JayJay

Barley has been grown in Greenland today using the same technique the Vikings used. You need soil temperatures above 3C to get the seeds to germinate.

No rippling fields of grain. They boosted the local soil temperature by growing the barley in small stone walled enclosures and irrigating by hand.

As to whether any sort of grain can grow there, my belief is that the country draws but little profit from that source. And yet there are men among those who are counted the wealthiest and most prominent who have tried to sow grain as an experiment; but the great majority in that country do not know what bread is, having never seen it.

A Viking Document from 1250AD, known as The Kings Mirror mentions the growing of grains on Greenland. I believe the sole historical evidence for such cultivation is a few scorched grains in a single layer at the bottom of one rubbish heap.

I believe the sole historical evidence for such cultivation is a few scorched grains in a single layer at the bottom of one rubbish heap.

Mar 12, 2018 at 2:39 PM | Phil Clarke

That is how Climate Science has always been cultivated. How many trees did Mann throw away into his own rubbish heap, before finding one to match his conclusion?

Mar 12, 2018 at 2:39 PM | Phil Clarke

Do you know about the use of Forensic Science in history and archaeology?

Mar 12, 2018 at 1:48 PM | Entropic man
Mar 12, 2018 at 2:39 PM | Phil Clarke

Do you both want to accuse the other of being wrong, or having selectively ignored evidence?

Phil Clarke

Methinks this is what you had in mind.

http://sciencenordic.com/vikings-grew-barley-greenland

Golf Charlie

Phil and I agree.

Based on the evidence, it was just possible, using great effort and ingenuity, for the Vikings to grow a small amount of barley in Greenland.

Note that the researchers only found grains at the bottom of the refuse heap, in the earliest deposits. The Vikings may have been lucky enough to colonize during a brief warm period around 1000AD but it did not last long.

Note that the researchers only found grains at the bottom of the refuse heap, in the earliest deposits. The Vikings may have been lucky enough to colonize during a brief warm period around 1000AD but it did not last long.

Mar 12, 2018 at 5:18 PM | Entropic man

Was this Peer Reviewed for Climate Science, or an equally unreliable source?

The Vikings may have been lucky enough to colonize during a brief warm period around 1000AD but it did not last long

Right. Actually they lived there for almost 500 years. Estimates for maximum population is between 5000 and 10000 people in at least about 18 villages (with 2 bigger settlements). More than 600 farms have been found so far.

As we have seen from Canada, shortly after 1000 AD there was a short cold snap (a big one) in the region. Otherwise it was warm from 850/900 upto 1250/1275 (when there was another cold snap, at least in Europe) and then warm again until about 1400/1450. So they stayed there for hundreds of years, until it became very cold again and had to abandon the settlements.

That first cold snap was a bit of bad luck because the Vikings under Eric the Red had settled Greenland just before that in ca 985 AD. They sailed from Iceland in about 25 ships, 14 arrived, so a few hundred people at most. But they thrived (relatively speaking) and grew to many thousand.
The voyage from Iceland was quite dangerous, but travel between the islands was possible, just not very regular. But no doubt more settlers followed later.
In 1126, a diocese was founded at Garðar. After a while there were about 18/19 churches and now they had their own diocese and bishop (and even 'cathedral'). Last record of a marriage that has been retained is from 1408, but the bishop was gone by 1378. In 1448 the Pope instructs the Bishops of Iceland to provide the Greenlanders with a new bishop.

From Greenland they scouted the area, including Baffin Island, Labrador and New Foundland. The sagas tell us that Leif Erikson (son of Eric) launched the first expedition and reached Vinland (New Foundland). They had some run-ins with the locals (I think they called them Skraelings, it is a long time ago that I've read the sagas), but they also made a settlement there (at L'Anse aux Meadows).
By the way Vinland does perhaps not mean Wine-land (from Germanic Vin/Win) but Land of the Meadows. Still that idea (Vinland = Wine-land) is fed by a quote from 1075 AD from a Saxon who spoke with the the Danish King:

He also told me that many in this part of the Ocean have discovered an island called Vinland because there are grapevines growing wild which produces the best of wines. From trustworthy Danes rather than from fantastic tales, I also have heard that there is an abundance of cereal which is self-sown. Beyond this island, he (King Sven of Denmark) says, are no more inhabitable islands in the Ocean. Everything farther out is covered by immense masses of ice and perennial fog. Martianus tells of this: "One day of sailing beyond Thule the sea is solid." This the widely travelled King Harold of Norway found to be true. With his ships he recently investigated the extent of the northern Ocean but finally had to turn back when the extreme limit of the world disappeared in fog before his eyes. He barely escaped the gaping ravine of the abyss.

The Western Settlement was abandoned ca 1350 AD, the last ('Eastern', actually in the South) settlement was abandoned sometime after 1450 AD, apart from some stragglers who held on longer (and the Inuit).

See also: Debunking the “Vikings weren’t victims of climate” myth
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2016/01/19/debunking-the-vikings-werent-victims-of-climate-myth/

It worries me that there are people living today, and allegedly well-educated and intelligent people, who claim that Greenland was as cold if not colder 1,000 years ago, than it is today. I should like to show them the 95 excavated farms at the Western settlement site, many being dug out from under permafrost, and ask for an explanation as to how this could be? Now, how does one cultivate crops in a land of permafrost? Were the Norsemen farmers in the Western settlement growing ice to feed their livestock?

Greenland Hype

There are claims made today by some people giving the impression that one can do anything in Greenland today that the Vikings of old did.

For instance, some have claimed that the “barley is back.” If you look into this matter, you will find that someone claimed they are experimenting with growing barley in Greenland, and that is about it. The growing season is just not long enough still for that kind of crop to grow. It is relatively well established now that the Greenland Norse farmers did grow barley.

Some will point out that hay is now grown in Greenland. Yes, that is true, for it is. In the far south of Greenland, they do grow hay. Hay has a very short growing season and currently in Greenland, the cut hay must be wrapped in plastic right in the fields to keep it from spoiling. That was hardly a technique available for use by Medieval Norsemen. Regardless, most of the feed for Greenland livestock of today has to be shipped in from afar.

JayJay

" 95 excavated farms at the Western settlement site, many being dug out from under permafrost, and ask for an explanation as to how this could be?

There was always permafrost. Foundations and graves were dug in Summer when the surface thawed enough to dig holes.
Many thousands ? The most recent estimates are about 3000 people in 650 farms, that is about 5 people per farm.

"Now, how does one cultivate crops in a land of permafrost?"

In small peat or stone walled enclosures which raise the surface temperature enough to keep the surface thawed long enough to grow a crop. Note that by 1250 even that was not enough. None of this is mentioned in the article.

"Were the Norsemen farmers in the Western settlement growing ice to feed their livestock?"

Silly question. They kept a few cattle, sheep and goats on Summer pasture as the Greenlanders keep sheep today. And why do you need plastic for winter feed? It's purpose is to keep the fodder in a low oxygen environment. A clamp would have the same effect.

Rhetorical questions are a debating tactic, not evidence. They invite the faithful to jump to conclusions. The whole WUWT piece was slanted to give the impression of a successful colony with a large population. In practice it was never as successful as implied.

Even a small amount of reading around the subject would show you that.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-35935725

"A new discovery has revealed that the Vikings may have travelled hundreds of miles further into North America than previously thought. It's well known that they reached the tip of the continent more than 1,000 years ago, but the full extent of their exploration has remained a mystery, writes historian Dan Snow."

From Wikipedia: "Greenland has been politically and culturally associated with Europe (specifically Norway and Denmark, the colonial powers, as well as the nearby island of Iceland) for more than a millennium.[9] The majority of its residents are Inuit, whose ancestors began migrating from the Canadian mainland in the 13th century, gradually settling across the island."

History and Archaeology, both backed up by modern Forensic Science, are far more reliable than Climate Science.

Having discovered the continent of North America, the Vikings would have realised it had far more resources than Greenland, including trees, and a more varied selection of meat and veg. It would seem logical that over hundreds of years, many "Greenland" Vikings migrated/escaped from Greenland and headed west, especially during colder decades.

Some settlements in Greenland may have been abandoned from time to time, rather than been in continuous occupation, and others may just have been convenient refuges for ships in transit, requiring provisions including fresh water.

While exploring to the south, along the coast, a party led by Leif’s brother Thorvald was set on by a horde of Skraelings [or pagan] [Washington] Redskins in skin boats

Christian Iceland Long Before Columbus

There was always permafrost. Foundations and graves were dug in Summer when the surface thawed enough to dig holes

http://www.zanusphoto.de/uploads/pics/60PermafrostHouse_320.jpg

Note that the researchers only found grains at the bottom of the refuse heap, in the earliest deposits. The Vikings may have been lucky enough to colonize during a brief warm period around 1000AD but it did not last long.

Mar 12, 2018 at 5:18 PM | Entropic man

Oh EM read the original. Grains were only found at the base of the tip where they had been partially carbonized by proximity to a fire. Clearly elsewhere grains remained edible and would have been eaten by vermin (as they would be today). You are using selective preservation to "prove" your preferred interpretation.
I would rely more on the argument that Vikings would not settle where they could not provide the ingredients for a home brew. They knew of land further to the southwest, and would have kept on travelling (as some in fact did).

Rats ate my homework?

Rats ate my homework?

Mar 13, 2018 at 7:49 AM | Phil Clarke

Vermin infested Climate Science?

European History and Religion maintained that Columbus was the first European to cross the Atlantic. Archaeological evidence suggested otherwise, and this is now backed up by Forensics.

If Climate Science wishes to be stuck with ingrained beliefs, locked in the past, based on ignoring evidence, to preserve revered icons and false prophets, no one should be surprised.

Trump will be pleased, he can slash Climate Science Funding based on factual forensic evidence, that Climate Science relies on false assumptions and fake facts, to preserve Mann's Hockey Stick.

They knew of land further to the southwest, and would have kept on travelling (as some in fact did).

Mar 13, 2018 at 7:11 AM | Supertroll

The Vikings and their culture evolved in Scandanavia, not an area capable of supporting large or concentrated populations sustained by agriculture.

Norman Tebbit famously said "on yer bike", as a message to those stuck, waiting for opportunities to come to them. The Vikings got "in their ships". They were not great "builders", so conventional archaeology has found little evidence of where they went. They travelled light, taking tools and knowledge to exploit and develop new lands.

The last 20-30 years have seen huge developments in archaeology and forensics, but Climate Science still can't prove Mann's Stick.

I believe the argument goes 'the planet was as warm or warmer than today in Medieval times therefore modern warming could be natural again. Climate Science in general and Michael Mann in particular corrupted science to eradicate the MWP'

Exhibit One: A warmer Greenland

As we have seen from Canada, shortly after 1000 AD there was a short cold snap (a big one) in the region. Otherwise it was warm from 850/900 upto 1250/1275 (when there was another cold snap, at least in Europe) and then warm again until about 1400/1450. So they stayed there for hundreds of years, until it became very cold again and had to abandon the settlements.

But this has been confirmed in the literature by none other than Mann et al 2009 which found Greenland temperatures comparable to today from 950 to 1250 (the usual definition of the MWP).

Exhibit Two: The MWP Project from CO2Science.

These guys have apparently found 100 or so reconstructions that include medieval temperatures comparable to modern. But they are not consistent. For example they include the Canadian lake sediment study I cited earlier which dated the MWP from AD1200-1500 but also Nyberg et al 2001
which reconstructed North Atlantic sea temperatures and placed the MWP several centuries earlier from AD700-950 and found a 2C cooling after AD1400.

Exhibit Three Moberg et al. Yeah right.

The argument fails because, while Greenland was warm 950-1250 ish , the average global temperature was nothing out of the ordinary, and there may have been (I am not going to check all the refs) 100 'hotspots' round the world during a thousand year timespan, this does not demonstrate the existence of a period of globally synchronous, historically rapid warming to levels we see currently.

JayJay, Golf Charlie

May I suggest that you read Vikings: The North Atlantic Saga, edited by William W. Fitzhugh and Elisabeth I. Ward.

Amazon has copies.

Henriksen, Peter. (2014). Norse agriculture in Greenland – farming at the northern frontier. 423-431.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/295073753_Norse_agriculture_in_Greenland_-_farming_at_the_northern_frontier
or
https://www.academia.edu/9688345/Norse_agriculture_in_Greenland_farming_at_the_northern_frontier

p.427-428

The on-site wet sieving of Ø47 at Garðar during the rescue excavation of the midden resulted in a considerable amount of household waste, including bones, wood and charcoal and, additionally, two burnt barley (Hordeum vulgare) kernels and a few burnt fragments of hazelnut (Corylus avellana). One of the hazelnut fragments has been radiocarbon dated to 994-1154 cal. AD (table 1).
These plant remains were found using a 4 mm mesh sieve and many cereal grains may have been lost.
...
The most significant and important discovery from this project is the burnt remains of cereal grains from Norse farmsteads. Those from the midden at Ø47 are mentioned above but three other middens also produced cereal remains (fig. 5).
At Ø3, a kernel of barley was found in the lowest 15 cm of the midden. Two radiocarbon dates of (1) a willow twig and (2) a crowberry (Empetrum nigrum) seed and seeds of common chickweed from the same layer gave ages of 1044-1216 cal. AD and 1022-1180 cal. AD.
At Ø49, a kernel of barley was found in the lowest 10-30 cm of the midden. Two radiocarbon dates of (1) a twig from glandular birch (Betula glandulosa) and (2) seeds of crowberry and juniper (Juniperus communis) from the same layer gave ages of 1031-1183 cal. AD and 1030-1176 cal. AD.
Finally, and most importantly, at Ø35, two rachis of barley were found in a very charcoal-rich layer in the lower 5 cm of the midden. Two radiocarbon dates of glandular birch twigs and birch and willow buds from the same layer gave ages of 897-1025 cal. AD and 997-1155 cal. AD.

p428-329

Discussion
Norse cereal cultivation?
The occurrence of barley in the oldest layers of four out of the seven more thoroughly investigated middens suggests that barley was fairly common in the households of the earliest Norse settlers in southern Greenland.
It is, however, difficult to determine how barley was used or how extensively it was used, purely on the basis of these finds of kernels and rachis. The important question is whether the Norse settlers cultivated their own cereals in Greenland or whether they imported all their grain from abroad. We know that flax (Linum usitatissimum) was cultivated by the Norse, as flax pollen were found in samples from midden layers from the Western Settlement (Sørensen 1982; Fredskild & Humle 1991). Flax plants produce only few, heavy pollen grains that are not easily wind dispersed and hence usually are found very close to the plant itself.
Cereal-like pollen has been found at numerous sites in the Eastern Settlement and this has led to the suggestion that the Norse cultivated cereals (Edwards, this volume). The cereal-like pollen type was not present at several of these sites prior to the Norse settlement, but as it cannot be differentiated from the wild lyme grass, it cannot be used as definitive evidence of Norse cereal cultivation.
The rachis found at Ø35 is a very strong indication that there was local cultivation of cereals. It is very unlikely that grain was transported to Greenland prior to threshing, not only because it would take up a lot of space, but also because straw bales in open Viking ships would be difficult to keep dry, affecting both the grains ‘shelf life’ and germination potential. Any grain exported to Greenland would probably already have been threshed and sealed in watertight containers for transportation. If additional cereal kernels can be found, further insight into the question of local cultivation versus import could be gained by provenance analysis using strontium and lead isotopes (Frei & Frei 2011).
It has previously been discussed whether it was at all possible to grow barley to maturity in southern Greenland during the Norse period (Hansen 1991). Experiments conducted in 1997 by local agricultural consultant Kenneth Høegh showed that Norwegian and Icelandic barley types can reach germination maturity in the inner, warmest regions of the Eastern Settlement (K. Høegh 2011, pers.comm.).
The climate during the beginning of the Norse period was as warm as at the present day or slightly warmer (Arneborg 2005) and would not have prevented barley cultivation.

"Let's repeat: YOU CAN'T GROW GRAIN IN GREENLAND TODAY!"

Mar 11, 2018 at 2:20 AM | JayJay

"Experiments conducted in 1997 by local agricultural consultant Kenneth Høegh showed that Norwegian and Icelandic barley types can reach germination maturity in the inner, warmest regions of the Eastern Settlement (K. Høegh 2011, pers.comm.). "

Mar 13, 2018 at 11:38 AM | JayJay

Moot, anyway. The argument that a warm medieval Greenland (which Mann himself noted in his 2009 study) debunks the hockey stick is nothing but a Straw Man, which was a multiproxy reconstruction which found the temperatures for the Northern Hemisphere on average were nothing particularly anomalous.

Mar 13, 2018 at 9:10 AM | Phil Clarke

You are talking complete Climate Science, devoid of evidence or facts. BS and CS are very similar.

Mar 13, 2018 at 9:31 AM | Entropic man
Have you read that book, and does it contain the Forensic evidence that proves that myths of Vikings in Greenland and North America are real, and many of Climate Science's claims to support Mann are myths?

Mar 13, 2018 at 12:03 PM | Phil Clarke

You and Climate Science have been cultivating Strawman arguments to preserve Mann., in complete Denial of actual evidence.

Why should anyone trust your Denial now?

This thread was started in order to review Climate Science and GHG Theory.

It has proved that Climate Science cannot admit a single mistake, and simply ignores all evidence that is Inconveniently True.

"Experiments conducted in 1997 by local agricultural consultant Kenneth Høegh showed that Norwegian and Icelandic barley types can reach germination maturity in the inner, warmest regions of the Eastern Settlement (K. Høegh 2011, pers.comm.). "

Yes germination, that is what EM already reported. But of course that is a far cry from growing and actually harvesting.
And not in some small enclosure, you need fields. Otherwise you'll never have enough to make beer. You need about 200 acres of barley to make about 5 gallon (19.4 L) of beer.
We need more in order to feed the chickens and pigs and to make bread.

Would that be the bread that the documentary evidence suggests was unknown to the great majority ?

"And yet there are men among those who are counted the wealthiest and most prominent who have tried to sow grain as an experiment; but the great majority in that country do not know what bread is, having never seen it.”

https://ancientfoods.wordpress.com/2012/02/17/viking-barley-in-greenland/