The Collapse of the Greenland Norse Essay -- european history

In Jared Diamond’s novel 'Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed' he discusses many civilizations that moved away from their homelands, grew in population, and then either failed or succeeded in their new environments. Throughout this essay I will attempt to explain the Collapse of the Greenland Norse, one of the many societies to rise and fall. The Greenland Norse faced multiple challenges including economical, agricultural, and unfriendly neighbors. Alongside Greenland other North Atlantic islands faced geographical challenges that lead to some of their falls as well. Yet, first I will discuss why the Norse left Scandinavia in search of new terrain. Similarly to other expansions the Norse, also known as Vikings, expansion was most likely caused by what’s commonly known as â€Å"push/pull† triggers. â€Å"Push† means that the population pressure lead to a lack of opportunities in their homeland while â€Å"pull† represents good opportunities and empty areas to colonize elsewhere (Collapse pg. 185). Another reason for their sudden expansion is autocatalytic process. For the Norse two very distinct events set of this type of process: one was that in A.D. 793 a raid took place in Lindisfarne Monastery yielding a rich haul of booty that lead to even larger yields in following years and the second reason being the discovery of the unpopulated Faeroe Islands lead to the finding of larger, more distant islands (Collapse pg. 186). Even though the islands looked promising the Norse soon found out otherwise as the geographical environments posed many problems. For instance, Orkneys which lays in the Gulf Stream was perhaps their most successful island as it enjoyed mild climates and allowed for great agricultural production, but on... ...the Norse (Collapse pg. 255). Furthermore, the Inuit was able to outlive the Norse due to their advanced fishing skills that the Norse refused to learn from their neighbors largely in part to religion. In the end though it was the Norse’s decision to refrain from eating fish, ringed seals, and whales that potentially could have saved them from collapse (Collapse pg. 274). Even though the Greenland Norse only survived for four hundred and fifty years they weren’t necessarily failures. After all their unique European society was able to survive longer than we’ve been able to survive here in America (Collapse pg. 276). If we, American’s, don’t learn from others past are we doomed to follow in their footsteps? In my opinion, the answer is yes, but hopefully we’ll be able to turn the tides before its too late and we fall into collapse like so many other societies.