Study: Climate change affected Vikings

• Tweet

PROVIDENCE, R.I., May 31 (UPI) -- Rapid changes in climate drove early Viking colonizers from Greenland as temperatures plummeted several degrees in just decades, U.S. researchers say.

Archaeological remains can fill in some of the blanks about the colony's demise in the 14th and early 15th centuries, researchers at Brown University said, but not all.

Climate scientists have been able to confirm an extended cold snap, called the Little Ice Age, that gripped Greenland beginning in the 1400s, but now Brown researchers have found the climate turned colder in an earlier span of several decades, leading to the end of the Greenland Norse, a university release said Monday.

The scientists used core samples to reconstruct 5,600 years of climate history from two lakes near the Norse "Western Settlement" to measure air temperatures where the Vikings lived.

"This is the first quantitative temperature record from the area they were living in," said William D'Andrea, who earned his doctorate in geological sciences at Brown. "So we can say there is a definite cooling trend in the region right before the Norse disappear."

The change could have introduced a number of hardships for the settlers including shorter crop-growing seasons, less available food for livestock and more sea ice that may have blocked trade, the researchers said, leading to the Vikings abandoning Greenland.