In his treatise, "Darkness at the Edge of the World" in the March 2017 issue of Smithsonian, environmental specialist Tim Folger focuses on the settlements of Hvalsey, now called Gardar, at the southwestern tip of Greenland, perhaps a hundred miles southeast of Nuuk, an Inuit settlement further up Greenland's west coast.
Settled by Eric the Red sailing from Iceland, this Nordic community was inhabited by at least 1,500 or more people from the tenth to the thirteenth century. Then the Norsemen disappeared. Where? No one knows, but they departed in unison; farmhouse doors were closed, gates latched, and the stones of their large cathedral, with part of the bishop's crosier carved from narwhal bone and his ring remain, although the roof and stained glass are gone.
Today, Gardar is an Inuit settlement, and although Greenland is Danish territory, it is no longer politically connected to Norway. Why did the Norse abandon their settlements? One reason was climate change. In the tenth century, there was a brief warming period (somewhat like today's global warming) that allowed some agriculture, mostly sheep and cattle raising, along the fjords; but farming was not the main cultural endeavor of the Norse Greenlanders. It was ivory hunting, causing near extinction of the Arctic walrus population. The Inuits hunted the animals for food – the Norse for their valuable tusks.
In 1257, a volcano on Lombok Island in Indonesia erupted, ranked by geologists as the most powerful blast in the last 7,000 years. Sulfur from it is found in ice core samples from Antarctica to Greenland. It blocked sunlight from reaching the ground and had serious impact on anything that might have grown in the small Norse communities, including food for their sheep and cattle.
Climate change was not the only reason the Norse left Greenland, however. About the same time as the volcanic eruption, Portuguese and other European explorers were sailing around Africa, discovering animals such as elephants, where the tusks were larger and of better quality than those of walruses.
European artists preferred African ivory to that of Norse ivory, hence the ivory trade, via the Norwegian port of Bergen, declined. With no other commodity to trade, the Greenlanders locked up their villages and sailed away, perhaps to that strange new Vineland, establishing new communities near the cod-infested waters of the Grand Banks.
14th century globalization vs. 21st century climate change
What has any of this historic mystery to do with 21st century insurance claim adjusting? Actually, quite a bit. Consider, for example, the economy of coal-producing regions of the nation as alternative fuels put mines out of business, leaving thousands of miners without jobs. Their economy declined; it is unlikely that some new coal-related industry will take its place.
In the Great Lakes "rustbelt," some new industries developed to absorb the hundreds of thousands of factory workers left unemployed; many moved to Silicon Valley for technology jobs, others to local jobs in the technology industry. When an economy slows, so does the insurance industry.
Many resent that Mexico, China and the Far East produce products once produced in the U.S., and that large corporate farms are absorbing small family farms. Will America still "feed the world" when the world population hits 10 billion? Next month we will address some of these key issues.
Ken Brownlee, CPCU, (kenbrownlee@msn.com) is a former adjuster and risk manager based in Atlanta, Ga. He now authors and edits claims-adjusting textbooks. Opinions expressed are the author's own.
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