Opening of the sea route in the White Sea.
Opening of Greenland and America.
The journey to the White Sea significantly facilitated the fact that it was possible to hold on all the time along the coast. Nevertheless, the storms often attributed navigators in the open sea, and then they got to the mysterious islands that cannot be determined accurately. From the conversation with the faces who visited the White Sea, I made an impression that the descriptions of Icelandic Saga, mainly Sagi Orel-Odde, closest to Solovkov. But this is contrary to the fact that the islands, to which Normanians stick, are not in the White Sea, but in the ocean, and the nearest parking lot from them is in Finmark. From here it is that Normans knew and visited, although, maybe against their will, persecuted by bad weather, and the islands lying in the Arctic Ocean, the KGUEV and, perhaps, a new land. If this island was subsequently attributed to nature, characteristic of actually more south BankThe error is quite understandable with the oral transmission of our sources.
Undoubtedly, the norms of Normanov to Northwest were much greater dangers, since in this direction there was no mainland shore, along which it was possible to swim. We see how normal moves are moving to the West carefully, individual stages, move from the island to the island. Even before the settlement of Iceland, they established themselves on the Shetland, Orcadian and Ferra Islands. At one time it seemed that this desire to the West would be limited to Iceland and would not go further. But stormy winds and then knocked down travelers from a fashionable path. In 920, a certain Gunbiorne was attributed to the beard to the West and saw unknown to the island. To our surprise and until this day failed to find these islands on the map. Therefore, the Moge thinks that these islands were finally destroyed by volcanic eruptions. In any case, in Iceland, Solve spread about newly open land in the West. He remembered Eikon Red, when he was sent from Iceland for murder. He really managed to open a new country. Three years he studied her and finally decided to settle in it. To this end, he returned to Iceland to recruit with him comrades. He called Greenland, as it seems to me, as opposed to Iceland. If his homeland rejected by his "country of ice", then how promisingly sounded the name - "green country!" This name suggested to him not only the well-known feeling of revenge, but also the desire to bother with them as many comrades. In addition, in some places of the Greenland coastal, green pastures are really visible. This colonization of Greenland applies to about 985 and was quite successful, so, as far as we can now judge, the population of norms reached up to 5,000 souls.
In 999, Leif, the son of Eica Red, makes the first journey from Greenland to Norway. On the way back, he wanders for a long time in the sea and finally sticks to an unknown coast. Here it is striking three things: grape vines, wildly growing wheat and large maple trees. From all of these rarities, he takes himself along the sample and sails to the northeability, to Greenland. It is clear, the news about the new opening excited everyone. But some evil rock pursued further enterprises. Eico Red himself was going on the road, but on the way to the ship fell from the horse, broke his rib and damaged his shoulder. In general, this trip was extremely unsuccessful: travelers were held in the sea for months and, without reaching their goal, tired returned to Greenland. Among them were the eldest to take Leif, Torstain; He soon died soon after this trip. But in 1002, two Icelandic ships arrive in Greenland. Torre, one of the visits of merchants, married Goodrid, widow Torstain. Probably, now Greenlandians gave them a secret about their opening. And then the whole expedition from many ships is equipped. On its way, they open three countries: the first because of the abundance of the rocks they call Helluland, the second, where they were hit by dense forests - Markland, and, finally, Vinland Hin Goda \u003d country of grapes. It is likely to assume that Helluland is Labrador, Markland - Newfundland, and Vinland is a new Scotland (or area near New Iorka). An attempt to settle in this last country was not crowned with success. They were persistent attacks from the natives, and soon they began to quarrel together. Torrech reached Greenland safely, but another Icelandic ship died during a storm. This trip continued, probably more than three years: on the way, Gudrid gives birth to a son who has been fulfilled for three years when they return to their homeland. Up to 140 people participated in this expedition. But its outcome was not particularly encouraged to repetition. It was too risky to swim in the open water space. So from 35 vessels sailing with Eyric Red to Greenland, only 14 reached their new homeland. Such misfortunes sufficiently show us how dangerously there were similar swimming in unknown waters, without a compass, without shore.
In addition to the saga about Eyric Red, from which we draw all the news about the opening of the North American shore, only fragmentary mention of these lands reached us. There is a note that Bishop Eric in 1121 went to look for Wellands, but whether he reached his goal, whether he returned, in general, we do not know much from this trip. At the most promotion of Normanov's intercourse with America applies to 1347 Icelandic chronicles noted that the Greenland ship on the way back from Marcland was abandoned by a storm in Iceland. Nevertheless, Normanians hardly founded some colony in these parts. Not only the complete silence of Norman sources speaks against such an assumption. From the dead colonies in Greenland, the ruins were left, for which we can restore, both the residence of the norms settled here and the number of their yards. North America has no such trace found. On the rocks, however, mysterious inscriptions were found; At one time they went for the Runic, but more thoroughly their research showed that these designs are obliged to their origin to the Indians. In vain also turned to Mexican manuscripts, hoping to find news about the first openers of America or even the impact of Christianity entered by Normanians. All these attempts were in vain, and we must be content with the conclusion that Normans were only occasionally run to the American shores with the purpose of fishing or for other products of the country.
Despite the fragility of intercourse, new discoveries left their traces in cartographic performances. Let's go back to the initial value of ganvik. The belief that the Arctic Ocean in the north from Europe is a big bay, it happened because normal at their trips from Norway, Finmarock or Biarmaland north, constantly pushed to the earth. Then Greenlandians were engaged in the study of their country, more northern its parts and the impregnable Eastern shore. Finally, they reached the island of Svalbardr, which Storm found it possible to identify with Spitsbergen. So they began to think that only the West and the passage is possible, and then the Earth. After all, for a long time, then they thought that the Kara Sea was not available for swimming, and then again they believed that a little further, Asia bends on the extreme north until Nordeceld destroyed this legend. The question of the northeastern travel (NordostPassage) actually only an account with the old delusion of ganvik. Adam Bremensky did not know the path past the Nordkapa. Therefore, he does not have an idea of \u200b\u200bNorway northern shore, about Biarmaland and ganvik. But he has an exa of cartographic construction: Greenland is located against Swedish (that is, Norwegian) or Rhyphic Mountains. So entry into ganvik was between Greenland and Northskap. Sakson puts a large desert in the north of Ganwick, without calling it by name. Neither the location of it is unknown; It is completely withdrawn from the human settlement, only wild extraordinary beasts are there in a variety. Very few visited these edges. We find more specific instructions in the so-called, Breve Chronicon, the manuscript of the XV century, although the original rises, probably by the XIII century. The author of the Chronicles tells such a case that ships heading from Iceland to Norway met the opposite wind and were attributed to the sea, located between Greenland and Biarmalands, and stuck to the shore, where people inevitably live (even to riceland) and to the ground Amazons. From their edge, Gangland is separated only by the Ice Mountains. It is clear, since the author perfectly clearly imagined the map of the European North, he could not put the Amazons near the Scandinavian Peninsula, as his predecessors, Tacit, Adam Bremensky and others did. Therefore, he moved them to the north of Ganvik, where they were alone, but In general, could still fit - MONSTRA VARIA. Greenland, according to the presentation, the author lies against Biarmaland and is associated with it. So, all the polar lands, ranging from Greenland and ending in Norway, constitute a solid mainland shore without a break and form a semicircle, inside of which ganvik is located.
Next, in the same chronicle, we find the definition of the extreme West. This is all the same Greenland - Viridis Terra, which thus acquired monstrous sizes. It is located near the African Islands, where the waters of the World Ocean are flowing. Atlantic Ocean Should somehow eat the waters of the World Ocean. But with this question, the idea of \u200b\u200bAmerican lands was closely related. So far, Norman was considered with America necessary for the coating of the oceans, the Strait could be placed either between Greenland and America or between America and Africa. Once America disappears from sight, only one place for a given strait between Greenland and Africa remains. It could happen the easier that Normans imagined America not in the form of a large mainland, but as a number of major islands. Of these, the southernmost - Winland, which was considered even associated with Africa. This idea of \u200b\u200bWINLAND was distributed to the other "Islands", and in this way the famous "African Islands" turned out. They appeared as a memory of the American lands, which the author is extremely curious about us! - does not mention at all. So, the memory of their existence is still preserved, while the names have already been forgotten. But were they really forgotten?
In the interpolation of Orvaro Odssagi, which, in any case, arose no later than the beginning of the XV century, describes a female ODDU with a flamund. For a long time, Odda has to find her enemy. Finally, he learns that the flamund retired to the Desert - I Hellulands Ubygdum. There he stopped in Skuggi's fioard. The last name means actually a shadow, darkness, but is also used in the sense of the trait or monsters, ghosts, in general. According to this indication, ODD goes to the "Greenland Sea" and looking for his enemy in the south and in the West along the coast. In addition to various monsters, ODD does not see anyone. Then ODD raises sail again and only now reaches Helluland. The described route leaves no doubt that this country is located in America and corresponds to the lands that normatons opened in the XI century.
Careful studies of Fisher found that Greenland was first recorded on a map of Danish scientists Claudius Clavus in the XV century, but American lands were left to them. So these Norman discoveries have never been registered by cardographs. Nevertheless, some memories could be transmitted to orally and then accidentally get to the card. In this, I convinces one name not maps of the XV century. On the same Catalan map, a long rectangle is drawn with the designation of ILLA Verde and near Round Island - ILLA de Brazil. On the map of 1507 and on the others we find Viridis Insula. Obviously, ILLA VERDE and Viridis Insula is the same Greenland. But Carta Marina has an island called Obrazill instead of Greenland. Then this is the name under different options, like that: brazir or Brezir, is repeated on the XV, XVI cards and even the XVII centuries. On the map of 1367 we find such a prescription: novus Cotus de Brazir. In 1498, the Spanish ambassador at the English courtyard comes that residents of the city of Bristol began to equip the expedition to the Unknown Island Brazil. Finally, after Columbus, the discovery of the land was followed, to which the name of Brazil was timed up to this day. Storm argued that the Spanish navigaters under Brazil generally understood the terrain that had a rich forest. But then Brazil would answer the Norman Markland, and mysterious Island Brazil would be a direct memory of the discoveries of the XI century. If Markland fell into Spanish maps called ILLA de Brazil, there is nothing surprising in this. On the one hand, the intercourse with Marcland was not entirely interrupted until the middle of the XVI century, on the other, the news even about the most remote edges of the North was undoubtedly uniform and south, as the Fisher indicated a number of examples.
While the memory of Helluland is preserved in some sagas, and Marcland was even listed on Spanish cards, Winland disappeared without a trace of subsequent literature. But this is the oblivion of Winland, we can explain to ourselves. Even who had to read the old essays and the chronicles, I understood the strange spelling of Finland - Vinland. Even on the maps, we sometimes clearly disassemble the Vinland where we expect Finland. Already Rudbek in his "Atlantis" notes this strange mixing: Vocabulum Finlandiae Provinciae Ad Regnum Nostrum Pertinentis Pro Quo Apud Snorrem ET in Historia Regum Nonel Occurit Vinlandiae Nomen. With this complete coincidence of the names, the differentiation of both areas was maintained only until time. Once an idea of \u200b\u200bAmerican WINLAND has become flexible, then European (or even Scandinavian) Winland \u003d Finland departed a completely memory of the first edge. Will not forget that Winland lay much further than other American locations, known to Normanam; Recall that just in Winland the Normans suffered from the attack of Eskimos, and we will understand why the intercourse with Winlands stopped before all.
Despite the fact that the Norman discoveries disappeared not at all without a trace, strong results in the sense of familiarization with the globe gave only the settlement of Greenland with normal. But the strange idea of \u200b\u200bganvik one time prevented the correct design of Greenland on the map. Fisher in applications V and VI to its essay reproduces such cards on which Greenland is drawn east of Iceland and north of the Scandinavian Peninsula. On the other cards, Greenland is placed correctly - west of Iceland. But the first delusion, I think, should have caused an exaggerated idea of \u200b\u200bthe magnitude of Greenland. The consequence of such an error was another circumstance that the navigators took different lands for the Greenland coast, which were in the direction of north, but nothing to do with Greenland. I noted this case.
Strange name. This land is not at all green as it is called. She is white, or, rather, ice. It would be quite suitable for the name - Iceland. But it consolidated for an incomparably larger island. This turned out to be a geographical paradox. But, like a genuine paradox, he has a logical explanation.
North-West Europe at the beginning of the new era, even more densely settled in enterprising strong and bold people. They grazed the cattle, engaged in agriculture, hunted, caught fish. However, despite the relatively mild climate of Scandinavia, supremous land for agriculture was not very much. Yes, and the soil quickly depleted.
An increase in population density If it is impossible to conduct more intensive farming and cattle breeding, internal conflicts caused. More and more young strong people began to leave for robbery, in Viking, as they were called.
First, perhaps, they just tried to find and populate new territories. But the path to the west and southwest across the sea led to the well-hidden lands of Britain, Ireland. The same was on the western edge of Europe. In these parts, Vikings made robbing raids and conquests.
The largest geographical discoveries fell out of those Scandinavians (Normanov, Norwegians), who were looking for not wealth, but a worthy peaceful life.
Residents of the British Islands suffered from Viking raids. According to this, the reason or simply from the desire to avoid the worldly bustle, the group of Irish monks began to go to the sea, settlementing on the desert islands.
According to the medieval Irish chronicler of Dicuil, at the end of the 7th century, one of the similar groups spent the spring and summer on a large uninhabited island north-west of Ireland. It was Iceland. Part of the people returned to their homeland, but some remained.
In 867, one of the leaders of Viking, Naddud, with a friend returned from Norway to his possessions on Faroe Islands. The storm dropped his Darcar far to the north-west. He saw the mountainous land with the snow-covered mountains and called it Iceland. Perhaps he did not want her to attract people to him.
Soon another group of Vikings, headed by Gardar, discovered this land, went around her and made sure that this island, besides quite attractive. Norwegian chronicle Ari Torgilsson Frode left such a description: "In those days, Iceland from the mountains to the shore was covered with forests, and there were Christians there, which Norwegians called papara. But later, these people, not wanting to communicate with the pagans, went away from there, leaving after themselves Irish books, bells and pea; From this it can be seen that they were Irish. "
This island would be quite suitable for the name Greenland. But for some reason, Norwegians preferred to call him "ice earth." According to one version, the choice of the name influenced the impression of the wintering, which he spent on one of the princes, Viking Flocks, sailing from Norway. These immigrants did not store in sufficient quantities for livestock. Winter was long and varying, cattle died. People could not leave the earth, because the sea was covered with ice. With considerable deprivations, they retained until the summer and returned to their homeland.
Over time, life is not only economic, but also a state-owned life on the island. In 930, residents at the general collection decided to establish the Supreme Council - alttention. It was the first parliament in the world. However, in about a century, the Novgorod Republic, with its elected citizens, there was a government, but it existed relatively long due to the internal junctions and was changed by the monarchy,
The altint allowed the inhabitants of the island to bring order and coordinate their actions, to deal with crime. This circumstance played a role in the opening of a new land.
The owner of one of the places, Eik, on nicknamed the redhead, in a quarrel that turned into a fight, killed two people. He was convicted for three years links. The circumstances of this case are unclear. Apparently, there were some controversial issues in the ownership of land or long-standing patterns; And it happened not just a fight, but a whole closer in which representatives of two clans participated. It is unlikely that the murder was suitable and unfortunate, otherwise the punishment would not be relatively soft: three years of references. By the way, the father of Eika and his family was expelled from Norway to Iceland too for murder. It can be seen, men in this family were generally distinguished by a steep temper.
So, the Eikric with his people in 981 or 982 plunged into Drakars - sharply long turbo - and left Iceland. They knew that in the east, in Norway, and in the south, in Ireland and Britain, there is no place. To the north to the unknown limits stretched the cold ocean. In the West, as some sailors told, there is some kind unknown Earth. Perhaps the Eica himself before while swimming came to her.
This time they had to be mastered on the unwriting deserted shores, followed by glaciers. The navigators moved to the south along the coast, choosing a suitable harbor with green meadows suitable for cattle breeding. They passed more than 600 km to the southern outskirts of the island and arranged a settlement. This is how it described this event Ari Torgilsson Frode:
"The country called Greenland was opened and settled from Iceland. From there headed to Greenland Eica Redhead from Beyidi Fjord. He gave the country name, calling her Greenland; He said that people would want to go there if the country had a good name. They found in the east and in the west of the country traces of housing, as well as the remnants of boats and stone guns. So told Torkel, the son of Gellira, in Greenland, a man who himself was in this journey with Eyrica Ginger. "
After the first wintering migrants examined the Western shores of the island, too, by about 600 km. Plots came across the places where settlements could be organized. Eica from the unfortunate izgoy turned into a host of an extensive country. One problem - Nature was a Surov. And the other - there was no population. How to attract people here?
By that time, apparently, there were no territories in Iceland, more or less suitable for habitat. When, departing the term of punishment, Eica returned to his native island, he managed to persuade a lot of people to go to Greenland - a green country. Especially since it was (in his surveyed Eyric part) on the same latitudes that Iceland, even south.
Eik is not too exaggerated by calling the "green" land open. He could not know the true size of the island - the largest in the world, nor the fact that it is almost entirely under an ice cover. The researchers did not enter the depths of the island, and its coast is almost everywhere, especially in the southwest, was indeed green. Perhaps, in some places, even small groves met in the valleys. The trunks nailed to the shore served as a construction and heating material.
In 985, Eica led to the new land a whole flotilla - 25 ships with families, belongings, livestock. In the way, they must be storm. Several Dracars sank, few turned back, but most of the reached Greenland. In total, it is supposed to be 400-500 people. They settled on the southern outskirts of the Great Island in places in advance of the chosen by Eyric.
Soon life in a new place has improved. The population of Greenland grew. In the XIII century, there were already about a hundred small towns and up to five thousand inhabitants. With the continent there was an established regular connection: from there the colonists delivered bread, iron products, construction timber. And the Greenland residents sent food hunting for birds, the sea animals: Gagachi fluff, whale mustache, walrus, sea animal skins.
However, in the XIV century, the situation on the island became increasingly worsening, the settlements came into decline, people were increasingly sick and died. After two hundred years, the Norman population of Greenland almost completely extinced.
Many geographers believe that the so-called "Small Ice Age" is blamed. However, there is no reason for such a global climate change. Was it? In any case, the most significant thing is: the political situation in North-West Europe has changed.
Iceland in 1281 lost independence and was attached to Norway. Now the trading links of the Greenland with Iceland were disturbed, ceased to be regular.
Even in about a century, Denmark set its power over Norway. In Greenland and almost completely stopped going to walk. The settlers had to increasingly join the armed skirmishes with Eskimos who were close to them from the north, where they were forced to retreat. On calm and dietary life now it remained only to dream. After all, agriculture, and without the requirement of great work, it has fallen into decline: in the north of the soil they quickly lose fertility, and the vegetation cover is poorly renewed.
Danes were sent to Greenland only one ship per year (all others were forbidden to have trade relations with northern Islands). Lained full nutrition, good wood and metal tools, tools of hunting, Normans fell into a critical position. Those of them who did not die and moved to the mainland, took the churches and mixed with the Eskimos.
It comes out, both prosperity and death of Europeans in Greenland were determined not by geographic causes, more or less stable, but environmental and socio-political. To live in isolation on the island, where the nature of Surov and Scott can, only joining the primitive system of management, which fully corresponds to local nature.
Mainly for the same reason failed the first attempt of Europeans to establish a colony in the new world - in North America. But this is another story and another great geographical discovery.
Early Paleo Eskimo Cultures
The history of ancient Greenland is the history of repeating migrations of Paleo Eskimos from the Arctic Islands of North America. Common trait All these cultures were the need for survival in the extremely unfavorable conditions of the most remote edge of the Arctic at the very border of the range suitable for the human existence. Even small climate fluctuations turned intimately favorable conditions into incompatible with human life and led to the disappearance of insufficiently adapted crops and devastating entire regions as a result of migrations and extinction.
Archaeologists stand out in Greenland four Paleo-Eskimo cultures, which existed before the discovery of the island of Vikings, but the terms of their existence are determined very approximately:
- Sakkak culture: 2500 BC e. - 800 BC e. in southern Greenland;
- Culture Independence I: 2400 BC e. - 1300 BC e. in the north of Greenland;
- Culture Independence II: 800 BC. e. - 1 BC. e. mainly in the north of Greenland;
- Early Dorset Culture, Dorset I: 700 BC. e. - 200 n. e. In the south of Greenland.
These cultures were not unique to Greenland. As a rule, they arose and developed in the territories of Arctic Canada and Alaska long before their penetration to Greenland, and could be maintained in other places of the Arctic after their disappearance from the island.
After the decline of culture, the island remained unnecessary over the centuries. The carriers of the Inito culture of Tula, the ancestors of modern indigenous people of Greenland, began to penetrate the north of the island at the beginning of the XIII century.
Settlements Viking
The last written certificate of Greenland Vikings - a wedding entry in the church of Khwali belongs to 1408. The ruins of this church are one of the most well-preserved monuments of the culture of Viking.
There are many theories regarding the reasons for the disappearance of Norwegian settlements in Greenland. Jared Daimond, author of the book "Collapse: Why some societies survive, while others die," lists five factors that could contribute to the disappearance of the Greenland colony: environmental deterioration, climatic changes, enmity with neighboring peoples, isolation from Europe, the inability to adapt. The study of these factors is devoted to a large number of scientific research and publications.
Environmental deterioration
Greenland vegetation belongs to the tundra type and consists mainly of sources, fluffy and lichen; The trees are almost completely absent, with the exception of a dwarf birch, willow and alder who grow in some places. There are very few fertile lands, which, as a result of the absence of forests, suffer from erosion; In addition, the short and cold summer makes farming almost impossible, so the Norwegian settlers were forced mainly to engage in cattle breeding. Excessive exploitation of pastures in an extremely sensitive tundra medium with unstable soils could enhance erosion, lead to worsening pastures and falling their performance.
Climate change
Running results ice ice Allow to know about the climatic situation in Greenland over the centuries. They show that during the medieval climatic optimum there was indeed some mitigation of the local climate from 800 to 1200 years, but at the beginning of the XIV century began cooling; The "Small Ice Age" reached his peak in Greenland in about the 1420s. The lower layers of garbage near the oldest Norwegian settlements contain significantly more bones of sheep and goats than pigs and coarse livestock; However, in the sediments of the middle of the XIV Art. Near the rich dwellings are only bones of cattle and deer, and near the poor are almost solid bone seals. The version of the decline of cattle breeding as a result of cooling and changes in the nature of the nutrition of the Greenland Vikings is also confirmed by studies of skeletons from cemeteries near Norwegian settlements. Most of these skeletons are traces of pronounced rickets, characterized by deformation of the spine and chest, in women - pelvic bones.
Enhance with neighbors
During the foundation of the Norwegian settlements, Greenland was completely devoid of local population, but later the Vikings were forced to contact inuita. Inuit of Culture Tula began to arrive in Greenland from Elsmir Island at the end of the XII - early XIII century. Researchers know that the Vikings called Inuita, as well as Aboriginalov Winland, english (Norv. Skræling). "Icelandic Annals" is one of the few sources, which indicate the existence of contacts between the Norwegians and Inuit. They are told about the attack of Inuit on Norwegians, during which eighteen Norwegians died, and two children were captured. There are archaeological evidence that the Inuites led to the Norwegians trade, because during the excavations of the Initov parking lots, many products of Norwegian work are found; However, the Norwegians, apparently, were not very interested in inuita, at least, the findings of the Initian artifacts in the settlements of Vikings are unknown. The Norwegians also did not adopt the kayak construction technology and receptions of hunting for Killed Nerpen from Inuit. In general, it is believed to be the relationship of Norwegians with Inuitis were quite hostile. From archaeological evidence, it is known that by 1300 the winter parking lots of Inuit existed already on the shores of the fjords near the Western settlement. Somewhere between 1325 and 1350. Norwegians completely left the Western settlement and its surroundings, due to the unsuccessful opposition to the attacks of Inuit.
Kirsten Siemer in his book "Frozen echo" is trying to bring that Greenland has had a much stronger health and fed better than it was thought, and therefore denies the version of the extinction of the Greenland colony from hunger. She probably claims that the colony died as a result of the attack of the Indians, pirates or the European military expedition, which history did not save information; It is also likely to relocate the Greenland in Iceland or in Wellands in search of a more favorable home.
Contacts with Europe
With quiet winter weather, the ship carried out a 1400-kilometer trip from Iceland to the south of Greenland in two weeks. Greenland should have supported relations with Iceland and Norway to trade with them. Greenlandians could not build ships themselves, because they did not have forests, and depended on the supply of Icelandic merchants and from expeditions for wood to Winland. Sagi talk about Icelandic merchants who flood to trade in Greenland, but trade was in the hands of the holders of large estates. They traded themselves with the commercial merchants, and then resold the goods to small landowners. The main article of Greenland exports were walrus. In Europe, they were used in decorative art as a ivory replacement, whose trade was designed during hostility with the Islamic world in the era of crusades. It is considered likely that as a result of improving the relations of Europe with the world of Islam and with the beginning of Transshar caravan trade in ivory, demand for walrus beeves has fallen significantly, and this could contribute to the loss of interests of merchants to Greenland, reduce contacts and the final decline of the Norwegian colony on the island.
However, the cultural influence of Christian Europe felt in Greenland quite well. In 1921, Danish historian Paul Norland was digging the burial of the Vikings at the church cemetery near the Eastern settlement. The bodies were dressed in European medieval clothing XV century and did not have signs of rickets and genetic degeneration. Most had crucifixions on the neck and drawn up in a prayer gesture.
From records of papal archives, it is known that in 1345, the Greenlandians were exempt from the payment of the church decade due to the fact that the colony was seriously suffering from poverty.
The last vessel, which was visited by Greenland somewhere in the 1510th year, was an Icelandic ship that took the West storm. His team did not come into contact with any inhabitants of the island.
At about the same time, about 1501, the Portuguese expedition was visited in the Greenland area. The re-discovery of the Europeans of Greenland, as it is believed to have been committed about 1500 by the Portuguese expedition of the cortyaria brothers. It is usually attributed to the re-opening of Greenland by Europeans.
Danish expeditions to Greenland in the XV century
From this time, Greenland became a territory, quite well known worldwide. Various English expeditions in search of the north-western passage studied its shore at least 75 ° north latitude.
Strategic value
Autonomous Greenland proclaimed himself by the state of the people of Inuit. Danish geographical names were changed to local. The country began to be called Calallit Nunat. The administrative center of the island, Gothob, became Nuuk, the capital of almost sovereign country, and in 1985 the Greenland flag was adopted. However, the movement for the independence of the island is still weak.
Thanks to the progress of the latest technologies, especially the development of aviation, Greenland has now become much more affordable for the outside world. In 1982, local television broadcasts began.
In 2008, in Greenland, a referendum was held on the issue of self-government, following which on May 20, 2009, the Denmark Parliament adopted the law on the extended autonomy of Greenland. Extended autonomy of Greenland was proclaimed on June 21 of the same year. Both inside Greenland and outside it, there are people who consider the expansion of autonomy as a step towards the independence of Greenland from Denmark
On a covered green grass, the slope on the shore of the fjord near the extreme southern tip of Greenland is the ruins of the church, built here by the Scandinavian settlers more than in the century before Columbus went to look for India, and found America. Thick walls are preserved, isolated from granite blocks, and a six-meter fronton. The wooden roof, rafters and doors long ago collapsed and rotted. Where once believers kneel knees, now sheep roam freely.
Here, in Fjord, who Vikings was called "Holvay", which in their language meant "whale island", on Sunday, September 16, 1408, combined Sigrid BjornSdottir and Torstein Olafsson (Thorstein Olafsson). The couple traveled on the ship from Norway to Iceland, but their vessel was killed from the course and, in the end, moored to the shores of Greenland, which by that time was the Wiking Colon for at least four centuries. The wedding was mentioned three times in letters sent between 1409 and 1424,
Another entry of the same period reports that a certain person, whose name and the floor remained unknown, was burned in a fire from Fjord Hwwsey for witchcraft.
These are the latest reliable information about the life of the Scandinavian settlers in Greenland. They do not give an answer to the question, where and why the European Population of the island was gone ...
The history of mankind is replete with cases of the mysterious disappearance of people, ships, airplanes, cities and entire civilizations. Scientists, criminologists, journalists and lovers of conspiraology come up with a variety of versions of each disappearance, accusing a wide range of subjects - from maniacs, special services and natural phenomena to aliens and residents of Atlantis.
Such a mysterious story occurred with immigrants from the Scandinavian Peninsula, inhabited in one of the most remote and insulated parts of the planet - in Greenland. it the largest island on the ground. It is 50 times more than Denmark, which belongs! Greenland is located off the coast of North America, almost completely covered with ice and is distinguished by a very harsh climate, with the exception of the most southern part.
Approximately 982-986 Scandinavian Vikings on 14 ships sailed from Iceland and landed in Greenland to establish a settlement here. A more accurate date of arrival is unknown, since the only source of information about this event, Saga about Greenlanders, does not contain detailed chronology.
The colonists were engaged in cattle breeding - the only type of agriculture, possible then on this harsh land.
The extreme south of the island is free from ice, the warm water of the flow of Gulf Stream soften the climate, so the natural conditions here resembled the usual scandinales of the coast of Iceland.
There is a version that the leader of the first wave of the settlers Eric Ryzhy Lalgal Malgal Malglas, telling them before sailing to the new land about rich pastures covered with green grass. So he allegedly wanted to attract more people to the island. Indeed, after the volcanic fields of Iceland, reminiscent of the surface of the Moon or Mars, a place where many juicy herbs for sheep should have much more like the colonists.
Even the name for the island was invented by the corresponding - Greenland ("Green Earth"), although in fact most of this land is covered with snow and ice all year round.
It is not known whether the colonists or the island were disappointed, it was exactly how Eric told, but they founded the first European settlements in Greenland, giving them the names eastern (EystriBYGGD) and West (VestriGGGD). Today, the remnants of the first are located near the village of Kaktoktok (Qaqortoq), and the ruins of the second, where the wedding of Sigrid Bjorchdottir and the Olafsson Torstain, were found near the administrative center of Greenland Nuuk (Nuuk).
There was also a small central settlement, but it's almost nothing unknown about it.
At first in all three settlements The islands lived about 350 people, but later due to the influx of people from Iceland and Norway, as well as the birth of children from the colonists, the population grown greatly.
During the excavations, archaeologists counted the remains of 400 residential buildings. During the maximum development of the colony in the XIII century in both settlements, up to 5-6 thousand people could live. Eastern was larger, about 4 thousand people.
It is not so little for Europe of the time. According to the tax census, 1377-1381 in all of England from about 250 existing cities only two - London and York - there were over 10 thousand inhabitants. In 16 cities, the population ranged from 3 to 10 thousand people, and the rest were even less. Then in German Cologne and Regensburg, 15-25 thousand people lived in French Strasbourg, and these cities were considered very large, real metropolisms of their time. During the heyday, the Greenland settlements were quite crowded for their time.
Colony has developed successfully. Scandinavians traded with Iceland and continental Europe. Selling a walruy tale, wool, meat, fish, fur and seal skins, and instead they received what was not on the island, first of all - iron and wood.
Greenlanders constantly supported communication with Europe. Every year, ships sailed from the continent in the colony. The settlers together with the rest of Scandinavia accepted Christianity, and in 1126 the Greenland Catholic diocese was founded, subordinate to the bishop of the Norwegian city Trondheim. The management of churches (their in Greenland was built at least five) demanded regular contacts with the continent. The flock needed priests, and they could only send them from Europe.
The colonists have repeatedly visited North America, for five centuries ahead of Christopher Columbus. In Newfoundland (this is the coast of modern Canada), they even founded a small settlement. When excavations of Viking houses in Greenland, the skin of Bizon was found, an animal inhabiting only in North America, which indicates contacts of a colony with a new light.
For a long time, Greenland was an independent state with a republican form of government - pretty a rare event In medieval Europe, where almost all countries were monarchies.
In 1261, the inhabitants of the island swore at the loyalty to the King of Norway. In exchange for taxes, it was obliged to send one ship with the colonists each year with such a deficient on the island of iron and wood.
Icelanders and Grennentians paid for the Norwegian king times in six years. A record of 1327 has been preserved, according to which, from Greenland, a ship with 260 shiping taxes sailed from Greenland to the Norwegian Bergen. At that time, this cargo cost more than all the wool sent as taxes for a six-year period with about 4,000 Icelandic farms.
In 1380, Norway itself together with dependent territories Entered the Ulya with Denmark. Since then, Greenland has been managed by Danish kings.
In the middle of the XIV century, the colony came into decay. As possible reasons, scientists call climate cooling, conflicts with Eskimos, a decrease in demand for a walrus bevel - the chief export goods of the colonists, the epidemic of the plague, attacks of pirates. The settlers were in such a difficult situation that in 1345 the Catholic Church freed them from the payment of church grade, and this was allowed only in the case of extreme poverty of the flock.
Between 1325 and 1350, the Western settlement was detected. It discovered a priest who came to visit believers. He found only abandoned houses, but no traces of battle. Residents simply left the city.
The last thing is that the Eastern settlement is known is the wedding of Sigrid Bjornsdottir and Torstain Olafsson in 1408 and the execution of the witch. And that's it. There are no testimonies about the future life of the colonists, as if the wedding and execution became the last episodes in the history of Eastern settlement.
"If some trouble had happened, we would have reason to assume that there would be some mention of her, Ian Simpson thought, an archaeologist from Sterling University in Scotland in a conversation with the Smithsonian magazine correspondent (Smithsonian Magazine). According to the scientist, judging by letters, "it was just an ordinary wedding in a relaxed community."
In world history it has repeatedly happened that people left the spaces based on the enemies. Citizens could die from the epidemic or hunger. But each time tragedies were left - the remains of people and animals, burnt ruins, eyewitness records and other sources that allow scientists to understand the reason for the disappearance of the population.
Residents of the Greenland Colony disappeared suddenly and without any traces and witnesses.
Meanwhile, these were experienced sailors and seasoned warriors who settled on the lands with one of the most unsuitable conditions on the planet, and made it their home. And they did not just survived. They built solid stone houses and churches, closed stained glass windows from Europe for them, the sheep, goats, bulls and cows were taken over the ocean of fur, walrus fangs, living polar bears and other exotic goods from the Arctic.
"These guys really lived on the edge of civilization," says Andrew Dagmore (Andrew Dugmore), a geographer from Edinburgh University. - And they did not just spend several years. They were there generations - centuries. "
In the XV century, Europeans almost did not attend a distant island, so the disappearance of the colony passed unnoticed. Only in 1540, a team of the Icelandic ship was landed in the former Eastern settlement. Sailors found only abandoned houses and a mummified corpse of an unknown man. In the cold of the body are preserved for a very long time, so the death time could not be determined.
Most often the disappearance of the colony explains the deterioration of weather conditions. Until the XIII century, the climate on Earth was significantly warmer than today. So much that, for example, in Scotland and South Sweden, growing grapes and existed winemaking. And in Norway near the northern polar circle, the wheat was cultivated. It is possible that Eric's Erica's stories about large Greenland pastures with juicy herb at that time were true.
In the Norwegian treatise of 1250, Konungs Skuggsjá ("Royal Mirror") It is written that the sun in Greenland "is quite strong to where the land is free from ice, the soil warmed enough and brought a good harvest and fragrant herbs."
American geographer and biologist Jared Diamond (Jared Diamond) in his book "Collapse. Why some societies survive, and others dying "wrote that in the south of Greenland, by the time of the arrival of the Vikings, there was a magnificent vegetation and even forests, subsequently cut down by the colonists.
In 1257, in the Indonesian island of Lombok (where, it would seem, Greenland, and where Lombok!) There was an eruption of a volcano. According to geologists, it was the most powerful eruption For the last 7,000 years. Current-climatologists found traces of its ashes in samples taken during the drilling of the icy bark and in Antarctica, and in Greenland. Sulfur, thrown into the stratosphere, reflected sunlight back into space. On the ground came cooling. "It influenced the whole planet," explains the Archaeologist of the New York City University Thomas McGovern. - Europeans have come a long period of hunger. It all started somewhere around the 1300s and lasted until the 1320s, 1340s. It was rather gloomy. Many people died of hunger. "
Having arrived in the XIII century, the cooling scientists call the "Small Ice Age". He lasted about 600 years. In Europe, the average annual temperature dropped very quickly. Cultural plants could not adapt to change, followed many years of failure. In 1315-1317, the continent covered the most terrible cold in medieval history. Every fourth European killed from him.
Small Ice Age touched and Greenland. Here the area of \u200b\u200bglaciers and permafrost increased, the winter has become even more severe, and the freezing sea made it difficult to shipping.
The latter circumstance greatly influenced the life of the colonists. Settlements could not long exist autonomously, without trade with Europe. The ice interfered with the ships from the continent to approach the shores of Greenland to pick up the local goods and deliver European products. Without wood and metal it is impossible to make tools and weapons, repair at home and ships. Due to the deficit of iron, the colonists were forced even to make nails from the tree.
Thomas McGovern so concociously formulated this version of the disappearance of the Greenland Vikings: "The stupid scandinavities go to the north outside their economic influence, spoil the ecology and then they all die when it becomes cold." The scientist himself adhered to this point of view for a long time, but then came to the conclusion that the Scandinavians could not be so stupid, but other explanations could be the disappearance of their Greenland settlements.
In the XIV century, an elephant bone from Asia and Africa began to act on the European market - better and cheap material than a walrupted talent. The price and demand for the main export product of Greenland have fallen sharply. The merchants were unprofitable to sail into the Arctic for the goods. And without trade, the scandinavis lost economic incentives to live on a distant island, to endure hunger, cold and other deprivation.
Some researchers suggest that the Vikings could not adapt to life in the Arctic. If the Scandinavians adopted the lifestyle of Eskimos: would hunt and catch fish, build houses from snow and ride on dog sledding, could stay in Greenland. But would they stay with the Vikings?
"Why scandinava just did not become natives? - Asks Niels Lynnerup, a forensic anthropologist from Copenhagen University, who studied the burial of Vikings in Greenland. - Why didn't Puritans just not become natives? Of course, they did not. There was never even a question that someone from Europeans who came to America began to wad and live, hunting for bison. "
Yes, in the ability to survive in the north, the Vikings strongly inferior to the Eskimos, but they were not particularly needed by such skills. After all, the indigenous inhabitants of the Arctic have no choice - it is necessary to adapt to harsh or to die. And Scandinavians had another third way - just return to Europe that many apparently did.
Studies of human remains and trash can near residential buildings show that at the beginning of the existence of the colony, the Greenland settlers were fed mainly by sheep meat, milk and cheese. But in the XIV century, 80% of their diet was meat seals and walruses. The most obvious explanation for this is to reduce livestock's livestock as a result of a decrease in pasture area. According to the incomprehensible reason, the colonists almost did not eat fish, although this is the most important element of the diet for the Scandinavian peoples.
All grain in Greenland became covered from the continent, but with such interruptions that some settlers, in the memoirs of the events on the island of Norwegians, never (!) In life, did not eat bread. So poor nutrition affected the health of the colonists. Studying their remains, experts found numerous traces of Rachita and other diseases associated with the lack of vitamins and microelements in the body.
The climatic theory has opponents. A scientist from the Danish National Museum of Christian Koch Madsen claims that Greenland was equally cold and in the X century, when Scandinavians came to the island, and four centuries later, when they disappeared. In his opinion, an unusually mild climate in the early Middle Ages, when in the south of Sweden Ros grapes was characterized only for Europe. And Greenland warming did not affect.
Vikings initially adapted to harsh natural conditions, four centuries lived in them. They would not notice the decrease in the temperature and the onset of the small glacial period.
This theory is confirmed by research by geologists. In 2015, the staff of the Colombian University and the University of New York have studied the samples of Greenland ice and concluded that the Square of Greenland glaciers reached its maximum between 975 and 1275.
"If the Vikings came to Greenland, when it was cold there, then it is impossible to say that they were expelled from the island of cooling," said Nicolas Young (Nicolas Young), a geologist from Columbia University.
Just 300 kilometers from the island is Iceland, where only a little warmer than in the extreme south of Greenland. But here the Scandinavians stayed, survived the small glacial period and live so far.
Another possible cause of the death of the colony is a disease. In 1348, the most terrible epidemic of plague began in Europe in the history of the Middle Ages, the name of Black Death. It is not known whether it reached Greenland, but in Norway, the disease was taken from different estimates from 50% to 70% of the population. The epidemic did not affect Iceland, since no ship came here from 1348 to 1350. Then the pathogen of the plague did not get to the island. But in 1402-1403, the disease still fell into Iceland and destroyed more than half of the population. Sad experience shows that in an isolated settlement, where everyone is next to each other, all the inhabitants often died from the plague without exception.
The small grenland colony could destroy the one-only infected person who arrived from Norway or Iceland. Infectious fleas could get to the island also on clothes, in the hair of people and on ship rats. With regular trading contacts of Greenland with Scandinavia, it was quite likely.
Even if the colony escaped the epidemic, the settlers suffered large economic losses. Europe's population after Black death It decreased by one and a half - twice, which sharply reduced the demand for most of the goods. The restoration of the former trade on the continent took many years.
Vikings may have been able to survive each of the listed disasters separately. In the end, they remained in Greenland for even almost a century, after the climate began to change. Moreover, they had enough strength and resources to build temples. The wrecks of which rise today over the "whale island", was erected in the 14th century.
According to another version, the colony died due to the war with Eskimos. The latter appeared approximately in the XIII century in the north of Greenland and began to move to the south, where they faced the scandinals. The relationship between the two peoples did not work out. Vikings contemptively called Eskimos "Skraelings", which can be translated as "scoundrels", according to another version - "hardware".
Dislike turned into an open war. In 1379, the battle between the Scandinavians and Eskimos occurred near the Eastern settlement. Victims are unknown among the latter, and the Vikings lost 18 people killed. This battle became known from Eskimo testes recorded by ethnographers five hundred years later, already in the XIX century. Surely there were other clashes, information about which did not reach this day.
Eskimos really were militant people. So, in 1612, they, not even having a gunshot weapon, attacked the English ship "Patience", sailing in the Greenland waters, and killed him captain.
But evidence that the Eskimos destroyed the colony was not found. It is very likely that bloody local shocks could occur between the two peoples due to controlling hunting grounds, but the extermination of several thousand Scandinavians could be unlikely.
Vikings were able to handle the weapons and were considered hardly the best warriors of Europe. The struggle for destruction with them would lead to great losses on both sides. The small Eskimo tribes could not afford to lose many warriors and hunters (Greenland Vikings, however, too). Most likely, they fought exactly as much as necessary to obtain control over hunting grounds.
The "Eskimo" version confirms the fact that Pope Nikolai V in 1448 passed on the care of the Bishops of Scalcholt and Gulmic in Iceland "... The Greenland Churches, who survived the disaster, comprehended by Greenland in 30 years before SEN (in 1418 - Note the author) when the Varvarov fleet came there from the neighboring pagan country; They ruined the temples dedicated to God and caused a general emptying, from which only nine distant parishes were hidden, covered by mountains, with few residents who avoided captivity and turned into their homes. "
There was a legend that two people moved away from the struggle to cooperate and even rejected with each other. Allegedly a lot of mixed marriages were concluded, in which methuses were born. And the descendants of the Vikings did not died and did not leave the island, but simply dissolved among the Eskimos. But it turned out to be just a beautiful legend.
In 2005, Professor of Iceland University Gisley Powlsson (Gísli Pálsson) published the results of the study of the DNA of the Greenland and Canadian Eskimos. No traces of mixing with scandinals were found.
Recently, it is suggested that in fact the number of colonies even in the period of heyday did not exceed 2.5 thousand people. Such a small isolated group of people can suffer severely even from one natural disaster or a single attack.
Thomas McGovern put forward such a theory. In Scandinavia, there has always been the custom of collective hunting and fishing, when all men settlements simultaneously go to the sea on fishing fish and marine beast.
It is possible that the Greenlandians went on a joint catch of seals or walrus, the wind suddenly rose and turned their boats. In this case, the colony would immediately lose the majority of able-bodied men. Only women, old men, children and disabled people who could not hunt were left on the shore. Scooty pastures did not allow a lot of sheep to breed. There was no other food, so the settlers were doomed to hunger.
"I think, at the end it was a real tragedy. This was the death of a small community, maybe by the end it consisted of a thousand people. It was extinction, "says Thomas McGovern.
Something similar happened in 1881 in the village of Glob (Gloup) on the Shetland Islands located 300 kilometers from Norway. All men and teenagers of the settlement simultaneously reached the sea and fell into a storm, in which 80% of them died.
Do not exclude and attack pirates. Such a hypothesis proposed, in particular, the American writer of the Norwegian origin of Kirsten Siver in his book "Frozen echoes."
In the XIV-XV centuries, in addition to goods and jewels, they kidnapped people who were then sold to slavery at the slavery markets of North Africa and the Middle East.
Much later, in 1627, Iceland was attacked by Pirates. Maghreb robbers (this area on the territory of modern Algeria and Morocco) sailed more than 3 thousand kilometers and captured over hundreds of Icelanders. Scandinavians were in slavery and many of them have never returned to their homeland.
Greenland settlements were one thousand kilometers further from Europe and Africa than Iceland. But the pirates were skillful sailors and could overcome such a distance. Robbers always kidnapped the most healthy and physically strong people who were more expensive at slavery markets. If, after a raid in the settlement, weak and sick remained, they were waiting for hungry death. Corsairs usually did not make records of their "feats", and their captions could die in slavery, so Europe did not recognize the details of the death of a distant settlement.
The attack of pirates and an unexpected storm is only an assumption. There are no evidence of these tragic events. But also argue that this could not happen, too, it is impossible.
Perhaps (this version seems the most likely) to disappear of the colony on Greenland led a combination of several adverse factors at once - the worsening of the climate, the fall in demand for the walruss and a decrease in the number of Europeans, hunger and illness in Europe, the fall in yield. Alone to survive settlements on the island could not, and the Europeans became not up to them. Greenland Vikings, in a sense, became victims of medieval globalization and a pandemic.
"If you look at the world today, many communities encounter insecurity from climate change," Andrew Dagmore warns. - They also face globalization issues. The most difficult thing when you have to resist both challenges. "
"Maybe this is an ordinary human story. People move to where there are resources. And they go away when something does not meet their requirements, "says Niels Lünnoup. As for the lack of records in the chronicles on the resettlement of Greenlanders from the island, according to the scientist, if the outcome was not massive, but gradually, he could not attract attention.
The remains of the settlements of Europeans in Greenland testify that the inhabitants left their homes calmly, perhaps even, suggesting ever return. The farms were destroyed by time, not the war or some natural cataclysm, testify archaeologists. During all the time, the excavations did not have any valuable things, only one gold ring and a fragment of the squad from the bone of narrowing.
"When throwing a small settlement, what do you take? Values, family jewels, - Lists Niels Lünnerup. - Do not leave a sword or a good iron knife ... do not leave Christ on crucifixes. This is all taking with you. I am sure that there would be some kind of decoration - bowls, candlesticks - which, as we know, were in medieval churches, but who never found in Greenland. "
Yette Arneborg (Jette Arneborg), Senior Researcher of the National Museum of Denmark, along with colleagues, found evidence that the owners of Greenland farms left them no hardening. Not far from the Western settlement there are ruins of estates, known as the "farm under the sands". Doors in all rooms, except for one rot. Judging by the footsteps, the wild sheep wandered around the premises. However, one door has been preserved and it remained closed for centuries.
"There was absolutely clean. No sheep was in this room, "says Yette Arneborg, who, as its American colleague Thomas McGovern, studied the settlements of the Greenland Vikings decades. For it, what happened on the farm is obvious: "They were filled, they took everything that they wanted and left. They even closed the doors. "
It is unlikely that Greenlandians simultaneously decided to leave the island, all got together on the ships and sailed.
Firstly, for this you need a whole flotilla of the courts, which the colony was not. Recall, Eric Red, to bring the 350 first colonists to be required 14 ships, and after four centuries in Greenland, much more people lived.
Secondly, they should have saved somewhere, most likely in Iceland or Norway. But in these countries, where the writing and launch of the chronicle by that time were the usual matter, there are no mention of the mass arrival of immigrants from Greenland, although the emergence of thousands of new people could not be unnoticed.
"If hundreds or a thousand people come from Greenland," says Thomas McGurne. - Someone would notice it. "
Only isolated cases of moving colonists from the island are known. Torstain Olafsson and his spouse Sigrid, the most newly lines, the wedding of which became the last famous event in the life of the Eastern settlement, found themselves in Iceland. Here in 1424, they provided documents and testimony of witnesses confirming their marriage.
For the disappearance of the colony, simultaneous mass migration of residents is not required. According to Niels, Linnuroupe It was enough for each year with Greenland and only ten people of childbearing age. After some time, the birth rate will become so low that it will not compensate for the mortality. The population will begin to quickly decrease. The colony will remain without hunters and workers, which will lead to her death.
It is not known when the Eastern settlement completely ceased to exist. The Russian archaeologist A. I. Anokhin suggests that it happened in the first quarter of the XVI century, after 100 years after the wedding of Olafsson's coastain.
In 1921, the Danish archaeologist Paul Norland found a burial, dating from the XV century near the eastern settlement. Strange, but the dead man did not look like a beggar, depleted human disease and hunger. He was dressed in a very expensive clothing at the time, and on the remains there were no traces of rickets or other diseases associated with poor nutrition.
The identity of the deceased remained unknown. Historians found only one explanation for this find. In 1470, the Danish expedition went to Greenland and the unidentified dead man, perhaps it was her participant who was dead in the way.
After several visits to the island in the 1510-1540, it became clear that the Western and Eastern settlements were deserted. But in Europe, rumors went for a long time that descendants of Vikings still live in Greenland. For their searches, expeditions have not happened more than once. It was Scandinavians who was looking for the crew of the English ship "Peyzhes" of the captain of which in 1612 killed Eskimos.
In 1721, the Danish missionary Hans Egiede arrived on the island, and the descendants of Europeans were also striving to find here. He was worried that the Christians were torn off from civilization, there was no priest who could confess, span and communion.
Holy Father was worried. On the island, he discovered only pagans-Eskimos. Egieda lived in Greenland for many years and proved that the mythical descendants of Scandinavians have not lived here for a long time.
The history of Sigrid Bjornsdottir and Torstain Olafsson indicates the direction in which it is possible to go to the search for descendants of the Greenland Vikings. The spouses sailed in Iceland and there for some reason needed documents confirming the legality of their marriage. It is logical to assume that the pra-grandchildren of this pair still live and live - maybe in Iceland, maybe somewhere else. If the assumption of Niels Lüntroup is true, and medieval Greenlandians, indeed, gradually left their own island, their descendants still live among us.
Text: Sergey Tolmachev
On the western coast of the Caspian Sea, where the Caucasian spots approach the marine water area quite closely, in the seaside plains and the hills spread out an ancient Derbent. Nowadays, he is the second largest city of the Republic of Dagestan, after the capital - Makhachkala, lying 125 km north.
Derbent is one of the most ancient cities not only the Caucasus, but also of all Russia. His story, as archaeologists consider, has five millennia, - precisely then, in the bronze age, there was a small settlement in this place, then acquired and urban fortifications.
However, the documented formation of Derbent as sufficient major city They are associated with the Persian king of the Sassanid dynasty - Jesdigre II (rules in 435-57. AD), which erect it on the northern border of his possessions, on a sublime and strategically important place - between the mountains and the sea (which is reflected in the title itself : Iranian "Derbend" means "Mountain Pass", or "Mountain Zadava").
About the century, i.e. In the VI century, in the era of the board of another king of the same dynasty (Hosras i Anushirvan - Rules in 531-579)., On the ruins of former fortifications, the fortified top (old) city is erected, the center of which is the impregnable fortress of the Naryn Cala. Two stone fortress walls are erected (they are equipped with powerful towers and majestic entrance gates), which moved away from the citadel and walked parallel to each other towards the sea. These walls, now survived only partially, have once reached the shore, and even came into a shallow water, so that the city itself, which turned out to be in the enemy protected from the enemy, but also the harbor. In addition to the two main walls, there had previously existed another fortress wall - Dag-bars (mountain wall), 3 m thick and up to 10 m thick, which moved away from the southwestern corner of the citadel and went aside Caucasian Gor. For as many as 40 km! (Now the mountain wall is almost completely destroyed, only individual fragments remained).
Subsequently, thanks to the profitable geographical position, Derbent turns into one of the largest and developed medieval cities of the East. True, his story is full of drama: it turns out to be in the epicenter of rapid events, it is experiencing a lot of assault and destruction, experiencing periods of heyday and decline. In the 630s. Derbent capture Khazara, from 652 g. - It is part of the Arab Caliphate, in the X century. becomes the center of independent emirate. Further, in 1071 the city capture Selzhuki Turks, in the XIII century. He is conquered by the Mongols, in the period from the XVI to the beginning of the XVIII centuries. Derbent - as part of Iran. From 1743 is the center of Derbent Khanate, and in 1813 Derbent joins Russia.
Citadel Naryn-Kala, which has been well preserved to our time, is limited to thick (2-4 m) and high (10-12 m) fortress walls, folded from two rows of well-treated stone blocks with filling out of debris and lime mortar. On its territory you can see the ruins of the Palace of Derbent Khan (2 half of the XVIII century), it is also a special underground structure - a "stone bag" (cellar or prison for the Khan Prisoners), Baths, Gaptwaht. The ruins of the palace structures of earlier periods are preserved (starting from the ancient time).
In the area adjacent to the Citadel - a typical Muslim medieval city with a network of narrow curves of streets, on which the deaf facades are 1-2-storey houses, with mosques, fountains, baths. In this part of the city there are: a complex of Juma Mosque, consisting of a mosque actually (VIII century), Madrasa (XV-XIX centuries) and 3 arched gates (XVII-XIX centuries), as well as a kyrocher-mosque (XVII century. ), Minaret-mosque (XVIII century, partially rebuilt in the XIX century) with the only one in Derbent a dilapidated minaret (XIV century), a damage-mosque (XVII-XIX centuries), former Khan Mausoleum (end of the XVIII century). Here you can see special reservoirs for water storage - underground tanks (XVII-XIX centuries), which for Derbent, like any other fortress city of those times, was almost paramount. Water was supplied here from mountain stennors - according to the numerous detected by the excavations of stone and ceramic waterways.
From 1926, a local history museum operates in the Upper City, and in 1989 the State Historical and Architectural and Art Museum-Reserve "Ancient Derbent" is organized.
Cultural criteria: III, IV
The year of inclusion in the list world Heritage: 2003
This object on the UNESCO World Heritage Site website WhC.unesco.org/en/List/1070
