James Johnstone from Ecclefechan, Scotland Image © CC BY 2.0 < https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0 >, via Wikimedia Commons.
New research has found the Vikings were part of a global network trading in walrus ivory. ScienceVega talks to Emily Ruiz-Puerta, researcher at the University of Groningen and Copenhagen, about her contribution to the research which focused on the possible interactions between Vikings from north Norway and Sweden with Thule Inuit peoples from Greenland and, possibly, modern-day Canada.
ScienceVega: What was the ivory trade like during the Viking period?
ER-P: In the early part of the medieval period, we know that ivory was used like gold to pay church taxes, to show political power and so on.
Vikings started in the north part of the North Atlantic; north of Sweden and Norway in the area known as Fennoscandia. In this paper we hypothesised that all the local walrus populations went extinct due to overexploitation pushing the Vikings into Iceland. They also overhunted all the walruses there and so they went into Greenland, where they finally established the first two settlements, one on the east coast (Igaliku/ Garðar) and the other on the west coast (Sandnes).
What we have described, based on previous literature, is that they were using the skull of the walrus and using the debitage (waste material produced during the process of making stone tools and weapons) and extracting the ivory. From there they would transport the ivory into specialised workshops in the north of Norway, and the UK as well, passing it on to craftsmen, who created all these amazing artefacts we now see in museums.
What we wanted to find out was where the walrus ivory was coming from, because there is a lot of literature on walrus ivory hunting and about methods the Vikings were using in order to obtain that ivory. The main objectives we wanted to know were where exactly was this ivory was coming from, the importance of walrus ivory during the medieval period and, if this hunting and trading of ivory was coming from Greenland into Europe, was it also provoking interactions between Arctic indigenous cultures and the north Vikings?
What we think is that there were two main climatic events in the Arctic that led to greater exploration. The first during the medieval warm period (MWP) opened up paths for the north Vikings to go further up into the north of Greenland to explore that region.
The other climate event happened later, during the Little Ice Age (perhaps from 1300 onwards), where we assume that blocked the north Vikings from continuing to explore, obliging them to go back into Europe. Of course, in going back into Europe, that decreased the economic importance of walrus ivory, leading to an increase in elephant ivory.
We also wanted to know how far the north Vikings were going into Greenland. From the archaeological excavations and everything we see and read, we know we have the western settlement, the eastern settlement and also a settlement in the northeast of modern-day Canada, although there is no information about Vikings going there. There are some metal remains and so on, but we have never found a Viking ship in the north part of Greenland to be able to say that is exactly where they were. But through ancient genomics and experimental archaeology using reconstructed Viking sailing ships and we found out that there is a possibility that they were going there.
That’s why we showed three hypotheses in the paper: one is the idea of direct trading between Arctic indigenous peoples, such as the Thule Inuit, with Vikings, trading in walrus ivory; another is the Vikings were heading north in search of more walrus ivory and in that moment there was interaction with the Thule Inuit, but it was not mainly for trading, and the last is that the Vikings were just going up looking for walrus ivory and they encountered the Thule in the North Water Polynya.
Coburg Island in the North Water Polynya. It was in inhospitable areas such as this where Vikings and Thule Inuit people may have met and traded. Image © Lorenz.King@geogr.uni-giessen.de, CC BY-SA 4.0 < https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0 >, via Wikimedia Commons.
ScienceVega: We’ve not found a Viking ship, so what evidence do we have of Vikings travelling to northwest Greenland and perhaps Canada?
ER-P: There is some evidence from archaeological sites where they found Norse iron and dolls from late Thule periods resembling Norse people. Also, in the literature, there are descriptions of white people, with beards and different facial features. But essentially, there’s no specific information.
The only way to prove that will be to find either a Viking ship or Viking remains on the same site where we find Thule archaeological evidence.
ScienceVega: How do we know about the walrus trade in these areas?
ER-P: That’s an interesting question. I am biologist and I did all the ancient genomic part of the project. I also learned Arctic archaeology through my PhD, and what we basically know is that Vikings did not have the technology to hunt walruses in the same intensity as Thule Inuit people. That is why we also think that they were trading with the Thule people. Because the Thule Inuit people came from the Bering Strait, we think all of their technology was linked to Pacific walrus hunting, so they were very specialised. They were also really good at hunting bowhead whales because they had all the tools, such as kayaks and harpoons.
But when we consider the north Vikings, they didn’t have the same capacity in the sense that they were not as suited to the harsh conditions of the Arctic. We think they were using hammers and knives to hunt walruses. There was a people called the Russian Pomors who hunted walruses in Svalbard.
They would use boats to approach a beach at night, and very slowly walked up from the water in groups to try to corral the walruses. We think that is what the north Vikings were doing; a completely different kind of hunting behaviour than the Thule Inuit people.
In the research we only had 31 walrus ivory artefacts from the North Water Polynya to study. If we’d had a much larger sample of walrus ivory artefacts from different museums and if we continue to see the pattern that it was coming from the North Water Polynya, we would be able to 100% say the north Vikings were contacting with the Thule Inuit people.
A map of the North Water Polynya. Image © NASA, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.
ScienceVega: Do we know where walrus ivory ended up as a result of this trade?
ER-P: I’m working on another paper at the moment and there’s some bibliographical information that walrus ivory could have even traded as far as India. I’m trying to resolve that now, but without using ancient genomics; it’s more a literature review.
We know that the Vikings were going through the river system and that they were really good traders. There is one paper that told us the walrus ivory was going into modern-day Ukraine, to Kiev, and an old review describing how possible walrus ivory was also traded in India. There they were using walrus in the handles of knives along with all the precious stones, which, through superstition, they thought, because it came from so far away, would protect them from disease and so on. It was considered a very precious material.
We also have to consider that there was also trading between the Pacific area from Russia and that there was walrus ivory coming from there. There was a group of people also known as the Vikings from the Kamchatka area that is in far eastern Russia, possibly also trading ivory and other things from that area.
Walrus ivory really was traded everywhere in the north, in all these circumpolar areas. They were all connected all around the pole. It is really interesting to see that there was trading everywhere and it was all connected in the 9th and 10th Centuries.
Walrus living in Svalbard. Image © Morten Tange Olsen.
Emily Ruiz-Puerta
Postdoctoral researcher
Arctic Centre
University of Groningen
and
Guest researcher
The GLOBE Institute,
University of Copenhagen.
The original study is published in Science Advances.
