Greenland's Climate
Anyone who can locate Greenland on a world map knows that the world’s largest island is not a sunny tropical paradise. Greenland is a place of climactic extremes, lying mostly within the Arctic Circle, where dog sleds are preferable to cars for out-of-town transportation. Residents of Greenland can by no means ignore the weather. Climate has played a leading role in Greenland’s history and even today plays a large part in any Greenlander’s existence. It is responsible not only for the state of their economy, but also for the limits that exist on their infrastructure today. In short, Greenland is a society that has been forced to accommodate its climate and which has a great deal at stake regarding the peculiarities of the same.
European colonization of Greenland has over the past thousand years has been inconsistent, and the wellbeing of its residents has been directly linked to the climate. The Old Norse Greenlanders, who arrived around AD 950, came during a period of unusual warmth(Lamb, 175). Having the luxury of living in a Greenland that was actually green, the Norse raised crops and livestock in ground that today is permanently frozen. The mistake the Norse settlers made was to assume that Greenland’s climate, which had been suitable for their way of life for more than two centuries, would remain so, and ultimately it was a shift in climate that resulted in their demise. Starting about half way through the 13 th century, a cooling trend developed, and by 1369, regular communication between Greenland and the rest of Europe ceased due to ice sheets encroaching on the shipping routes that took vessels past Greenland (Lamb, 187). It was around this time that the more northern of the two Norse settleme...
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...uld otherwise significantly raise the sea level. Greenland is a society that relies on a very delicate balance of weather factors to remain viable. The balance is maybe less precarious for many other parts of the world, but a change in the status quo of the climate always has the possibility to upset society on a biblical scale. Advanced as humans are as a species, we have not by any means developed to the point where we can force the climate to accommodate us.
Works Cited
Lamb, H.H. Climate, History, and the Modern World. New York: Routledge, 2002.
“Lonely Planet: Destination Greenland.” The Lonely Planet. 2003. Accessed: 12 December, 2004. http://www.lonelyplanet.com/destinations/europe/greenland/printable.htm
“The World Factbook – Greenland.” CIA World Factbook. Accessed: 12 December, 2004. http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/gl.html
This is because, the Norse did in fact have regular contact and knowledge of these people. The Skræling and Thule people were commonly referred to by the Norse. Thule, which is now called Qaanaaq, is located in northwest Greenland, towards Canada and is part of the Kingdom of Denmark. It is believed the Thule people are the ancestors of the modern Inuit (Eskimo) as they are linked biologically, culturally, and linguistically. The Vikings were in contact with the Thule people, particularly in the 11th century when they explored Greenland and the edges of Canada where they referred to these people as both “Thule” and “Skræling.” During the occurrence of the “Little Ice Age” in 1650 - 1850 AD, the changed climate caused the Thule communities to migrate and scatter in which they later became known as th...
Diamond, Jared (2005). Norse Greenland’s Flowering. Collapse: how societies choose to fail or succeed (pp.221-257). New York: Penguine Group.
The beginning of the ninth century AD to the eleventh was known as the “Viking age”; during this time Iceland was settled by Scandinavians and CeltsCeltics. Some of the settlers were Christian while most were Pagan; together they created a culture
Brown, DeNeen L. "Culture Corrosion in Canada's North; Forced Into the Modern World, Indigenous Inuit Struggle to Cope." The Washington Post 16 July 2001, page A01.
Various glaciers in Alaska and other parts of the United States have shrunk dramatically. If temperatures continue to rise, the ice will continue to melt, and some glaciers could disappear completely, which causes sea levels to rise. There are many animals, birds, and seafood that depend solely on glaciers for survival. With an increase in sea water temperature, and increasing sea levels, sea-plants that these fish thrive on will be lost, lowering the number of seafood, which in-turn will make survival of many species difficult. The arctic is source region for cold ocean currents and with no ice it will have no density and temperature distinctions, which pushes the ocean currents. If the ocean current heat transfer mechanism powers down,
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The Inuit people of Nunavik had a very distinct culture before the Europeans arrived. The modes of transportation consisted of dog sleds, and kayaks made of skin and bone. Because of the cold climate, they ate animals from the ocean and rivers such as Beluga Whales, seals, and fish. In the summer, they found berries to eat. There are no trees in the arctic, so they used other resources to build shelter. They lived mostly in igloos, made of ice blocks and sealed by pouring water over them and letting it freeze. They also built sheds and other buildings out of whale bones and various animal...
A large portion of the Inuit culture was developed based upon the need to survive. Migratory societies such as the Inuit were driven by the need for food to feed its members, by the availability of trade to secure resources not normally available ...
I knew whatever innocent ethnographic research I had planned would now be fruitless. The devastating effects which Western culture had on these villages were so profound and impossible to ignore. As I walked the rugged dirt roads crowded by elderly white Canadian tourists smiling from ear to ear, snapping pictures of this serotonin mirage. These tourists had been blind to the pain behind the eyes of the street vendors. Vendors who donned ragged clothes which indicated a high level of strength required of them to hold a smile and pretend their world was a fairytale (for the short amount of time we were there). Their streets were littered with pollution, the local grocery market had inflated prices (such as a carton of milk for $15), and in one instance a village’s school had been burnt down by local teenagers. The health of these communities were tragic and I quickly learned about the high volume of adolescent suicide which runs rampant in these villages. This experience made me question the mechanisms which devastated the inuit people and detached them from their ability to master their environment. I questioned why this specific diaspora of Inuit were so marginalized while their contemporaries across the Davis Straight seemed to be living more comfortably. However, to understand their plight, one must first examine the history of the Inuit and the sociopolitical dynamics of the Canadian Arctic.
The ice sheet extends from about 60° to 83°N over a distance of 2,400 km in the North Atlantic Ocean. The ice sheet covers 1.71 million km2 , or roughly 80% of the surface of Greenland. It consists of a northern dome and a southern dome, with maximum elevations of 3,230 m and 2,850 m, respectively, linked by a long saddle with elevations around 2,500 m. Its total volume is about 2.85 million km3, which, if it were to melt entirely, would raise global sea level by about 7.2 m. The ice sheet has an average thickness of 1,670 m and reaches a maximum of 3,300 m in the center. The bedrock surface below the ice sheet is an extensive flat area near sea level, which would rebound by as much as 1,000 m if the ice sheet were to be removed (Figure 1). Precipitation over Greenland generally decreases from south to north, ranging from about 2,500 mm per year in the southeast to less than 150 mm per year in interior northeastern Greenland. The southern high precipitation zone is largely determined by the Icelandic low and the resulting onshore flow which is forced to ascend the surface of the ice sheet. In contrast to Antarctica, summer temperatures on Greenland are high enough to cause widespread summer melting. This results in an ablation zone with negative mass balance all around its perimeter. Ablation rates are highest over the southwestern part of the ice sheet where...
The collapse of Norse Greenland has been widely disputed; did this society truly collapse, or rather did they choose to leave for a better life elsewhere? Many books have been written on this subject; from Jared Diamond’s Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fair or Succeed to the corresponding Patricia McAnany and Norman Yoffee’s Questioning Collapse: Human Resilience, Ecological Vulnerability, and the Aftermath of Empire. In Diamond’s Collapse, there are five main points of collapse that have to happen before a society will collapse. These points are: 1. Environmental damage, 2. Climate change, 3. Hostile neighbors, 4. Friendly neighbors, and 5. Society’s response to environmental damage. When comparing it to McAnany and Yoffee’s Questioning Collapse, they dispute how societies don’t collapse, in fact there is a resilience to the societies and that they adjust according to their environment and how their economy and personal life is going. In my essay, I will compare Diamond’s view of collapse against the resilience view of McAnany and Yoffee.
In conclusion Vikings were people which wanted to expand their territory. With the information that we have they expanded till Greenland and British isles. And with their struggle they did and at last they have found Newfoundland which was so good for them by resources and land. Yet they couldn’t stay there because of weather conditions and the distance between Greenland and Canada played a major role too. And these circumstances resulted on their abandoned. However Historians may certainly not know all the facts about why settlement did not last. With that in mind the evidence points to battles with the natives, the long distance from Greenland, the population lack and the natural environmental factors. In my last words the Vikings were here for an instant and, for numerous reasons abandoned their settlement, leaving their spot forever.
Beginning with the general history, scientists surmise that roughly 50 centuries ago, there was a migration of the Inuit’s ancestors across the Bering Strait (when it was frozen). Later, coming from an autonomous district in Russia now known as Chukotka, the pre-Inuit supposedly settled in North America about 15 centuries later than the Paleoamericans — forerunners of the Native Americans. Contrasting to the Native Americans, the Inuit people are more akin to “indigenous Mongolians of Far East Asia” compared in terms of language and culture. Restating the obvious, the climate of the Arctic is a harsh one. Consequently, the evolution of Inuit culture in the Arctic spanned over a few millennia without much influence from different indigenous peoples, unlike the Native Americans. Over this time, Inuit culture mainated a genuineness and uniformity unique to most ancient cultures. Continuing with the Inuit’s historic homes, Inuit communities locate in the Tundra. Previously, Inuit communities lived in igloos during the winter. The igloos, shelters made from snow, were used as homes because of the scarce variety of resources in the area. During the melting of the snow in the summer, Inuit made huts similar to tents using animal skins outstretched over the area of a frame. Decidedly, before in the past, Inuit migration would occur between a winter and a summer camp in which multiple families would live in. In short, this paragraph discussed Inuit history using their overall history and their homes in the
Hoffman, J. (2007, May). The maldives & rising sea levels [Fact sheet]. Retrieved March 16, 2014, from Ice Case Studies website: http://www1.american.edu/ted/ice/maldives.htm
It is an unquestioned fact that the climate is changing. There is abundant evidence that the world is becoming warmer and warmer. The temperature of the global land average temperature has increased by about 8.5 degrees centigrade from 1880 to 2012 (Karr, et al 406). The one or two degrees increase in temperature can cause dramatic and serious consequences to the earth as well as humans. More extreme weather occurs, such as heat waves and droughts. The Arctic Region is especially sensitive to global climate change. According to the data in recent decades, the temperature in the Arctic has increased by more than 2 degrees centigrade in the recent half century (Przybylak 316). Climate change has led to a series of environmental and ecological negative