Collapse_ How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed - Jared Diamond [143]
Because Western Settlement lies 300 miles north of Eastern Settlement, its hay production per acre of pasture was barely one-third that of Eastern Settlement. However, Western Settlement was closer to the hunting grounds for walruses and polar bears that were Greenland’s chief export to Europe, as I shall explain. Yet walrus ivory has been found at most Eastern Settlement archaeological sites, where it was evidently being processed during the winter, and ship trade (including ivory export) with Europe took place mainly at Gardar and other big Eastern Settlement farms. Thus, Western Settlement, although much smaller than Eastern Settlement, was crucial to the Norse economy.
Integration of poorer with richer farms was necessary because hay production and grass growth depend especially on a combination of two factors: temperature, and hours of sunlight. Warmer temperatures, and more hours or days of sunlight during the summer growing season, meant that a farm could produce more grass or hay and hence feed more livestock, both because the livestock could graze the grass for themselves during the summer and had more hay to eat during the winter. Hence in a good year the best farms at low elevation, on the inner fjords, or with south-facing exposures produced big surpluses of hay and livestock over and above the amounts required for the farm’s human inhabitants to survive, while small poor farms at higher elevations, near the outer fjords, or without south-facing exposures produced smaller surpluses. In a bad year (colder and/or foggier), when hay production was depressed everywhere, the best farms might still have been left with some surplus, albeit a small one. But poorer farms might have found themselves with not even enough hay to feed all their animals through the winter. Hence they would have had to cull some animals in the fall and might at worst have had no animals left alive in the spring. At best, they might have had to divert their herd’s entire milk production to rearing calves, lambs, and kids, and the farmers themselves would have had to depend on seal or caribou meat rather than dairy products for their own food.
One can recognize that pecking order of farm quality by the pecking order of space for cows in the ruins of Norse barns. By far the best farm, as reflected in the space for the most cows, was Gardar, unique in having two huge barns capable of holding the grand total of about 160 cows. The barns at several second-rank farms, such as Brattahlid and Sandnes, could have held 30 to 50 cows each. But poor farms had room for only a few cows, perhaps just a single one. The result was that the best farms subsidized poor farms in bad years by lending them livestock in the spring so that the poor farms could rebuild their herds.
Thus, Greenland society was characterized by much interdependence and sharing, with seals and seabirds being transported inland, caribou downhill, walrus tusks south, and livestock from richer to poorer farms. But in Greenland, as elsewhere in the world where rich and poor people are interdependent, rich and poor people didn’t all end up with the same average wealth. Instead, different people ended up with different proportions of high-status and low-status foods in their diets, as reflected in counts of bones of different animal species in their garbage. The ratio of high-status cow to lower-status sheep bones, and of sheep to bottom-status goat bones, tends to be higher on good than on poorer farms, and higher on Eastern than on Western Settlement farms. Caribou bones, and especially seal bones, are more frequent at Western than at Eastern Settlement sites because Western Settlement was more marginal for raising livestock and was also near larger areas of caribou habitat. Among those two wild foods, caribou is better represented at the richest farms (especially Gardar), while people