NARRATOR: The wind here cuts through you. It is not just the cold, though the temperature is hovering barely above freezing in the middle of July. It is the silence. I am standing on the banks of the Ameralik Fjord, deep inland on the western coast of Greenland. The year is 1350. Around me, the landscape is a bruise of grey rock and brown scrub, flanked by the crushing weight of glaciers that seem to have crept closer than anyone remembers. This is the Western Settlement, the Vestribyggð. For three hundred years, this was the edge of the known world for the Norsemen. Today, it is a crime scene. I am here to witness the discovery of a mystery that will haunt historians for seven centuries. And I am not alone.
IVAR BARDARSON: Keep the men close. Spears up. We do not know what waits in the high grass.
NARRATOR: That voice belongs to Ivar Bardarson. He is a priest, a steward, and right now, a very frightened man. He was sent here from Norway by the Bishop of Bergen to act as a tax collector and ombudsman. He has spent years in the Eastern Settlement, south of here, waiting for a shipment of walrus ivory that never came. The church is owed its tithe. The King is owed his taxes. So, Ivar gathered a crew and sailed north to find out why the Western Settlement went silent. Ivar, what are you seeing?
IVAR BARDARSON: Nothing. That is the trouble. Look at the smoke holes on the longhouses, there, up the slope. No smoke. No smell of burning peat. No dogs barking. It is the middle of the day, yet the farm of Sandnes lies as still as a grave.
NARRATOR: Sandnes. This is the heart of the settlement. The cathedral of the wilderness. A large stone church stands on the headland, its mortar crumbling slightly under the assault of the salt spray. We beach the boat, the wooden keel grinding loudly against the gravel. The sound is startlingly loud in the quiet. The crew disembarks, hands gripping the shafts of their axes. They expect an ambush. They expect the Skrælings—the Norse name for the Inuit hunters who have been moving south as the climate cools.
IVAR BARDARSON: Halla! Sigurðr! Is there anyone here? In the name of King Magnus, show yourselves!
NARRATOR: His shout dies instantly, swallowed by the vastness of the fjord. We begin to walk up the path toward the main farm complex. The grass is overgrown, lush and thick. And then, we see them. Movement, near the byre.
IVAR BARDARSON: Hold. What is that? A cow?
NARRATOR: It is. A small, sturdy breed of cattle, shaggy-haired against the Arctic chill. And not just one. There are sheep, too. And goats. They are grazing lazily in the home field. This is the first thing that feels truly wrong. In Norse society, livestock is life. A cow is wealth. To leave cattle unattended, to let them roam feral in the fields, is unthinkable. It implies a breakdown of order so total that the mind struggles to comprehend it.
IVAR BARDARSON: They are fat. Look at them. They have not been milked, their udders are swollen, but they are not starving. If the Skrælings had raided this place, would they not have taken the beasts? Meat is survival here. Why leave a feast walking in the meadow?
NARRATOR: Ivar is trying to fit what he sees into the logic of warfare. He believes the Inuit have attacked. But the evidence before us suggests something stranger. We push open the heavy wooden door of the main longhouse. The hinges groan, rusted and stiff. Inside, the air is damp and smells of moldering wool and old earth. It takes a moment for our eyes to adjust to the gloom.
IVAR BARDARSON: Bring the lantern. Search the corners.
NARRATOR: The room is eerie. It is not ransacked. There are loom weights stacked neatly by the wall. A soapstone pot sits near the hearth, empty but unbroken. If this were a raid, where is the blood? Where are the bodies? If they fled, why did they leave their tools? Iron is more precious than gold in Greenland. You do not leave an iron knife behind unless you are running for your life, or unless you are already dead.
IVAR BARDARSON: It makes no sense. I knew the bondi here, Þorstein. He was a hard man, careful with his silver. He would not leave this house to rot. Unless... unless they were taken. All of them.
NARRATOR: Ivar, look at the floor. The layer of twigs and insulation. It is trampled, yes, but there are no signs of a struggle. This feels less like a massacre and more like... evaporation. Let’s step back outside. The air in there is suffocating.
IVAR BARDARSON: The Skrælings must have done this. They possess sorcery, it is said. They must have come from the north, overwhelmed the farms, and driven the people into the sea. We must report this to the Bishop. The Western Settlement is fallen.
NARRATOR: Ivar Bardarson will write exactly that in his report, a document that will survive for centuries as the 'Description of Greenland.' He will claim that the Skrælings possess the entire Western Settlement. But Ivar is looking at this through the eyes of a 14th-century European terrified of the heathen other. He doesn't see the invisible forces that have been besieging this farm for decades. Forces that are far more powerful than any raiding party.
IVAR BARDARSON: What forces? The Devil?
NARRATOR: No, Ivar. The ice. And the market. Let’s walk the perimeter of the field. Look at the glaciers on the horizon. Do they look closer to you than they did in your grandfather’s time?
IVAR BARDARSON: The summers have been short. The hay does not dry. We have had to bleed the cattle in winter to make blood-porridge because the stores run out before spring. It is a punishment from God.
NARRATOR: It is the Little Ice Age. The global temperature is dropping. Here, on the margin of agriculture, a drop of one degree is the difference between survival and starvation. The sea ice is clogging the fjords longer each year. The ship from Norway—the 'Knarr'—hasn’t come in years, has it?
IVAR BARDARSON: Not for... six years. Maybe seven. The King neglects us.
NARRATOR: It is not just neglect. It is economics. You came here for ivory, Ivar. Walrus tusk. For centuries, this was the red gold of the north. The Lewis Chessmen, the crucifixes of kings—they were carved from Greenland walrus. But in Europe, the markets are changing. Elephant ivory from Africa is flooding the ports of the Mediterranean. It is whiter, larger, and easier to carve. The price of your walrus tusk has crashed. The trade that kept these ships sailing is dead.
IVAR BARDARSON: So they are poor. Men do not vanish because they are poor. They endure.
NARRATOR: They endure until they cannot. Archaeology tells us a darker story about this specific farm, Sandnes. In the layers of dirt beneath our feet, future scientists will find the bones of hunting dogs. Butchered. The marks of knives on the bones of their loyal companions. When a farmer eats his dog, Ivar, he has lost all hope.
IVAR BARDARSON: They ate the dogs? But... the cattle. The cattle are here. Why eat the dogs and spare the cattle?
NARRATOR: That is the true mystery. Perhaps they ate the dogs in the winter, desperate to keep the breeding stock—the cows—alive for a spring that never came. Or perhaps the end came so swiftly that the cattle were the only ones left. Some theories suggest a final, desperate migration. That the people of the Western Settlement, realizing the ships would never return, packed what little they could carry and turned their backs on the Norse world.
IVAR BARDARSON: To live like Skrælings? A Christian man would never. It is heresy.
NARRATOR: Is it? If the choice is heresy or death? But you are right about the silence. There is no one here. The settlement wasn't destroyed by an army. It withered. It was strangled by the cold and abandoned by a Europe that no longer needed what it had to sell.
IVAR BARDARSON: We cannot leave the livestock. We cannot take them on the boat, there is no room. And we cannot leave them for the Skrælings to take. Men! Drive the cattle to the shore. Slaughter them. We will salt what meat we can carry. The rest... the rest we leave to the ravens. Nothing remains for the heathens.
NARRATOR: The order is given. The silence of the fjord is about to be broken by the sound of slaughter. It is a grim end to the Western Settlement. Ivar Bardarson will sail back to the Eastern Settlement, bearing news of a catastrophe he doesn't fully understand. He will tell the Bishop that the colony is gone. And in a few decades, the Eastern Settlement will follow. The darkness is closing in on Norse Greenland.
IVAR BARDARSON: God have mercy on their souls. For this land has none.
NARRATOR: The wind picks up, howling down from the ice sheet. It screams through the empty windows of the church at Sandnes. The Western Settlement is closed. The experiment is over. And the long silence begins.
Backgrounder Notes
As an expert researcher and library scientist, I have identified several key historical, geographical, and economic concepts from this narrative that are essential for understanding the Norse experience in Greenland.
1. Western Settlement (Vestribyggð)
Located in the present-day Nuuk region, this was the smaller and more northern of the two primary Norse colonies in Greenland. It was established around 985 AD and served as a vital outpost for hunting and ivory collection until its mysterious abandonment in the mid-14th century.
2. Ivar Bardarson
A 14th-century Norwegian priest and official, Bardarson was sent to Greenland as a steward to the Bishop of Garðar to oversee church properties and collect taxes. His written account, Det gamle Grønlands beskrivelse, provides one of the few surviving historical eyewitness descriptions of the colony’s final years.
3. Sandnes
Sandnes was the largest and most prominent farm in the Western Settlement, acting as a regional center of power and religion. Archeological excavations there have revealed a significant stone church and evidence of a sophisticated dairy operation that once supported a thriving community.
4. Skrælings
This was the term used by the Norse to describe the indigenous Thule people (ancestors of the modern Inuit) who migrated into Greenland from the north. While the narrative suggests a violent conflict, historical evidence indicates a complex relationship of both occasional trade and resource competition as the climate cooled.
5. Little Ice Age
The Little Ice Age was a period of global cooling that began in the early 14th century, significantly lowering temperatures in the North Atlantic. For the Greenland Norse, this meant shorter growing seasons for livestock hay and an increase in sea ice, which eventually cut off essential shipping lanes to Europe.
6. Walrus Ivory Trade
For centuries, walrus tusks served as the primary export and "hard currency" of Norse Greenland, used in Europe to create luxury items like religious reliquaries and chess pieces. The colony's economy collapsed when the European market shifted toward more abundant and more easily carved elephant ivory from Africa.
7. The Lewis Chessmen
These famous 12th-century gaming pieces, discovered in Scotland, are widely believed to have been carved from walrus ivory sourced from Greenland. They serve as a primary example of the high-value trade network that once connected remote Arctic settlements to the royal courts of Europe.
8. Knarr
The knarr was a type of Norse merchant vessel designed for long-distance Atlantic travel, featuring a broad beam and deep hull for carrying heavy cargo like livestock and ivory. These ships were the only lifeline between Greenland and the mainland, and their cessation marked the beginning of the colony's end.
9. Eastern Settlement
Despite its name, the Eastern Settlement was located in southern Greenland and was the larger, more populous of the two colonies. It remained inhabited until the early 15th century, outlasting the Western Settlement by nearly 75 years before it, too, was abandoned.
10. "Description of Greenland" (Det gamle Grønlands beskrivelse)
Originally written in the 14th century, this document is based on Ivar Bardarson’s reports and serves as a vital primary source for historians. It contains detailed geographical directions, descriptions of farms, and the earliest account of the Western Settlement’s collapse.
