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Why Did the Vikings Disappear From Greenland?

In the 15th century, the Vikings vanished from the island after more than 400 years of living there—what happened?

For several centuries, Viking settlers eked out a living on Greenland, tending pastureland, hunting walruses, and constructing stone buildings that still stand today. Sometime in the 15th century, however, their civilization collapsed, and all the Vikings either died or fled. Though researchers have pieced together numerous clues about their disappearance—including sea-level rise, drought, a cooling climate, disease, environmental degradation, conflicts with the Inuit, and economic disruption—no one yet knows exactly what happened.

A continuous Viking presence on Greenland first dates to around A.D. 985, when, according to the medieval Icelandic sagas, Erik the Red landed there at the head of a large fleet (after being temporarily banished from Iceland for killing two men in a neighborly feud). Covered by a vast ice sheet, most of Greenland—named by Erik in a possibly disingenuous attempt to lure over more settlers—was uninhabitable.

et, where lush meadows existed, largely inside sheltered fjords, the Vikings (also known as the Norse) established two outposts: an Eastern Settlement on the southern tip of the island and a smaller Western Settlement about 240 miles away. In addition to raising goats, sheep and some cows, the Norse hunted seals, caribou, walruses and other prey and built houses and churches out of sod and stone.

Eventually, the Eastern Settlement grew to include some 500 farm sites clustered around 12 major churches, explains Marisa Borreggine, a graduate student of earth and planetary sciences at Harvard University, and the lead author of an April 2023 paper on the Viking collapse. “It was a pretty thriving settlement for a little while,” Borreggine says.

Even so, the settlements were never very populous. Researchers once thought that, at their peak, roughly 5,000 Norse resided on Greenland, but more recent estimates have cut that figure nearly in half.

At any rate, the civilization was in decline by the late 1300s, when the Western Settlement apparently winked out. The Eastern Settlement held on a bit longer, as indicated by a wedding recorded by scribes that took place there in 1408. But by around 1450, archaeological evidence suggests everyone had either died or sailed off.

Their fate remained unknown outside of Greenland until 1721, when arriving missionaries found no Vikings, only their ruins. Ever since, scholars have pondered their mysterious demise, which, akin to the collapse of the Maya or Anasazi, has prompted myriad theories.

Climate Shifts to Little Ice Age

The climate, for one thing, likely played a role. At first, the Norse occupied Greenland during the so-called Medieval Warm Period, when pastureland would have been in relative abundance. “Conditions were really favorable,” Borreggine says.

Around 1250, however, the onset of the Little Ice Age purportedly depressed hay production, to the detriment of the Vikings’ livestock. Colder temperatures would have also clogged the surrounding seas with ice and exacerbated storms, making it harder to ship walrus ivory, their main export, or to receive imports of iron tools and weapons, not to mention food.