Gone Medieval - Lost Vikings of Greenland

Episode Date: July 21, 2023

Is there a lost colony of Vikings somewhere in Greenland, shut off from the rest of the world? For hundreds of years, that question has taxed many minds for a variety of reasons that often reflect changes in outlook.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Matt Lewis talks to Dr. Robert Rix who, in his new book The Vanished Settlers of Greenland, goes in search of a legend and its legacy .This episode was edited by Joseph Knight and produced by Rob Weinberg.Discover the past on History Hit with ad-free original podcasts and documentaries released weekly presented by world renowned historians including Dan Snow, Suzannah Lipscomb, Lucy Worsley, Matt Lewis, Tristan Hughes and more. Get 50% off your first 3 months with code MEDIEVAL. Download the app on your smart TV or in the app store or sign up here > You can take part in our listener survey here. If you’re enjoying this podcast and are looking for more fascinating Medieval content then subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here: https://insights.historyhit.com/signup-form Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

From long-loss Viking ships and kings buried in unexpected places to tales of murder, power, faith, and the lives of ordinary people across medieval Europe and beyond. Join me, Matt Lewis, Dr. Eleanor Jarniger, and some of the world's leading historians as we bring history's most fascinating stories to life only on history hit. With your subscription, you'll unlock hundreds of hours of exclusive documentaries with a brand new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world,

to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Welcome to this episode of Gone Medieval. I'm Matt Lewis. Is there a lost colony of Vikings somewhere in Greenland shut off from the rest of the world, a time capsule of a world lost hundreds of years ago? That question taxed the minds of many for hundreds of years for a variety of reasons that often reflect changes in outlook. Also, lost Vikings is just a great story. So my guest Today, Robert Ricks is an associate professor and director of research at the University of Copenhagen, whose new book, The Vanished Settlers of Greenland in Search of a Legend and its legacy, seeks to wrap this enduring mystery in a variety of shifting contexts.

Thank you very much for joining us today, Robert. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure. I mean, I can't wait to talk about Lost Vikings. It's such a great story. So I guess to kick us off with, who were these settlers that reached Greenland? Well, to begin with, I think we need to talk about one of the more colourful, people of Viking history. That's Eric Tovleton, also known as Eric the Red, who was originally of Norwegian extraction, but his father was exiled to Iceland. And then later, Eric himself became exiled for three years from Iceland because of a murder he committed. And during his

time of exile, he explored the seas beyond Greenland, beyond Iceland and found Greenland. He was not the first Icelander to do so. There are records of a previous sighting by one beyond Olsen, at least a century before. But Eric was the first who discovered land in Greenland, at least from a Western perspective, obviously the Paleo-Eskimos had discovered Greenland long before, but from a Western perspective, he was the first. So the settlers in Greenland were primarily farmers. In the saga records, they're called Landman's Men, which means land takers. So this kind of discovery was facilitated by an apex in maritime technology, and they were able to reach Greenland's time. So they made that 900-mile journey from Iceland to what became the eastern and western

settlements within a couple of weeks. It said that 25 ships left, first for Iceland, around 985, and 14 ships reached the coast. So they would set up their farms near the sheltered fjord system in the southwest of Greenland. So farmers and also walrus hunters, and that we may come back to because that becomes a very important part of the Greenland economy. And why do they decide to go to Greenland? Why are they going west? I guess part of it is that Eric has been exiled from the place that you get exiled to seems quite daunting. But why go west? Was it because there were stories of a land out there? Were they just hopeful of finding something? He couldn't stay in Iceland, so the kind of Western movement and previous sightings may have led him to go there.

And the reason why others went, the story in the saga material is that Eric was basically a very good estate agent. He created a kind of buzz around Greenland. So it said that he called it Greenland because it sounded good. This was a good name to sell it to other people. And this salemanship proved successful. As many people, primarily those living on poor land or those who had suffered a downturn in farming fortunes, they came convinced that Greenland Hill Great Opportunity. There's also a 13th century treatise from Norway called the King's Mirror, where it is a kind of conversation between a father and a son. And the father gives three reasons why you want to go to Greenland. He says it's fame and rivalry, its curiosity.

You want to explore things you've heard about. And then there's a desire for walrus hide rope and also the teeth of walrus. And this really becomes very important. And I think over the past decades, we realized that the selling and exporting of walrus bone became extremely important. So Greenham became a trade-dependent economy. They became commodity exporters. So many of the walrus tusks were made into ivory products.

So we know this from swordhills, from gaming pieces. Some of the listeners may recognize the loose chess pieces of late 12th century. And sacramental objects like the crooks on bishops, crociers. So this became high value commodity. And Greenland became a major supply of eye released from the beginning of the 12th century. So we might also talk about not just farming, which was obviously one way to sustain yourself, but also there's a sort of gold rush. The Greenland economy was a boom and bust economy. So as soon as the walrus trade got underway, there's a reason for going there. And when it faded, they probably left.

Such an interesting sales trick to call it Greenland as a way to appeal to everyone who's living in Iceland, because what sounds better than Iceland? Well, somewhere that's green and lush and the promise of farmland and everything else. It's a con trick, really, isn't it? But it's a good one. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that's at least what the saga material says. But surely that kind of promotional value of having green land. But there were green. Spots obviously near the fjorts, but compared to Iceland, I mean, this is probably a better name. And whereabouts on Greenland do we think that they settled? Because I think from the book, there's some confusion over it being called an eastern settlement that may have caused problems later on. Yes. So the Greenland is settled on what was basically the southwestern tip of Greenland. And they were only on the West Coast. So there were basically two main settlements, the Eastern settlement and the Western settlements.

The eastern settlement was around the 61st parallel north, the western settlement about the 64th parallel north. But the reason why it was called the eastern settlement is because the Greenland's west coast, there's east as it runs south. So when you look at the two settlements in comparison, one was more to the east than the western settlement. But this kind of misapprehension persisted for centuries because it was believed that the eastern settlement was really on the east coast, which is difficult to access because of sea ice. So no one could get there for many centuries. So there was this rumour or myth, legend,

that there was still a standing settlement on the East Coast, which was never the case. The eastern settlement paris at the same time as the Western settlement. So there's a lot of confusion about this, but we know that the North Greenland has only settled on that sort of southern tip of the West Coast. So eastern settlement was only eastern in relation to the Western settlement. but it sort of created an idea that they were on the East Coast. And I suppose when you try and get to that and it's enclosed by Pack Ice,

that just doubles down on this idea that there's perhaps this trapped community in this historical bubble who haven't been keeping up with the modern world, perhaps, who might still be living there utterly inaccessible to everybody. Precisely. And there were so many myths at the time. There's books published from the 1560s where someone meets someone who had been trained in a monastery in Greenland at the time when certainly the colony there would not have existed. Also, people who drifted at sea and then they came near the coast and they could spot in the distance. They could see the Greenland are still tilling their fields. And these sort of

rumors persisted for a long time. And then there were also rumors as soon as the Danes recolonized Greenland. There are still rumors that somewhere beyond the mountains, so there were still this colony that existed and what had become of them. So this sort of interest in finding these Norse Greenlanders was strong. And one of the reasons why the Danes wanted to recolonize, so hence, who was the missionary, who first suggested that the greeners should be recolonized. He was interested in finding these colonists, primarily because from a Christian point of view, the connection had been cut off before the Reformation. So he thought it was incumbent upon the Danes in the Danish church to reconvert the North settlers.

And it was believed on the East Coast. So even when they arrived on the West Coast, which was where they could get to, they still believed that there was something to be found on the East Coast. And well into the 1830s, well into the 19th century, this was still the belief that there would be a functioning eastern settlement. It's incredible how some of these stories can endure. So we've talked before on the podcast about Presta John, which is a similar thing. People believe he exists in a place, and the more you explore, the more you just move him somewhere else.

He must be a little bit further away. And eventually he moves from kind of Eastern Asia down to Africa. And it's still that idea that even when you start exploring bits of Greenland, well, they must just be somewhere else, a little bit further in. We can still find them. It's very interesting because when Hansir arrives in Greenland, he obviously is reared on this sort of diet of rumours about Greenland and there were so many rumours about the gold that could be found there, the silver ore, about the fertility of Greenland and these big

forests. And it's quite interesting to read the book who writes about Greenland in 1741, his description of Greenland, because he constantly sort of comes up against things that don't really match up with what he's read in the books. So he has this view beyond the horizon. He says, unless it directly contradicts what he can see with his own eyes, he has his idea that beyond the horizon, it may still be there. So maybe on the East Coast we still have these big forests, we have the eastern settlement, there is a fertile land to be found somewhere. So though he failed in all his attempts to grow barley and other things on the West Coast, he still believed that they would be there and there was an eastern settlement which had all this fertility and gold and ample supply

of resources. So it's very much the same idea that beyond the horizon, it must be there. It's a fascinating thing for us to think about today, I think, when we consider ourselves to have mapped to the entire surface of the planet. We know everything about everything that is everywhere, that we've lost that kind of idea that what is just beyond the horizon? What can we hope is out there? What can we imagine we don't have to do that anymore? Perhaps we've lost something in no longer being able to do that. So what do we know about the disappearance of this settlement? Do we know when this colony is last heard from? The last sort of information we have about North Greenland is a wedding, which takes place in 1408. And there's a ship that leaves Greenland in 1410. And that's really

the last communication with the North Greenlanders. So that's on record. And the wedding is still described until the 1420s. But after that, there's no communication with the Greenlanders. And that is really the last information. And beyond that, there's no information about the whereabouts of the Greenlanders or what happened to them. So obviously, over the centuries, a number of myths developed about how they may have perished or how they may have still continued to live in Greenland. So we know very little about their disappearance. And even to this day, it's not been settled exactly what happened to the Greenlanders. And that's part of the mystery of North Greenland. And I guess why it's such an intriguing mystery. But I mean, the colony obviously

lasted for, if they set out around 985 and they disappeared or they were last heard from around kind of 1410, they've been there for sort of 400 years, which suggests that they were able to make a fairly good living there. They were thriving, perhaps, under the Woolrus ivory trade in particular, and then something happens, and they completely vanished from the record. So are there competing theories of what happened to them? Do people have ideas of what may have occurred? There are several competing theories about the disappearance. So one theory concerns Eurocentrism. The fact was that in 1985, when they first arrived, this was during the hot period of the medieval times. And towards the end, we came into what's known as the Little Ice Age. So there

would have been less opportunity for them to farm the land. And even though we do know they adjusted to sub-arctic conditions through adopting a marine-based diet, there's still indication that it was just a tough life to live in Greenland. When we talk about the walrus trade, and I think that's really the most important thing here to mention, we know that after 1350, there's an increase of elephant ivory coming out of Asia and East Africa. And maybe also competition from Russia, where walrus ivory is also produced. So this indication, at least in terms of a fine commodity, as soon as you have elephant ivory, which is considered to be a better quality, it's whiter, then they might have been out-competed. There's also the indication that they may

have been overhunting, because towards the end of the period, as I understand it, more female walruses were caught, which means that they have smaller tusks. So that might have been a desperation to produce or to source ivory. So the ivory trade may have been part of determining why the colony couldn't persist. Then there's some more sort of colorful theories, which I think we might mention here because they're part of the medieval stories. There are stories of pirate raids. So when the Danish colonies came in the 18th century, they heard stories about pirate rates in Greenland. There's a very interesting story from 1769 when Nils-Ir, one of the colonists, he interviews a shaman who keeps these stories alive, the tradition alive, and he tells of a ship that came and burned down the villages,

kidnapped many of the North Greenlanders. Not quite a credible story because there's no archaeological evidence that the villages were burned down. But we do know that these ships, especially English ships, may have visited Greenland. We know from 1425, there's a record of the governor of Iceland who was carried to England. And from prison, he writes his letter to the King of England, listing all the crimes that have been committed by English fishermen over the prior five years. And this includes raiding of farms, the murder of farmers, looting of churches, and not least kidnappings. And we also know that Icelandic children were for sale as slaves in Norfolk in 1429. So there is indication that there could have been a security problem in Greenland,

that everyone was carried away by pirates seems unlikely. But there might have been a concern there, because with no protection in such a far-flung place, it might have been so that pirates did come and kidnapped and burned and looted. And for that reason, you didn't want to stay in a place such as Greenland, which had no protection. So certainly in the realm of possibility that we did say pirate raids, but as the only reason, probably not. Then another theory is conflict with the Inuit. And that is a theory that has been taken up recently.

We know that the Inuits encountered the Norse people, sometime in the 14th century. So they moved down from Canada. And first of all, they would have met them in the hunting grounds near the Disco Bay. And they came into conflict. And sometimes they came to blows. So in historian of Nigeria from the 12th century, there's an encounter where an Inuit is hit by a Norse weapon. And his wounds gush out some white blood and the bleeding wouldn't stop.

So this is a kind of medieval account of what happened on a monstriization of the Inuits. But also the Icelandic animals, Tiberian. incidents where 18 Norsemen were kidnapped. Two boys were captured and 18 Norsemen were killed. So there's some indication that there were skirmishes with the Inuit. And finally, there's a church official Eva Barterson, who was sort of a tax collector. He describes the abandonment of the Western settlement. So there's an account, an oral account, which was written down sometime later. We don't know exactly when he visited the Western settlement, but towards the end of the 14th century. And he says that the Western settlement was abandoned. You only saw cattle in the streets and no people there at all.

So there might have been some certainly not genocides, but there might have been skirmishes with the Inuit, which may have troubled the Norse people. I guess if we should have put it all together, perhaps the real reason why they left or why they couldn't sustain a living in Greenland is really the kind of perfect storm of calamities at this time. As it was a globalized economy, they were selling the ivory and that became increasingly more difficult. There's also the plague. The plague had hit Iceland and also Norway sometime before the 15th century. So the communication there would have been more difficult and ships wouldn't have visited Greenland with quite the same frequency. Then there was the colder chill at the time, the little ice age. And a number of factors may have convinced the people who are left that this may not be a good place to stay. So they might have hitched the ride with some of the fishing ships that came to Greenland and gone back to Arabiades. land in Norway or other places.

Yeah, it's interesting to think that the mistake may be looking for one single reason that caused them to leave or abandon the settlement or disappear when it could just be, as you say, a perfect storm of lots of different factors coming together to mean that it's no longer viable to stay here. On American history hit, we ride the Wild Oregon Trail, delve deep beneath Central Park and fight the forgotten war of 1812. Join me, Don Wildman, and my end. expert guests as we uncover the stories that have shaped America in all its endless complexity.

We'll follow John Wilkes Booth as he shoots President Lincoln and goes on the run. And we'll walk under the stars with Harriet Tubman as she finds her way to freedom. Follow America's story from the first native people to footprints on the moon. On American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit, with new episodes every Monday and Thursday, Thursday. Follow us wherever you get your podcasts. What do we know that contemporaries made of the loss of contact with Greenland? Was there any concern about the fact that no one was hearing from these people anymore? Initially no. So Norm's Greenland was Christian. They were under the supervision of Rome.

And we know that Greenland continued to be what you might call a ghost sea for quite a number of years after the colony was no longer in existence. So at least until 1537, bishops were still appointed to Greenland to guard. in the eastern settlement, but they would never intend to travel there. So the last resident bishop in Greenland was Alpha, who died in 1378. And it may say something about the infrequent communication that the news of his death didn't reach Norway until six years later. So there was very little communication, partly because of the plague, and partly because maybe the IRA trade had become discontinued to some extent, so there's no sort of focus on Greenland. So very little was made at the loss of Greenland to begin with. There are some papal letters. There's a letter written at the

behest of Pope Nicholas V, around 1448, which talks about a pirate raid again. There are other letters. There's a letter from 1492, I think, by Pope Alexander, who talks about Greenland as being at the world's end. So at least from the kind of Roman perspective, there was some prestige in having Greenland as a kind of most northerly outpost of Christianity. So this was as far as the Christian light expanded and beyond that was just pagan darkness. So this idea almost goes back to Matthew chapter 28 where you have this idea that Christianity should spread as far as possible. There's this idea that Greenland was a kind of favoured outpost of Christianity. So there's a little bit of concern about that. A lot of it would have been to do with, I guess, political savvy.

Depicting Greenland as suffering or still existing or the colony needed help might have been a way to appeal to Rome for increased funding. So some of these Icelandic bishops might have painted a picture of Greenland as needing help without having any real communication with Greenland. So it's a little bit of concern there. And obviously the Christian church and after the Reformation in Denmark and Norway, there was a concern for the countrymen that they should be helped and certainly reconverted. And this is also described in some of these papal letters. they are falling away from faith, they're renouncing the Holy Sacrament of baptism and so forth. So there was sort of a need for help. But most of the time, if you read the records, for instance, the Bishop of Trondheim, Archbishop

Eric Balkendorf in the 1510s, he collected all information that was to be had on Greenland. And he talks about ivory, furs, hides, what could be caught in the sea. So he talks about it as a very resource-rich country. So the interest is also for monetary gain. So the reason why you want to reconnect with Greenland is not just because of the lost Christian souls, but also because there's rumors of gold, silver and resources. It's fascinating that amongst all of that, I don't know whether there was a lack of concern for the actual people there at the physical plight that they may be in. There seems to be concerned for economic impacts, the reach of Roman Christianity,

and after that, the fact that these people may be lingering as Roman Catholics when they should be Protestants, but very little concern that there might be actual people suffering. There's lots of reasons to go there, but maybe missing one of the better ones. You mentioned before that there was no archaeological evidence for the burning of villages, but does archaeology tell us anything about the eastern west settlement? The eastern settlement has ruins of approximately 500 farms. So this was quite a substantive colony. So probably at its peak, it may have had up towards 5,000 inhabitants, about 100 farm ruins in the Western settlement, the smallest settlement. So we do have a record of quite a number of farms existing there.

If we look at the waste middens beside the farms, they're very rich in walrus debris. So this also indicates that walrus hunting was very much part of the economy there. There are also indications of the Greenlanders growing barley, and they may have done so to a limited extent, but primarily farming would have been concerned with the hay, so basically animal feed. There are some interesting finds in terms of Norse objects, which are found in remains of Inuit settlements and Inuit artefacts found in Norse ruins. So whether this indicates some kind of collaboration or trade, we don't know, it could have been raids, it could have been looting, we don't know, but there certainly was some kind

of connection between the Inuit and the Norse settlers. So there are some interesting archaeological evidence there of what the culture would have been like and how open it would have been to other cultures. The book talks an awful lot about how the stories, myths, legends of these Viking settlers persist over the centuries that follow their disappearance, right up, I think, till the early 20th century. Why do those stories linger so much? What does that lost settlement come to represent to people who are looking for it? Yeah, I think at the heart of it, there's really the mystery.

that we were talking about. And I think I begin the book by making a comparison to one of the other great mysteries of vanished settlers. And that's the Roanoke colony that's Walter Raleigh established in 1585 in North America, which also disappeared without an explanation. And I think a number of books have been written about this and also what happened to them and whether they were sort of assimilated with the Native Americans and conspiracy theories and political intrigue and all of this. So I think the mystery in itself of simply these vanished settlers is in itself enough to carry that mystery throughout time. But I think there's also a fundamental mystery about how civilizations collapse. So this goes back to the Mayan, the Roman Empire.

There's kind of apocalyptic stories about the end of society, which in some ways also speak to the idea that our own civilization may end at some time. So there's a kind of mirror in this. And certainly when we talk about environmentalists who predict the kind of ecosystem wipeouts that will plunge mankind into deadly peril, that has a parallel with the Greenlanders and what they may have suffered. Another reason I think why this is important is also the human endeavor to conquer new areas. So this idea of colonizing the Arctic and human endurance, certainly Western endurance, we'd sort of go hand in hand with this idea of almost domesticating the Arctic, the hunt for the northwestern

passage where you could easily access eastern markets that could navigate the Arctic. And the Greenlanders also symbolize this idea of being able to colonize and to master the Arctic. So that's also a reason why this myth lingers, I think. It's an interesting idea that people could believe they could tame the Arctic environment because someone has done it before. We're just following in the footsteps of someone else. If they can do it, we can do it too. Nothing is unconquerable for a human who's determined enough to do it. Do people, during this period, for how long, do people actually believe there might be an isolated Viking outpost still on Greenland, sort of trapped in this time bubble? Absolutely. So at least until the 1830s, when the eastern coast was explored by the English

whaler and explorer William Scoresby Jr. and also by a Danish explorer called William Auguste, there was still the belief that the eastern settlement would be on the east coast, this kind of mistake that was made, even though towards the end of the 18th century, it was established that the eastern settlement was actually on the West Coast. And that's incrementally one favor in academic circles, but it took a long time. So at least until the 1830s, the eastern settlement on the East Coast was still a believable legend. And even after that, still people thought, well, maybe Scorsby and Gros didn't go far enough. If they go a little more inland, they may have found the settlements. But what changes after that,

time throughout the 19th century is that there's this idea of an open polar sea that behind the ice rim, the ice wall, there's an open polar sea and there are geothermally heated places, islands, landmasses that where these North Greenlanders may have migrated to. So this becomes a new legend which takes over and this is something that is at least until the 1920s still believed. Perhaps towards the end more in kind of popular science articles. So real scientists would not believe this anymore, but at least in the popular science world, these are still promulgated, these theories, that you should explore the Arctic and maybe on some unknown coast in the open polar sea, you still see the Vikings fighting and jousting and the tilling the fields.

So it's only when the Arctic is truly explored that it comes home to everyone that maybe that is not the case. But certainly in terms of a cultural myth, this still continues in a number of literary works, many of them pop fiction or sort of cheap literature, which is kind of adventure stories where you find a kind of isolated Viking community. So that continues even longer, even after the 1920s. But in terms of science, I think that is the end of that myth. But there's a shift from being on the East Coast to, well, there must be somewhere else. They migrated. That's what the Vikings did. So it makes sense that you could find it somewhere else. It's interesting to wonder if they were something of a lure to explorers. You know, if you just go a

little bit further, you might find these people and the way that they've survived in this region. And every time you go a little bit further, there's still another horizon to be crossed. There's still a little bit further to go until there isn't anymore. And all of a sudden, the myth has to end because there's simply nowhere for them left to be hiding. Talked a little bit about what Inuit memories tell us about the settlers as well. So they're pretty clear that the settlers were there, that there was contact. We don't know whether, as you say, that was trade contact or whether that was hostile.

How do we come to know those Inuit memories? later do they arrive? And do they tell us anything about the settlers that we didn't already know from earlier on? So the Inuit legends about the North settlers are collected by the missionaries. So primarily the Danish missionaries and also the German Moravians who also established a colony on the West Coast. So they collect the myths and legends from the Inuits, from oral records about the Norse people. There's one story collected by Paul Idle, an indigenous legend, about a skirmish, which resulted from the fact that a Norse colonist passed through the land, and he saw an Inuit who shot a dart at a seafowl and missed, and then taunted him, said,

well, I'm sure you can't hit me, which he then did, and the Norse man was killed, and after that some kind of fracca evolved, and the legend says that the Inuit exterminated all the Norse people. What's interesting about these myths is that the colonists were interested in finding out what had happened to their ancestors. And this legend of violence of genocide was very much on their mind. So if you look at the evidence or how they write these stories, they often would use terms like the Inuit confirmed that this was so-and-so. So there is the indication that a lot of this was planted by the colonists. and the Inuits simply just responded by giving them what they wanted. Many of these stories about the Norse settlers and how they came into contact with the Inuit,

you can tell our kind of traditional stories which were also told about skirmishes with other people, so other indigenous people. So they're simply just transferred. So these were pliable legends that could be adapted to new situations. So when the colonists asked for stories of violence in the past, the Inuit responded by giving them stories that were traditional. and could be Norse settlers or someone else. But there's a drive to find these stories.

One of the main informants is a storyteller called Aaron, who has brought up in Kangeck, one of the German missionary stations. So he was a learned Greenlander at the time. And he provided no less than 56 stories and numerous drawings, and his artwork is absolutely fantastic. In the book, there's also one of these illustrations. But even he expresses doubt about these stories.

So his fellow Inuit, he says, well, maybe those are not completely. truthful stories. So even he had an inkling that these were stories adopted from somewhere else. So in fact, the Inuit stories tell us very little that we didn't know, or they tell us a lot we didn't know, but really they are folklore, traditional stories, which may not be about the North settlers at all. Yeah, fascinating. How do you separate that myth and legend from what may or may not be fact? One of the things that the book focuses on a little bit is how the stories of the lost settlers became an influence for colonialism as that developed over the centuries that followed.

Why do you think it was such an important myth for colonising countries to latch onto? The way I read the story of the vanished settlers is that it's really a story about the two expansive movements, which comes out of Western culture, that is colonialism and Christian mission. So to take the latter, we had this sort of idea of a kind of metaphoric juxtaposition of a whole climate a cold heart, something which is completely incongruous with any reality, obviously. But this idea that if you could convert people in the far north beyond civilization, then you could convert everyone. So this became a kind of proving ground for the missionaries. And in terms of colonization, we talked a little bit about that, the most northerly place that

you could colonize, that would be Greenland, and that would be some kind of reference. Again, as a kind of proving ground for what could be achieved. But in terms of colonialism, I think some of the legends about the vanished settlers if they were still there. So some of the colonists heard rumors of man-eaters, cannibals who were hiding somewhere in the mountains, who might be the lost settlers or descendants of the lost settlers. So there's also a concern with Greenland as a kind of symbol of how colonization could go wrong. The idea that if lines of communication were disrupted, if there's too far away, if you had a colony too far away, it might suffer. If it became isolated, what would happen to the inhabitants?

And this idea of going native, losing your civilization, losing your Christianity was very much a danger. So there's an interest in the North colony for that reason. There's a book by John Howison. It's called the European colonies from the 1830s, monumental work, which describes a number of English colonization efforts. But it also has a huge chunk of it. It's really concerned with Greenland. Because this is a kind of testing ground for any kind of colonization. So what would happen to this colony?

Well, it's also interesting, and you mentioned it before, Matt, this idea that you have an isolated colony and what's in that, because he also has a kind of fantasy about this as an oasis, where the Viking colonists had escaped the Cissitudes of what had gone on in the world, the softness of modern civilization, the wars of Europe, and so forth. So that's also fantasy we see that begins to develop at this time, and certainly towards the end of the 19th century in many of these popfews. fiction works that I mentioned before, there's this idea of a pure ethnic white community, which is spurred by ideas of eugenics at the time of laws of misogination in America.

There's a kind of pure ancestors who have maintained a kind of ethnic purity. So that's also part of the draw of finding these colonies. What would they be like? What had they maintained? Could we sort of use that as a motto or a society that is faltering in the old world? So many of these discourses, I think, are important when we look at why. Greenland became such an important legend. Thank you so much for sharing all of that with Robert.

I mean, the idea of this colony, someone setting out in 985 to establishes colony, surviving for 400 years based on this economy that it developed for itself, but then to vanish is an incredible story in itself. And then as the book explores, the whole afterlife of this colony in myth and legend that persists for centuries more is another fascinating element of the story. so thank you very much for sharing a little bit of that with us today. Thank you. If Robert has wet your appetite for this mystery of Lost Vikings, then his book, The Vanished Settlers of Greenland,

in search of a legend and its legacy, is the place to go for more tantalising details. There are new episodes of Gone Medieval every Tuesday and Friday, so please join us next time for more on the greatest millennium in human history. Don't forget to also subscribe or follow us wherever you get your podcast from and to tell your friends and family that you've gone medieval. If you have a moment, please do drop us a review or rate us anywhere that you listen to your podcasts, including Spotify.

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