Greenland is not very green at all. Most of the world's largest island is frozen, buried beneath endless fields of snow. More than a thousand years ago, Erik the Red, a Viking explorer, left his home in Iceland and discovered a rich supply of fish, whale, walrus and seal in uninhabited Greenland's waters. But he needed help to harvest the riches. He guessed that an attractive name might lure fellow Vikings from their cold homeland to an even colder place. So he called the new land Greenland.
Some Vikings must have been tricked by the name. About 5,000 of them packed up longships and made the dangerous crossing. Warriors and tradesmen began exploring. Families set up homes along the narrow inlets, called fjords (fee-yords).
Treasures In The Sand
Like a freezer, Greenland's cold climate has preserved traces of these ancient settlements. Scientists thought they had found them all until 1992, when Inuit (In-oo-it) hunters stumbled across some unusual pieces of wood floating into a fjord near the capital city of Nuuk. They had found a lost Viking settlement.
Now a team of archaeologists from around the world has finished the painstaking job of exploring it. Known as the "village beneath the sand," the settlement was actually a large farm where Vikings lived for more than 300 years. Six buildings of stone and peat (rotted moss and other plants) had up to 30 rooms each.
Digging through ancient storerooms and kitchens, the scientists found a treasure chest of Viking daily life: kitchen utensils, walrus-tooth dice and reindeer-bone necklaces. Miniature boats and wooden boxes may have been children's toys. "It was a hard life," says Danish archaeologist Jette Arneborg, "but not without its comforts."
Why was the farm abandoned? Viking colonies began disappearing from Greenland in the 1300s. Arneborg suggests that "the weather got worse and trade dried up. Europe was no longer interested in the materials that Greenland could provide."
Did You Know?
VIKINGS probably got their name from the Old Norse verb vika, which means "to go off." They left their homes in Scandinavia to trade--and raid--in Europe from about 800 to 1100.
VIKINGS treasured their fierce weapons. They gave the heavy swords, spearheads and battle-axes nicknames like "Leg Biter" and "Long and Sharp."
VIKINGS wore helmets with horns not during battle but during prayer to gods like Thor, the god of thunder. They wore thin leather caps for war.
VIKINGS wrote by inscribing
words on stone, using an ancient and mysterious system of letters and symbols called runes.
VIKING ships had a high prow (front) and a high stern (back) for smoother rides in rough seas. Heroes were buried in huge graves with their ships: it was believed that they would sail on in the afterworld.