Human Response to environmental Change in North Atlantic Insular Situations Menniskjaligar reaktiónir til umhvørvisbroytingar í oyggjasamfeløgum í Norðuratlantshavi

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Published Jan 1, 1998
Przemyslaw Urbanczyk

Abstract

Cultural responses to the middle-range climatic changes may be of a various character which depends very much on the type of environment. However, this volume is concentrated on islands that were relatively isolated in the ocean which limited very much the spectrum of possible choices. Faroes, Iceland and Southern Greenland were settled by immigrant farmers/fishermen seeking improvement of their social situation by escaping from Europe where centralising processes of organising coercive
territorial states started with devastating effect on traditional decentralised social organisation. Once they colonised North Atlantic islands and, subsequently, filled all suitable localities they were trapped in situation of no-return. They were too many to re-immigrate back to the continent and they were too many to change their economy to some less intensive energy extraction model. An important obstacle was also their hierarchical organisation that must have been based on surplus accumulation necessary for material manifestation of status.

I discuss here those internal/subjective reasons that made impossible an effective adaptation to deteriorating environmental conditions. Especially interesting is the case of Norse Greenlanders who had an opportunity to learn from the native North Americans but they did not take that chance. To understand it we must turn our attention to the ideological rather than material aspects of the Norse presence in Greenland. Decisive was their European culture tradition reinforced by Christianity.
However, also some more practical aspects should be considered. The Norse were farmers and agriculture has such a strong impact on human mentality that there was no question of abandonment of agricultural land if there was no other similar locality available.

The extinction of the Norse Greenlanders, then, was due to the Christian ideology of farmers who tried to continue with their cultural tradition against any odds.

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Section
Natural Sciences