![]() After that there was silence.Īn excavation of one farm, V54 at Nipaatsoq, showed that the house was a complex of connected rooms, where sheep were kept in a room in the middle. In 1327, taxes were paid in ivory, suggesting the annual hunts were still taking place. The community was doing well around 1300 when the last of the churches there was build. But very little is known about the Western Settlement during later years. The Western Settlement was involved with the Newfoundland exploration. Initially, there was good contact between the two settlements. Traders from Norway also would not normally come this far. But it was isolated and visits even from the Eastern Settlement became infrequent. ![]() ![]() A large harbour seal population was nearby, and the lack of drift ice meant this remained reliable until the 14 th century. The location was less susceptible to Atlantic storms that could reach the southern tip of Greenland, it had much less drift ice, and was much closer to the walrus hunting region in Disko Bay. The settlers farmed, but at much lower intensity than in the Eastern Settlement. It was much further north and had a two-month shorter growing season and a longer winter. With some 90 farms, it was a quarter the size of the Eastern Settlement and may have housed 1000 people at its peak, possibly only half that. Of the two Viking settlements, the Western Settlement was both smaller and more marginal. Now we will look at an even more mysterious disappearance, that of the Western Settlement. In Part II we saw the fall of the Eastern Settlement. In Part I, we looked at the Viking colonization of Greenland, and the failure of their settlement in America.
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