The mystery of the Greenlanders who vanished

One of the Arctic’s most enduring and fascinating mysteries is the fate of Greenland’s Norse settlement. The European settlers predated the Inuit people by several centuries, but for reasons unknown vanished completely. It’s a tale that combines the eeriness of the Mary Celeste with the tragedy of the Roanoke Colony, which left a lasting legacy that still impacts the island to this day.

“Although the big picture is clear, the mystery remains unsolved,” says Icelandic author and historian Valur Gunnarsson, who recently published the book Grænland og fólkið sem hvarf (Greenland and the people who disappeared). “A society of 3,000 people that just vanished. It’s the Nordic countries’ biggest enigma.”

Gunnarsson has written several books on topics such as Nordic counterfactual history, the layered past of Berlin and his travels through the former Soviet Union, but his latest work brings him back to a mystery he has carried since childhood. As he puts it, he grew up partly in Iceland and partly in Norway, studied in Finland, Denmark and the Faroe Islands, and “woke up every day aware of this great riddle in Nordic history.”

The story of Eirik the Red

The Norse settlement in Greenland was founded in 986 by Icelandic settlers, and a society of at least 3,000 people thrived in two main communities—the Western Settlement and the Eastern Settlement. The first settler was Erik the Red, who after being exiled from Iceland for murder sailed to Greenland and settled in what became known as Eiriksfjord. He would later convince over 700 people to follow him to this new land, which for PR purposes he called Greenland.

Gunnarsson explains that he embarked on writing the book following a trip to Greenland. After publishing a previous book, a reindeer farmer in Greenland who had read it invited him to visit.

“The idea for the book was, like so much in life, a combination of a lifelong interest in Nordic history and coincidence,” says Gunnarsson. “On my way back from my trip to the farmer, I visited the Hvalsey church, which is the most remarkable medieval building on this side of the Atlantic and much more beautiful than anything you’ll find in Iceland.”

The ruins of the church, which inspired Gunnarsson, still stand near the town of Qaqortoq, and as testament to its legacy, the last written record we have of the Norse people of Greenland was a wedding of two Icelanders that was held there in 1408.

“To step into the church where that last event took place,” Gunnarsson says, “and then realize they disappeared from the stage of history, that stays with you.”

After that final mention in 1408, only one more trace appears in the historical record and even that is debated.

“We have an account from 1540 by a man called Jón the Greenlander, who was actually an Icelander who sailed to Greenland, and in a very interesting, though unfortunately brief, account he says that they found a body in the ocean by the island and when he turned it over he saw that it was a man with a red beard, wearing a medieval European hood but dressed in sealskin clothing. He seemed to be a Norse man who had adopted Inuit ways.”

Gunnarsson is quick to stress that the tale is on shaky ground. It’s brief, late and impossible to verify.

The Danish claim

It wasn’t until roughly 300 years after the wedding in Hvalsey church, that the imperial reach of Denmark and the missionary zeal of Christianity stretched their hands to the Arctic that the outside world learned of the fate of the colony.

“In 1721, Hans Egede arrives there on behalf of the Danish king, a priest, to find these people in order to Christianize them,” explains Gunnarsson. “But what he finds is the ruins of the Eastern Settlement.”

Egede believed there must be another existing Norse community farther north or on the east coast, but later explorers discovered that the ruins he found were the final remnants of the vanished society. The Norse presence in Greenland would soon take on a second life, however, not as a living community but as a political instrument.

“It is through the idea of the Norse Greenlanders that the Danish king makes a claim to Greenland,” Gunnarsson says.

The logic was simple: the Norse had sworn allegiance to the Norwegian crown in 1261 and when Norway later entered union with Denmark, the Danes inherited that claim. Even centuries after the settlement disappeared, this medieval connection became the legal foundation for Danish sovereignty over Greenland.

But it is the disappearance itself, and the reasons behind it, that continue to resonate today.

What happened?

What happened in the three centuries between that last recorded wedding and Egede’s arrival remains one of the great cold-case disappearances of world history. While the settlement declined gradually after the 14th century, no single cause explains the complete disappearance of an entire society.

Earlier interpretations emphasized conflict with Inuit groups, but the archaeological evidence is thin. Another theory was that the two groups had merged, but modern DNA analysis has shown no indication of that.

Instead, Gunnarsson points to the settlement’s deep vulnerability to environmental change. During the late middle ages, following a series of large volcanic eruptions, a period called the Little Ice Age began, which brought harsher winters, pack ice blocking trade routes and shorter growing seasons.

At the same time, the Norse economy had become tightly interconnected: walrus ivory from the Western Settlement was traded through the Eastern Settlement and then onwards to Europe. Possibly the society in Greenland had become too dependant on trade to withstand a sizeable shock.

“If anything in that chain breaks,” Gunnarsson explains, “everything collapses.”

As shipping routes faltered, the Black Death devastated Norway, cutting off Greenland’s main support line. Population decline, loss of young women, economic contraction and isolation followed. Still, none of these fully explain the final disappearance.

“There is nothing in the archaeology that shows a mass death,” Gunnarsson notes. “People don’t just lie down and starve to death.”

Lesson in vulnerabilities

The story is not only about medieval Greenland. The book explores the mystery, both as a historic cold-case and as an impactful event that touches on colonization and climate change, which left a lasting mark on Greenland. It offers an insight and a warning about the harsh realities of the Arctic. A reminder that even resilient northern communities can collapse under pressure from environmental and economic change.

“It shows how fragile northern societies are,” he says, “how vulnerable they are to sudden shocks and changes in climate.”

But how does a society just disappear without a trace? Gunnarsson believes the final families may have attempted to flee.

“I suggest that they tried to build a kind of ark and sail away to save themselves,” he says. “But they never made it and perished at sea. But this remains a mystery—a question that still haunts us.”

Currently, the book is only available in Icelandic, but according to Gunnarsson, an English translation of the book is forthcoming.