@jeffyoung60

4 months ago

Around 800 A.D. there began a four-century period of high global temperatures, known as, The Climatic Optimum. It was not a global disaster back then as today. Many parts of the world previously uninhabitable due to harsh and cold weather, became moderate and open for agriculture. In England, grapes were being grown in the south.
In Greenland, much land land in the southern tip around the coastlines became suitable for farming and animal grazing. The weather had greatly moderated in southern Greenland to like that of today's southern Canada where it is warm enough to plant crops once a year while the winter, cold and snowy, was not Arctic freezing as before. The once stormy seas around Greenland calmed enough to make extensive fishing safer and feasible. It was a good time for the Norse settlers.
As the four hundred years came to an end, the world began to experience the exact reverse, unusually cold, wet, and prolonged winters. This was a ecological disaster for Europe which led to crop failures, famines, and plagues like the Black Death.
In Greenland, the land and seas over the course of just ten to fifteen years reverted to its originate state. The Norse descendents could no longer farm the cold, harsh windswept land nor pasture animals. The surrounding seas once again became frigid and stormy, too unsafe for fishing or whaling. According to history, the Norse settlers began to due out from starvation and famine and malnutrition. Those who did not die eventually sailed to the Scandinavian homelands of their ancestors.

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