24.8 America: a.d. 901 to 1000

America

Back to America: A.D. 801 to 900

North america

The far north and canada

We have previously mentioned the Thule Inuit Culture which spread all across the Canadian arctic and Greenland after about 800 A. D. No one knows if the Thule people drove off or simply absorbed the Dorset tribes. Perhaps the latter simply couldn't adapt to the warming climatic change that occurred about this time. In summer the Thule people lived in tents, as had the Dorsets, but their winter houses were better. Foundations of these structures were dug into the ground with tunnel entrances, which trapped warm air inside, and walls and roofs were added of stone, sod or occasionally the baleen and bones bowhead whales. (Ref. 45 , 189 )

The eastern coast of Greenland is only about 250 statue-miles across the Denmark Strait from Iceland, so it is not remarkable that Icelanders soon knew of its existence. Of course the eastern coast of Greenland is and was very inhospitable to man and the journey around its southern tip to the more livable western coast was somewhat difficult. The fact that the climatic conditions were different in the 10th century and that at A.D. 1,000 parts of Greenland were actually green, probably helped. At any rate, Erik the Red, known as a criminal both in his original Jaeder, Norway home and also in Iceland, took to the sea about 980, landing and exploring southern Greenland, a land which had been reported as seen by another Icelander some 50 years or more previously. After three years of exploration, Eric returned to Iceland, got into more trouble and organized one of the largest arctic expeditions on record to return to Greenland for permanent settlement. He obtained 35 cargo vessels

At the very end of the century Leif Erikson, son of Eric the Red, while on a regular trade trip back to Norway, was entertained by the enthusiastic Christian King Olav Tryggveson and commissioned to take a Catholic priest and several religious teachers back to Greenland. Leif departed Norway just before Olav's death in 1,000 and did bring Christianity to Greenland and shortly thereafter allegedly to Vinland