Paris (AFP)
The Viking would have disappeared from immense Greenland in the 15th century after having disseminated the populations of walruses which they hunted for their ivory, according to a study published Monday in the journal Quaternary Science reviews.
The island was colonized at least 3,000 years ago by the Inuit people of the Arctic who were forced to leave probably due to the harsh climatic conditions.
Then came the Norwegian Viking Erik the Red, wrongly considered the founder of the first colony of Greenland around the 11th century.
The Viking occupation then lasted until about the 15th century before ending under conditions which remain still mysterious.
One of the explanations often put forward would be that Greenland, like the rest of northern Europe, was going through the so-called "Little Ice Age" period and that the Nordics left to find more lenient lands.
But according to a research team, "the overexploitation of walrus populations" for the ivory of their defenses could also have played a role.
By analyzing many medieval objects, the researchers highlighted that "for a long time, almost all the ivory marketed in Europe came from walruses hunted in seas exclusively accessible from the Scandinavian colonies of south-west Greenland".
"The Scandinavians of Greenland needed to trade with Europe for iron and wood, and had practically only the products from walruses to trade", explains James Barrett of the university of Cambridge and coauthor of the study in a press release.
But according to researchers, over the centuries, ivory began to come from smaller animals and more and more often from females. In addition, "genetic and archaeological evidence suggests that walruses came from increasingly northern regions".
Then in the 13th century, elephant ivory flooded European markets, causing a fall in the price of walrus ivory and forcing the Vikings to intensify their hunting to maintain the economic viability of the Greenland colonies.
"If both the walrus population and the prices of their ivory began to fall, this must have seriously compromised the resistance of the colonies," said Bastiaan Star of the University of Oslo, co-author of the study.
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