You do not get the point. The Viking settlements blossomed for the first decades, yes. But then the growing erosion of the land within their reach, the slow growth rate of vegetation that did not help to prevent erosion, the ongoing hostility towards theInuit from which they refsued to learn, and the cooling climate all came together to strangle their agricultural autarcy more and more. The inuit demonstrated that one still could survive in Greenland, and how, and they were capable to hunt animals like seals the Norseman refused to hunt for cultural pride in their damn cows. the agricultural desaster was caused my lacking understanding of the diffrences between Greenland and Scandinavia, they looked the same, but were anything but the same. The non-existing efficient use of replacable ressources, mainly meat/animals, led to the paradox that the Vikings suffered starvation altho9ugh being surrounded by a country that was capable to give them the meat to eat ansd the fur to dress that they needed when things became cool. Only the colling climate is the one factor that was beyond the Norse'S reach. The rest was self-made mistakes, some due to lacking knowledge, some due to arrogance. consider that the contact with eurpe was sparse and thin, biut they wanted to stick to their identity - by dressing the way they used to do in Scandinavia. The women on Greenland wore thin dresses with deep decoltees and a scarf-like thin textile around the shoulder at a time when the Inuit alraeyd were dressed in full fur! the male vikings again wore textiles tzhat cppied european and scandinavian models, but were absolutely inadequate for the cooling climate in the place. They wanted to live at least as scandianvian as the Scandinavians themselves in Scnadinavia lived - to reassure themselves of their cultural idetity. you see the same ohenomeneon with the British in Australiua - and later, Australian citizens behaving more British than the British in Europe themselves.

It was the complete failure of the Norse culture in that place, and it died an anything but peaceful death. For that society, it was a worst case outcome indeed. Really funny, eh...? There are indications that in the end some of the last survivors became cannibals (something that was found in other falling cultures as well when they were in the last minutes of their lives), and small groups died by starvation, others froze to death. weakened as they have been, diseases also must have played a role.

It was not exactly the idyll you used to know from adventure movies about the vikings.

Possible I messed up translation/language. What I meant was a false "Analogschluß". Your analogy was that since life is good at the present, it must be good in the future, too, at least it cannot be understood why it should be so much worse. I answered with the Vikings drawing false "Analogschlüsse" from their Scandinavian home when they saw the apparent visual similiarity between the landscapes in Scandiniavia, and Greenland.

Depends on your outlook on life in general. I simply meant that whether you care for trying to widen your perspective or not, you must make deicisons for which you must accept moral and often practical respinsibility. Since you argued a bit accporidng to "as long as you are no academic expert you must not care that much for trying to learn some things in that branch of science", I simply wanted to imply that when we cannot evade decisions and responsibility, maybe it is a good idea to gain some knowledge even if we do not become experts in a given field. you see, what I try to do in my own life is to gain that level of generla information on many different things that is suffcient to see how the many single things seem to fall in their places and form one great picture. Maybe I cannot reveal the picture in all small detail that way, but I can get an educated guess on what it'S motive is, and how it is generally arranged and composed.

Unfortunately the more pieces I have inserted the less pleasant a motive it seems to become.

Not much, it seems. Many in the West think like that. They simply do not care. Some for egoism, some for simple thoughtlessness. but I take it as solid fact that the way we consume nature's ressources in the West like crazy and give it back toxines to pollute our living spohere and our food and the resources we need in the future, would spell rightout disaster throughout the globe if all the 6 billion beyond the 1 billion in the first world would share the same living standards of ours. We simply are too many, and the the Western consummation model simply is beyond good and evil in itself. I think it would not even allow a maintained future for generations coming after us even if we would be only 1 billion people on the globe. Which is an obvious conclusion only, based on the fact that the industrialised world already had started to shrink the health of the planet when he still was the only industrial big player on the globe.

Live long enough, and you will change your mind - if you allow yourself some openmindedness and do not deny reality to reach your senses.

Well, I often get reminded of it when reading the forums here - especially on religious issues and climate things. and I think much of the details I just listed today are anything but the trend of general thinking, currently. Historic lessons on the effects of collapsing environments on falling societies I read first mentioned in the work of classic Arnold Toynbee, which was a long time ago for me, but Toynbee only mentioned it in order to minimise it instantly. And Joseph Tainter, who has become popular with some thinkers in the 90s, rightout denies it completely and argued that societies realising they are in trouble would act rational and adress the problem. But all too often the opposite is true, history shows, and often it is exactly a rational, reasonable thinking, a rational calculation of options and chances, of investement-profit-calculations, that paradoxically seal the road to doom. Happened often in history. And I fear it is happening again in the present. I just need to listen to the slogans in the media in the aftermath of the finance crisis, the hope for "economic growth", and the claim to balance economic interests against environmental needs and limited resources. we have not learned much. If anything at all. We do not want reasons to chnage. We want excuses not to change. what it almost always comes down to, is this: "more of the same, please, proceed by the same standards and methods". And my assessement on this is: it guarantees global suicide of our civilisation in whole, since today we are the first truly globally interlinked, mutually dependant society in history ever. I would need to rape my brain in order to conclude different when reading the signs of the times.



NeonSamurai,

I understand what you said on children. I am beyond the point in my life where the possibility to found a family still plays a role, I am 42 and my soulmate I have met, but she had to leave early, so I know for sure there will be no family and children for me. Sometimes I feel sad and truly regret that, but most times I feel relief for the same reasons you described.

Man's world is long beyond it's climax, and the sun is setting on our civilisation. But do not let that be a reason for despair. Despair comes to me when I allow my mind to get narrowed to few perspectives and interests only. If I allow that to go on for too long, I even become depressive, so I know that I must interrupt the automatism whenever I become aware it has started again and I still have the power left to stop it before I fall into the abyss. Living alone and as a single has it's costs in life, especially at higher age, but it also has its merits. And what our life is worth to us, does not get decided by the going of the world, or by our family "success" or regular job career, but by our attitude of wanting to add meaning to it, and by the way we spend our life's time so that in the hour of our death we must not feel ashamed - or must. the shame is not called for by others, but by our own inner standards, in good and bad. Eternity is in the present moment, and the gates to heaven or hell we open ourselves every moment we make a decision, and act, and become responsible for the consequences. What we do every day is what decides whether we are good people or not, and are free in mind, or not. Outer freedom can be taken away from us, and shattered, by bad intention of man or unlucky events or our own thoughtlessness or nature showing us the other side of life that we often tend to refuse. but freedom we manage to realise inside of us, cannot be taken away, and this is where we may win our peace.

Skybird, you are not communicating. You are carrying on a parallel monologue. The phenomenon is called cross-talk.

I am making the point that when the Norsemen settled Greenland, properly naming it because of its then present characteristics in a world much warmer than our own, they were able to live and flourish there due to a climate much warmer than our own.

I am calling to attention the silly predictions of global catastrophe if such warming were to happen now. In fact, the warming of the year 1000 was way beyond the most dire predictions of global warming doom enthusiasts.

I am also calling attention to the indisputable fact that during the past thousand years, a blink of an eye, the earth has both been considerably warmer and considerably cooler than it is now. Life flourished, as it will, no matter what silly doomsayers proclaim, no matter how many books cry wolf.

I also call attention to even more severe fluctuations in temperature in the more distant past, with half of Europe under a mile-thick layer of ice, at another time when there were no polar icecaps at all. What happened? What always happens? Life flourished, just as it will in the future.

The global warming/climate change silliness is just the latest example of the superb arrogance of man, taking credit for all that he actually is only privileged to witness. We inject cause and effect relationships where there are none and make ourselves look very small. Heck, we ARE small!:D

You responded to something else altogether. Your attempt to portray me of making light of the demise of the Greenland Scandanavian settlement is so far off the mark it merits no reply at all, except to say that you did not read and comprehend what I wrote. The shouts of your own thought drown out any ideas trying to get in.

Ah, ok, I see now. thanks:DL

I've always read that Eirik Raude called it Greenland as a sales pitch, to attract new colonists. Now I finally read a translation of The Saga of Erik the Red, and what do I find? No mention of how it got the name at all. They call it Greenland, but talk about the hardships of the place. You may be right, and you may be wrong.

That's what I heard too. :hmm2:

Will the last person leaving planet Earth please....

turn off the light.

After all the noise, I just can conclude that you make a point on Greenland having been an easy place to live, green, warm, friendly to farming and agriculture. Obviously you have not read most what I said. That point of yours simply is wrong. I made some notes on why it is wrong: it has to do with the slow growth rate of the vegetation, especially woods, but also meadows and grass, the different type of soil on Greenöland being more prone to erosion. You see the same problem in Australia and Iceland, where farmers have to fight with these issues as well because they stick to a form of agriculture and farming that is not matching the different realities in these places. The outcome is the same: a constant, ridiculously expansive fight against erosion, ground water shortages, salienation of soil. Even without the cooling that took place during the medieval, the Vikings on Greenland sooner or later would have run into troubles, becasue their living style and farming philosophy was not adequate for the place. they used the natural ressources att he same speed they used them in Scandinavia, but they did not know that for various reasons they would not be replaced by nature as quickly as in Scandinavia, so sooner or later they reached the point when they were running low of said ressources. The initial impresson of the place beeing "green" - was misleading, and due to a lack of knowledge about the different ecosystem they had to deal with. Running an agricultural community there like they were used to run them in Scandinavia was doomed to fail in the long run from the beginning on - because vegetation does not regenerate as fast there as it does in Scandinavia. The intiial enthusiasm that made them calling the place Greenland, which is your argument, was not as much justified as it first appeared. The green took MUCH longer to grow. And without it, the fertile grounds disappeared by erosion.

You may not like it, but this is no fantasy by me, but solid results from according resaearch they do since 20 years or so. In Iceland for example the state is incredibly willing to pay and massively support such research, because understanding these factors after the immense damages they had done to the fertile grounds on Iceland for comparable reasons the ikings did the same kind of damage in Greenöland, decides on the survivability of their now heavily regulated agriculture there. You cannot run it by the same rules and knowledge base you run agriculture on continental europe.

I just want to hint, that there are many other examples than just the vikings that show how societies for various reasons made decisions that made them running out of resswources, food, and left their envrionemnt exposed to erosion, killing said societies in the end. Before setting up more tunnel-viewed posts like your last one, you may want to get some information, therefore. Becasue the rest of your lament must indeed be understood as just the usual tricks to negate man'S influence on climate so that no concerns must be taken serious and business can run on as usual without caring for what it does to the future. The regular arrangement of Global Warming Scepticism it is, I mean. you are in chosen ignorrance of a whole lot of data from many different fields of research, all of which contribute to our knowledge and understanding of the social models, political conditons and economies of past societies that had chosen ways and made decisions that led to their fall by running out of food, natural resources, and eroding fertile soil by overexploiting the land and destroying more vegetation than nature could replace. the Vikings on Greenland - are just one of many examples for such man-made failure. and your posting give me the strong impression that your understanding of the Norse in Greenland, is basing on clichés, and is anything but complete.

Will somebody please tell Skybird that once again he misses the point? (I personally suspect he does it deliberately).

The fact that Greenland was once green enough to be called "green land" ought to make it obvious to anyone that it was once greener than it is today. The viability of the Viking colonies over the long term has absolutely nothing to do with it except to allow Skybird to turn what should be a one paragraph post into a several page exercise in misdirection.

Or am I just making "noise"?

Hey guys what happened to the original thread?

I cant seem to find it. I had some insightfull stuff there but cant find the damn thread and I'm too lazy (and sick) to re-type it.

Nope, I'm voting on the misdirection. Some tangent about resources and the Vikings did not know crap about conserving resources and farming. Then again the internet was not available to the Vikings at that time as a tool for getting informed so the continent lanquished into ice cream. There was no government mandated reform on resource conservation. Not until Viking Gore started his rant on warming resources when in fact the resources were cooling thus forming the ice cream. Or something like that. :hmmm: :shifty:

Check out the big environmentalist Ed Begley lose his cool over this isssue. :DL He's panicked. I don't think he understand that "peer-reviewed" by this community has suddenly lost an immense amount of credibility. This cracked me up.

http://bighollywood.breitbart.com/bi...t-on-fox-news/

Regarding the once green land of Greenland, some people here do not get the real point. the point is that the place back then when the vikings arrived looked as green and fertile as their Scandinavian homes - yes.

But the point you people do not get is that beyond the superficial visual impression the place was very very different to Scandinavia and in no way was to be compared to Scandinavia.

It is like living in finland with all it's lakes, then going to the middle East and one day finding the Dead Sea. It looks like a lake, it feels like a lake, and has liquid in it like a lake - so it compares to Finish lakes, yes?

The vegetation on Greenland at that time grew much, much slower than in Scandinavia or anywhere in Europe, nevertheless it was consummed at the same pace like in europe by the vikings, like chopping the few trees, and having cows on the meadow. Result: the Norse met a shortening on these resources, and had to meet that shortage sooner or later (in the last third of their stay they even imported wood from Europe, which then was almost as important as was iron), they took more ressources than the natural growing rates in that place could replace. By living the way they did in Scandinvia, now they lived beyond what nature could maintain in Greenland. The grass that was eaten, took much longer to grow, the trees chopped, were not replaced. The soil that lost it's green skin was exposed to erosion much longer, and since the ground was made of lighter material than the heavier soil in Scandinavia, it was taken away much faster. Agriculture therefore became even more difficult, already suffering from trying to have cows, and the meadows not producing as much as grass as the Norse were used to. Followiung the erosion, ground that could be used now even started to become rare. In the end, this all meant a destruction of their envrionment in reach of their two settlements that sealed their fate and made them suffering hunger, and finally death by starvation. First died the smaller Western settlement, then the single farms scattered in the neighbourhood, and finally the maor settlement in the East. As far as we know, no one escaped. Hunger killed them all.

I do not know how to explain it any easier or clearer. Either you understand it now, or you don't. Greenland looked green, but the Green took much longer time to grow, so losses in that green took longer time to be replaced - time in which precious fertile ground got lost by erosion. Is that clear enough now?

Hell, sometimes GT's ignorance is killing me, really. This is no difficult nor any exotic matter. It is widely agreed consensus amongst researchers on the Norse history regarding Greenland, any fool could underatand it if reading it, and I am even not a specialist for the matter and still understand it. Greenland was no agricultural paradise just because it looked green. The parallel the Vikings draw between Scandinavia and Greenland by the similiar looks of both places, was misleading, and wrong. Their status had already turned critical due to the erosion they had created themselves. when the cooling of the climate had effects to be felt, it was fighting for their lives soon, even more since they refused to hunt seals, to learn from the Inuit they had turned into enemies, and refused to give up keeping cows (cows were a thing vikings took pride in, and a symbol of prestige) although that bound hilarious working efforts and harvest ressources especially over the winters. Like sheep, foxes and rabbits never should have gone to Australia, the Vikings should not have brought cows to Greenland.

If you look at iceland, you see that there are incredibly tight and close regulations on sheep-keeping there. The Icelanders have had the same problems like the Greenlanders in their past, and their island has suffered miserably from that. Most of the forests they once had, are lost, and most of the green skin too. They are rebuilding it now, very very slowly. the project has national priority. They have learned their lesson and try to not have higher levels of farming and stock breeding than the highly sensitive landscape can maintain. If the meadows get used by cattle and sheep too much, they most likely get lost to erosion, because like on Greenland the grass does not grow fast enough to protect the soil from erosion. It grows much slower there than in europe with its milder climate and different soils. That that Iceland meadow may look like the meadow in Ireland, does not mean anything - it is a completely different ecosystem.

Mysterious, eh? Buh!

Sigh. I'll let someone that's still on speaking terms with him explain.