Collapse_ How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond [127]
According to the sagas, Leifsbudir was just a base camp at a location convenient for overwintering and going out on summer explorations; the resources of interest to the Vikings were instead to be found in those exploration areas termed Vinland. This is confirmed by a tiny but important discovery made during the archaeological excavation of the L’Anse aux Meadows camp: two wild walnuts known as butternuts, which do not grow in Newfoundland. Even during the centuries of warmer climate prevailing around A.D. 1000, the walnut trees closest to Newfoundland occurred south of the St. Lawrence River Valley. That was also the closest area where the wild grapes described in the sagas grew. It was probably for those grapes that the Vikings named the area Vinland, meaning “wine land.”
The sagas describe Vinland as rich in prized resources lacking in Greenland. High on Vinland’s list of advantages were a relatively mild climate, much lower latitude and hence longer summer growing season than Greenland, tall grass, and mild winters, making it possible for Norse cattle to graze outdoors for themselves throughout the winter, and thus sparing the Norse the effort of having to make hay in the summer for feeding their cattle in barns during the winter. Forests with good timber were everywhere. Other natural resources included lake and river salmon larger than any salmon seen in Greenland, one of the world’s richest ocean fishing grounds in the seas surrounding Newfoundland, and game, including deer, caribou, and nesting birds and their eggs.
Despite the valuable shiploads of timber, grapes, and animal furs that the Vinland voyagers brought back to Greenland, the voyages were discontinued and the L’Anse aux Meadows camp was abandoned. Although the archaeological excavations of the camp were exciting in finally proving that Vikings had indeed reached the New World before Columbus, the excavations were disappointing as well, because the Norse left nothing of value. Objects recovered were confined to small items that had probably been discarded or else dropped and lost, such as 99 broken iron nails, a single whole nail, a bronze pin, a whetstone, a spindle, one glass bead, and a knitting needle. Evidently, the site was not abandoned hastily, but as part of a planned permanent evacuation in which all tools and possessions of value were taken back to Greenland. Today we know that North America was by far the largest and most valuable North Atlantic land discovered by the Norse; even the tiny fraction of it that the Norse surveyed impressed them. Why, then, did the Norse give up on Vinland, land of plenty?
The sagas offer a simple answer to that question: the large population of hostile Indians, with whom the Vikings failed to establish good relations. According to the sagas, the first Indians that the Vikings met were a group of nine, of whom they killed eight, while the ninth fled. That was not a promising start to establishing friendship. Not surprisingly, the Indians came back in a fleet of small boats, shot arrows at the Norse, and killed their leader, Erik the Red’s son Thorvald. Pulling the arrow out of his intestines, the dying Thorvald is said to have lamented, “This is a rich country we have found; there is plenty of fat around my belly. We’ve found a land of fine resources, though we’ll hardly enjoy much of them.”
The next group of Norse voyagers did manage to establish a trade with local Indians (Norse cloth and cow’s milk in exchange