Eric the Red
You will find Viking ruins scattered throughout South Greenland. The first Vikings to arrive in South Greenland were Eric the Red and his crew. Banished from Iceland after killing a man, Eric the Red was persona non grata in his native country. When he returned to Iceland, he spread the word about his discoveries, and spoke of a fabled "green land" to the west. This "media campaign" proved to be a success, and he persuaded a number of settlers to follow him to Greenland in the year 985 AD.
Eric the Red settled along a majestic fjord in South Greenland that he "modestly" named Ericsfjord - today it is called Tunulliarfik in Greenlandic. He called his farm Brattahlid, which is commonly thought to be located in the present-day village of Qassiarsuk, but many leading experts now believe that the Landnamsgaarden ruins in Narsaq are the actual location of his homestead.
Farmers and traders
The Vikings came at just the right time. Temperatures in Greenland were higher than they are today and the land was unoccupied. They built homesteads where the countryside was most fertile and raised livestock, but as the centuries went by they were forced to adapt a more and more Greenlandic style of living. Wood became scarce, so they made boats out of sealskin and whalebones.
Trade with Iceland and Europe was crucial to the survival of the Norse colonies. Seal and polar bear furs, and narwhal and walrus tusks were highly prized in Europe. Meanwhile, Inuit from the north gradually began to arrive in the area, and possibly played an important role in local trade. As skilled hunters, they were specialized in catching large sea mammals, which they traded with the Norse for goods like iron and wood.
Changing religion
When Eric the Red came to Greenland, he and his family were all believers of the old Nordic mythology. But around the year 1000 AD, his son Leif Ericsson went to Norway to serve the king and converted to Christianity. He brought his new faith back home and his family built a little church in Brattahlid, probably the first church on the American continent. A hundred years later, the Norse Greenlanders had a bishop from Rome. A cathedral was built at Gardar (present-day Igaliku), where ruins are still visible today.
Cultural exchanges - or clashes?
At roughly the same time as Eric the Red settled in South Greenland, groups of Inuit crossed the strait between Canada and North Greenland. Over the decades and centuries, the two peoples gradually moved closer and closer. Both the Icelandic Sagas and Greenlandic mythology bear witness to many encounters between these two cultures.
Mysterious disappearance
There are a lot of theories about the disappearance of the Norse in Greenland. Climate changes definitely played an important role. There may have been violent encounters with the Inuit, or more friendly meetings that eventually led to a merging of the two cultures. Raids by pirates possibly contributed to the demise of the Norse colonies after they were already decimated by a series of cold winters and failed crops. Perhaps they died of disease. Or perhaps they simply sailed west in search of greener pastures on the North American continent.
But conditions in Europe could also have been a key piece in the puzzle. There was a huge famine in the 14th century, the plague had killed a third of the population of Norway, and the Hanseatic League burned down the town of Bergen in 1393. Bergen was the centre of all sailing to the Arctic.
The last written evidence of the Norse in Greenland was a wedding held in the Hvalsey Church in 1408, near present-day Qaqortoq. No one has ever been able to establish what actually happened to the Norse. It remains one of the great mysteries of the Arctic.