Greenland in the Medieval Warm Period
February 25th, 2007 by Stephen
I received a long comment in this blog this week that included something I see from time to time by those who want to believe that climate change is not man made:
1300AD — when exploring vikings named ‘Greenland’ Greenland, they did so for a reason: they cultivated the land for two centuries — before they couldn’t grow any more (it wasn’t human greenhouse gas that interrupted their cultivation LOL
Firstly, let’s get the facts straight. The Vikings colonised Greenland towards the end of the 10th centure (c. 982). They remained there for over 400 years, but their settlements were abandoned by the 15th century (after c. 1430 AD, but it is unclear exactly when the colony was abandoned).
Now the argument that is made is that the name of the country - “Greenland” and the fact that people lived there implies that at this time (during the so called “medieval warm period”) the global temperature must have been much warmer than it is now.
But this argument is made in ignorance of a few key facts. Firstly, people live in much the same locations of Greenland now as the two Viking settlements. These areas are indeed very green even today. Look at this google map of the area of the Western settlement. The eastern settlement area is here. Notice the strong green colour in all the valleys! Whilst travel to the settlements and trade with them would have become very hard in the Little Ice Age, it is not as if they were overwhelmed by the Greenland ice sheet!
Indeed the average temperature in Greenland now is higher than it would have been in the medieval warm period[1].
But there are other misconceptions in this argument. Greenland was settled by Erik the Red, who was expelled from Iceland. It is a very likely theory that the naming of the land as “Greenland” was a bit of 10th century marketing hype to encourage others to settle there.
Another point is that “grn” is an indo-european word meaning something akin to a nugget, and at the root of hundreds of words in a multiplicity of languages. Words including “ground”, “corn”, “grain” and so on. Some early maps actually refer to Greenland as Groundland (the Old Norse equivalent at least), and it may be that the country was not named for the colour green at all.
Finally, the medieval warm period was primarily a Northern European phenomenon, and not one found worldwide.
So an argument made on the existence of the Viking settlement, and the naming of the country as Greenland, is a very tenuous argument against global warming.
Notes
- Crowley TJ, Lowery TS (2000) How Warm Was the Medieval Warm Period? AMBIO: A Journal of the Human Environment: Vol. 29, No. 1 pp. 51–54
[...] I have already answered the point about Greenland in an earlier post. However, I did not mention this bit about grapes being grown in Britain. [...]
very interesting, but I don’t agree with you
Idetrorce
Hi
your argument against warm Greenland on etymological grounds is redundant. Whether or not Greenland was a FLorida of middle ages or not is beyond the point, as we all know that non-anthropogenic climate change has happened in the past at a greater scale than any hockey stick graph. Of course there is a greenhouse effect from ca. 1770s and of course we are changing the earth’s climate. And of course there is nothing we can do about it (homework: your comment to this must not use the term ’sustainability’)
all the best
Vladimir
My argument is a lot more than based on etymological grounds. Indeed this post is a refutation of the argument made that Greenland must have been some sub tropical paradise in the recent past!
Non anthropogenic climate change happens - but it generally happens more slowly than what we see now, and if it doesn’t then it is accompanied by extinctions. If climate changes faster than an ecosystem can realistically adapt (think - how fast can a tree walk?) then ecosystems will fail and extinctions will result.
And I am glad you recognise that there is a greenhouse effect that has intensified in the industrial period. It is a pity that you think there is nothing we can do about it though. Problems can be hard without being intractable.
I don’t see why sustainability should not form part of the answer, of course. It depends what line of argument you wish to proscribe, but it is clear that unsustainable consumption of fossil fuels is, nevertheless… unsustainable
But that is a different issue. The issue of climate is this: climates change, ecosystems usually can adapt. But if climate changes too quickly then ecosystems fail. In a worst case scenario, a feedback mechanism could push the climate into a feedback loop that destroys it utterly (look at Venus!) However we don’t need to get hung up on such dire predictions, to realise that even small changes can have very damaging effects - often to regions, people and ecosystems least able to deal with those effects.