners or Chieftain they are autocratic controlling all of the Viking settlers under them and they ensure that all work in Greenland contributes to the survival of the settlement Viking Society in Greenland was quite structured quite rigid and very hierarchical in the harsh conditions of Greenland it ensured that people could work together to manage their livestock to build large barns to protect them over the winter it ensures the Vikings a steady supply of dairy when the settlers need more food they turn to hunting Caribou or migratory ha and ring seals as far as we know Norse communal ceiling was organized with a line of boats uh driving seals up onto land onto ice and quite possibly between little islands with a net strung between so the idea is to kill a whole bunch of the once this would have required basically all able-bodied men going on the hunt and then meat would be distributed to all the farmsteads at the farmsteads the women work to sustain the remote settlement while the men are off Hunting the women are in control of the farm women have to make sure that the animals are fed that they're sheltered and that the repairs are done without the women there would be no Greenland Vikings a rigid societal structure develops with The Chieftains at the top governing all those underneath allowing them to survive in the cold climate but for the Vikings to actually Prosper they need to build an economy and with the settlements offering very little to trade they look far a field across the Frozen Seas Vikings led by Leaf Erikson the son of Eric the Red set sail searching for new sources of wealth 1,200 km Southwest of the Eastern settlement they make landfall and establish a new Outpost in modern day Newland Canada 500 years before Columbus reaches America the Vikings make it all the way to Canada it is beautiful it has trees this is brilliant for ship building it has wonderful grapes growing so it's called Vinland but hostilities with the indigenous people begin almost as soon as Leaf Erikson arrives as more and more Vikings are killed it becomes harder to maintain The Outpost making the journey across r North Atlantic Seas a lot less inviting after only 10 years the Vikings give up any hope of a permanent settlement here the search for exotic Commodities to trade with Europe stops but with few trees on Greenland the Vikings are forced to return to Vinland to harvest wood periodically the Greenland Vikings were utterly reliant on the supply of wood for ship building and for house maintenance and very soon the Vikings find a source of wealth much closer to their new Greenland home about 27 days sailing from the easn settlement about 15 days from the Western settlement up into the north the colder more harsh climates they discovered this hunting ground that they called North seta which means hunting ground of the north it's a it's an area rich in exotic dangerous but highly profitable Wildlife what they find is the most precious thing pretty much in all of Europe and that is the walrus the warus has ivory tusks and the rest of Europe is desperate for Ivory Ivory is one of the most precious substances in all of Europe it's up there with gold it was used by the rich it was used to make jewelry and precious items in the north of Greenland the Vikings find a near inexhaustible Supply they would make a perilous Journey North every summer to hunt as many walrus as they could that was communal as well it was a question of who owned the ships who could actually bring you from the settlements to the hunting fields and that was the chieftain the entire process required a ton of Manpower and also it required you know intense bravery they are actually very scary animals the Vikings would take as many warus as they could they were cutting off their jaws and their heads and they were bringing those back for processing back at the settlements recent archaeological finds have shown widespread chippings from walrus jawbones Across the Western and Eastern settlements the communities work together to Pro ESS and remove the tusks before being shipped to Europe via Iceland and Norway from the Eastern settlement Port of Gada the Vikings living on Greenland had a monopoly on wol Rec iory trade at this time they carve out a very prosperous life for themselves we have some surviving trade records from the time and one of them shows one load of ivory which is a whopping 520 walrus tusks that was equivalent to 780 cows or 60 tons of fish the same value which is huge this profit from Ivory allows the Vikings to ship in Goods that are essential for life in Greenland via Traders from iseland and Norway they were providing iron so iron nails and more importantly iron tools these are the tools they were using day to-day to survive and through this connection to Europe they import more than just material Goods in the 10th Century the Vikings of Norway forgo their Pagan beliefs and Christianity takes hold as their religion the Greenland Vikings become subjects of the Norwegian crown and convert as well this connection with Europe and North America allows the north settlement to flourish for hundreds of years and support thousands of people and yet the last definitive evidence that we have of the Viking greenlanders is the record of a marriage in 1408 after 1408 they just seem to disappear from history and archa ically what we see are the ruins of their homes ruins of barns ruins of churches but the people they've disappeared what could cause an entire people to seemingly vanish from the face of the [Music] Earth Danish archaeologists Yan melgo and canul crow in investigate a viking Cemetery at bratti in the Eastern settlement could it reveal any clues milgo and Crow excavate and they find lots of orderly burials as they would expect but then they found one that was very shocking it was a mass grave when they examined the skulls they found that five of the individuals had been struck by sharp blades we can quite clearly see what must be lethal sword or ax lesions which leads to the conclusion that they were probably all failed in battle does that give us a clue as to what happened to the Vikings on Greenland was this the start or the simmering of a a civil war how long could that kind of War sustain do you kind of write your own obit [Applause] there if this theory that these individuals were evidence for the demise of the Viking settlement in Greenland one would have to assume they'd match up to the date of around you know the 1400s when the settlement is thought to have ended but melgo and Crow have a problem at the time of the excavation in the 1960s you can't directly date the human remains themselves by the 1980s an accurate method has developed radiocarbon dating Professor Neil's Lino takes up where melgo and Crow left off one of the things we worked a lot with human skeletal material from Greenland was trying to date the skeletons being able to fit how these skeletons fits with a general picture of the history of the Greenland settlement Professor Lop radiocarbon dates the skeletons from the mass grave the radiocarbon datings of the individuals in the mass grave clearly show that they were from the early period of the settlement period these individuals are killed around the year 1,000 and the Vikings lasted on Greenland for centuries after whatever caused these violent death yes it was too early to have caused the downfall of the entire settlement but could they have faced a threat not from within but from outside their settlements perhaps from a foreign [Music] enemy a major clue comes from the medieval manuscript the history of Norway the history of Norway describes a group of people that the Vikings called the scalings which roughly translates to wretched people it's not a compliment we have a few records from the north side and they're all about conflict this year you know some of the greenlanders were killed others were taken away it's not friendly an account from a Greenland Viking says how the scalings come to the Western settlement in the mid 1300s Iver bis is is sent by members of the Eastern settlement to check on things in the western settlement and from his description he says that there were no one left in the settlement when he arrived they found animals wandered around but no humans Left Alive so now the scalings have it and the implication was that there was you a massacre the Western settlement's probably gone by the mid-4th century 1350 somewhere in that time period historical documentation clearly suggests that a foreign people have destroyed the Western settlement but is there any truth to it when the Vikings first arrive in Greenland in the year 985 they encounter no indigenous population but archaeologists now believe that in 1200 a group of Proto Inu people known as the Tuli cross from Canada into Northern Greenland these are the people that the Vikings refer to as the scra Lings and they're considered to be the ancestors of all modern Inuit they rapidly expand South towards the Vikings the Tuli are expert hunters in this Arctic environment their hunting techniques are so successful that modern Inuit used them continuously well into the 20th century as seen here in rare footage from 1922 of their hunting practices the Tuli developed techniques to exploit whatever food resources were available even in the debt of winter who did seal would need to pop up in holes in the ice to breathe when the seal popped up the Tuli would be ready in waiting with Spears and lassos rather than hunting communally like the Vikings the Tuli developed Technologies and techniques that allow them to hunt individually or in small groups and all year round their methods of hunting on land and Ice are far safer than the Vikings who carry out all their seal hunting by boat on the danger Arctic seas the Tuli need far less communal organization and outlay than the Vikings to survive the harsh Greenland Winters by 1300 they've reached the Western settlement and by 1400 the Eastern settlement are the Greenland Vikings wiped out by advancing Inuit Warriors the discovery of the ruins of a Viking Barn proves key to unlocking the mystery Professor Thomas H mcgaven is an archaeologist and member of nabo the North Atlantic biocultural organization an elite group devoted to unlocking the archaeological mysteres of the cold North Atlantic back in 1970s we had the opport to work on projects in the western settlement and one of the projects took us to this Inland farm and this is a site where we had an unexcavated house complex so we're able to go down to the top and excavate very systematically the discovery was a golden opportunity to actually get a close look as to what happened here and whether the scalings May indeed have been responsible for the demise of the western settlement as the team excavates they uncover something surprising wood from the roof of The Farmhouse and you remember in a North Atlantic situation wood is very scarce and it's very precious when a house is abandoned it stripped to Wood very rapidly so the fact that we were finding everything in place but just collapsed downwards was a real shock if the Viking occupants of the western settlement had left in an orderly fashion they would have taken this wood with them we did a number of radio carpon dates on the site and they all clustered in the mid 14th century 1350 so this actually is pretty close to the estimate you get from ER bardson did the Tuli kill the Vikings and destroy the Western settlement like Eva bison's 14th century report suggests is the ancient Apocalypse of the Greenland Vikings due to a foreign invasion mgov searches for evidence of an attack one of the things you expect to see is evidence of burning because a classic way of attacking a northern house is set on fire but we haven't seen that if the settlement was attacked and its people killed there should be signs of conflict but mgov finds none it appears that Tuli didn't destroy the Western settlement after all instead what mcgo uncovers are the skeletal remains of carves lambs and a large hunting dog we have a situation where in multiple sites of the western settlement dog scel are found in the uppermost layers so something's going on the at the very end there it's a highly unusual find why are there so many animal skeletons inside this Viking home a closer analysis of the bones reveals something disturbing cattle and sheep are primarily used by the Norse greenlanders for making milk cheese and yogurt but these remains show signs they were butchered you're looking here at evidence of things like cut marks on the bone surface and right outside the the Larder where the veins that chopped up cows were found was piece of at least one of these big dogs so it looks as though this is an animal which didn't just die natural death there these animals were killed and killed for one reason alone food the standpoint of a farmer this is a real disaster because if you eat all your domestic animals now you will not have them later in the year there's no indication that the dog was on the menu on a regular basis you know these are animals you depend upon for hunting these are animals you depend upon for your own Survival and if you destroy them you won't survive for another year that suggests an emergency situation these people were starving and desperate prioritizing their immediate survival over any thoughts of their future the Vikings had lived prosperously at the Western settlement for over 350 years what could have changed so dramatic ically that these people were now [Music] starving for mgov his work hasn't answered the question about why the Greenland Vikings disappeared without an exceptional Discovery it appears the Greenland Vikings will remain lost in the midsts of History mcg's investigation gets a boost from an unlikely location 3 km beneath the surface of Greenland starting in 1988 a massive scientific project is undertaken on the Greenland ice sheet the Greenland ice sheet project 2 sees scientists going about 12200 km north of the West settlement onto the Greenland ice sheet to drill CES up to 3 km deep and by analyzing that that kind of apple core of ice they can determine climactic changes from the deep past each year frozen water settles on the ice sheet and builds up in layers over time by analyzing the changes in the chemical structure of the ice year on year scientists can build a picture of the history of the climate of over the last 100,000 years could they give any clues for why the Western settlement was abandoned and for the wider Greenland Viking collapse from the year 950 to 1250 the ice core analysis shows something surprising the climate during the early period of the north occupation was probably warmer you probably had a more favorable set of Seasons that say shorter Winters more precipitation in summertime this is known as the medieval warm period for the Vikings in Greenland it enabled them to get a foothold on what would otherwise have been a very Barren and inhospitable land but these warm temperatures wouldn't last overcast Skies with little sunlight isn't unusual for the Vikings on Greenland but in 1257 they increase Ash spewed into the atmosphere from a massive volcanic eruption in Indonesia blocks sunlight across the globe temperatures around the world drop it is catastrophic for conditions in the already freezing Greenland Summers begin to get shorter Winters longer and colder and the Seas get get much rougher the conditions at Sea get worse and worse there are more glacial icebergs storms also increase it's a lot more hazardous sailing between Greenland and Norway the frequency and severity of these cold periods accelerate through the mid 1300s until by the, 1400s the climate becomes incredibly cold and harsh average temperatures across Greenland plummet by up to 4° C the drop is so severe that a glacier close to the Western settlement Grows by 15 km it is known as the little ice age and lasts until the mid 1800s there's a really severe cold spike in the mid-4th century as far as we can tell this is one of the cold oldest spikes in approximately 8800e period it would be disastrous for Viking farming it's going to affect the grass growth you need to produce the fodder for your animals it's going to affect the length of time the snow lies in the ground the rapid increase in severe Winters in the 1300s lines up perfectly with the evidence of Abandonment of the western settlement in Greenland and it paints a picture in the runup to that final historical record of the marriage in 1408 it's a major climate clue that would indicate not only why the Greenland Vikings ate their own animals but also why they might have to leave the Western settlement but was there evidence that the Eastern settlement also suffered a fatal change in climate the Eastern settlement has some of the most favorable conditions in Greenland it's far away from the icy Wasteland to the north so it's protected from the elements it's got better soil this is their agricultural Heartland paleoclimatologists search for Clues at the bottom of a lake 9 km from the Eastern settlement Lakes are wonderful for reconstructing the past climate because they're essentially just big sediment traps sediment washed into the water settles on the lake bed and builds up in layers over time that means we have a reconstruction that goes back in history so the further down we drill into the sediments in this Lake the further we go back in time paleoclimatologist Tobias Schneider examines a sediment core sample drilled from the lake near the Eastern settlement by analyzing the chemical makeup of each layer or year Schneider can get a detailed view of the climate stretching back hundreds of years did a change in the climate cause the Viking settlement here to collapse like it did at the Western settlement Schneider examines the siment core sample for traces of leaf waxes plants that grow around the Le have a waxy coating covering their leaves when the plants die traces of these waxes find their way into the lake sediment stored in the chemical makeup of the leaf waxes is a history of the climate plants build a waxy layer on the leaves to protect the leaves from evaporation and moisture loss these Leaf waxes are made from hydrogen from the water that they drink when the plant is exposed to evaporation water containing the lighter Isotopes will evaporate first and the heavier water will stay back in the plant Schneider analyzes the sample for the types of hydrogen Isotopes stored in the leaf waxes over time what he discovers is startling from the year 950 until the 1500s there is a steady decrease in lighter hydrogen Isotopes across this period there is more evaporation but also crucially less [Music] rainfall by 1400 towards the end of the Viking occupation of Greenland the Eastern settlement is in drought less rainfall would have been devastating for the Greenland Vikings it would have unraveled their entire way of life long Winters and with less rainfall they can't grow animal feed they can't raise cattle and sheep and goats which means they have no food to eat and it's becoming harder and harder to survive it's a huge step closer to unlocking the mystery but there's a problem the Tuli managed to survive the changing climate so successfully that today 90% of greenlanders count Tuli her AG so how come they survive but the Greenland Vikings don't what is it that leads them to disappear from history around the time of the Viking collapse on Greenland a disease rips through Europe plunging the continent into chaos the Black Death from 1347 into around 1351 waves of a Bubonic plague known as the Black Death swept across Europe and killed millions of people in Norway the plague kills about half the population and in Iceland the impact is enormous as well the Greenland Vikings were plugged into a trade network with Iceland and Norway ships carrying iron were dock in the Eastern settlement and return with their hulls Laden with walrus tusks these Traders would make ideal hosts for the plague one person with the plague can very rapidly spread it to every household on Greenland that's very likely a reason for a whole settlement to die but does the Black Death reach neighboring Greenland archaeological investigations across burial grounds show to the the Black Death never reach Greenland it seems the Greenland Vikings are able to survive this catastrophic event but the Black Death doesn't have to infect the Viking population here to have a dire effect on the settlement once Norway was overtaken by the Black Death the demand for iy just drops most people are thinking we've got to build back Society from the ground up and luxury items like Ivory were just no longer in demand add on to this the onset of the little ice age and as temperatures Begin to Fall Seas become rougher obviously when there is demand for iory tasks people are prepared to risk it but suddenly that Journey becomes a lot less tempting and a lot more dangerous in time northern Europe recovers from the Black dead culture trade and science flourishes but carved walrus Ivory would never come back in favor the desire to trade with Greenland stops less walrus Ivory is being collected and crucially fewer essential supplies like iron are making their way into the settlements and even rougher Seas make the trip to New Finland to harvest trees too dangerous the supply of wood dries up their economy collapses with the climate worsening the Greenland Vikings have the odds heavily stacked against them their whole way of life their very survival is under threat Professor Neil Lino believes that the collapse of the economy and the worsening climate could have led to a mass Exodus of people from Greenland I always uh try to imagine the old farmer in North Greenland standing on a hill looking over his farm and saying to his young son look son one day all this will be yours and what he sees is a round down farm with only a few scy animals and he's like like right there uh I'm off so when the next ship comes he's off to Norway or Iceland with Norway and Iceland recovered from the Black Death their ideal places to live this depopulation would have severe consequences for those who remain while there is no written evidence of a Great Migration linup believes that even a slow trickle of people leaving Greenland would be equally disastrous if a young couple leaves once in a while at first it doesn't really register but at some point Not only would it mean that two people have left it also means they've taken out the potential for children so 10 20 years later you suddenly realize wow you know we're only maybe 500 people left very few young people left the Greenland Vikings have built their society on the idea of a Chieftain surrounded by people and every one of those people is vital for the survival of the homestead the fewer men there are the fewer seals that they can actually hunt and collect and bring back and people are bound to go hungry more and more people are going to leave because it's hard and then it gets harder so more and more people leave the Greenland Vikings would be right on the edge of Extinction all they would need is one final push [Music] analysis of the ice core samples taken during the Greenland ice sheet project 2 reveals a small change that gives a major clue the samples drilled over 1,400 km in land from the Eastern settlement show a steady increase in sea salt from the year 1200 [Music] onwards more seaw water is blowing Inland and settling on the ice sheet it indicates rougher seas around Greenland with more frequent and severe storms then in 1425 there is a major spike in salt it is a close match to the last known record from the Greenland Vikings the marriage in 1408 in this period of the early 1400s the sea is getting more and more dangerous their Farms are failing they have no other option but to go and Hunt seal for survival now this is how they're getting their main source of meat with a diminished population all it would take to finish off the Greenland Vikings is one particularly bad storm while a communal seal Hunt is taking place the sorts of boats we're talking about is something called six sword boat they could be very fast but they also could fat capsize easily does it get a lot of people killed is a catastrophic storm that comes just the wrong time and drowns a whole lot of people what you're really seeing is loss of almost all of your active adults and the folks are left are old people and sick people and children with the principal food Getters gone the remaining Vikings would face a bleak future and a very desperate ending archaeologists can't be sure exactly when the Greenland Vikings finally perished but what they are sure about is that after hundreds of years on Greenland these people in the end could no longer survive a brutal change in climate both on land and sea a collapse in their economy and a final debilitating Exodus it is a vicious circle leading only to one thing the end of the Greenland Vikings but one critical question remains Modern greenlanders Display a 90% genetic similarity to the native Tuli peoples modern greenlanders are by and large direct descendants of the Tuli people Greenland's Inuit population carried on the traditional Tuli way of life well into the 20th century where the Vikings perished the Tuli lived on archaeological evidence suggests that the Vikings chose not to adopt any Technologies or techniques that the Tully used to survive for thousands of years in harsh Arctic environments so in order to survive why did the Vikings not copy their Tully Neighbors this is a community dominated by its Chieftain dominated by its Elites uh it's by no means an egalitarian Community fundamentally that level of strict hierarchical Society quashes creativity and Innovation there's not that much opportunity to think of a different way of doing things and then enact it without incurring the WTH of your community without sort of stepping out of your lane and then being chastised for it Innovation that didn't directly Advance the Vikings Ivory harvesting seal hunting or farming is discouraged and all of these were communal events as the climate changed and their Farms failed the Vikings adapted by upping their seal hunting but they still chose to hunt as they always had communally and the seal migration only occurs twice a year the pressure on the hunt in the Viking model in Greenland would have been intense effectively the Vikings allow themselves only one shot to secure enough food to see their population through a Long Winter it's very different to the way the Tuli hunted which had proved so successful for Millennia there are a number of technological practices that the Greenland Vikings could have adopted from their Tuli neighbors things like harpooning seals through the ice and then pulling them up which ensures a supply of meat throughout the year the Tuli also hunted individually to provide just for their family rather than their entire Community as the Vikings did I think fundamentally the Vikings didn't want to do that they they could have adopted all those practices it is possible that some people said we're going to do that we're just going to go native as it were but I think for a lot of other Vikings that just would have been inconceivable it would have been too much of a a cultural gear shift a handbreak turn if you will the Vikings didn't adapt to their way of life outside their very narrow Viewpoint even with a solution staring them in the face namely the Tuli or more Inuit way of life what had helped the Vikings to grow on Greenland their communal pastal way of life in the end became their Achilles heel as Greenland changed the Greenland Vikings weren't able to change with it and they paid the ultimate price [Music] oh [Music]