Emily Chan
Hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus arrived in North America, Viking Age Norse people may have encountered Indigenous Americans while searching for walrus ivory in the High Arctic, according to a new study.
Walrus ivory was a highly valued commodity in medieval Europe. It was supplied by Norse intermediaries.
They traveled across the North Atlantic to seek out the product, and in the process, they established settlements in Greenland and Iceland.
However, the exact locations of where the ivory came from have long been unclear. The new study has suggested that walrus ivory was harvested in remote hunting grounds in the High Arctic. They were imported into Europe from Norse settlements in Greenland.
A research team used high-resolution genetic sourcing techniques to identify hunting grounds in the High Arctic, particularly the interior Canadian Arctic and the North Water Polynya, which is an area of open water surrounded by sea ice. It lies between Greenland and Canada in northern Baffin Bay.
These regions are well beyond the areas traditionally linked to ivory harvesting activities by the Greenland Norse.
The Viking Age was a period that took place between the late 8th and 11th centuries. During this time, seafaring Norse people from Scandinavia, called Vikings, explored, raided, colonized, and traded across Europe and beyond.
At some point, Norse ivory harvesting spread into the remote parts of the Arctic. As a result, Vikings may have run into Indigenous peoples of the North American Arctic and possibly traded ivory with them.
“There has been a lot of interest in Vikings and the walrus ivory trade in the last 10 years, but it is very Eurocentric. We wanted to know what was happening out in the remote Arctic hunting grounds, especially where the ivory was coming from,” said Peter Jordan, one of the senior authors of the study with the Department of Archaeology and Ancient History at Lund University in Sweden.
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