The mystery of the Norse Vikings who vanished from Greenland
samoolya
The mystery of the Norse Vikings who vanished from Greenland
21 Minutes Read 4529 Words EN The first time I met Michael Nielsen he had just returned from a summer spent excavating a Viking site in southern Greenland, not far from where he’d lived as a child. Most sites on the island seem to be swiftly disintegrating, their buried artifacts melting into a kind of brown sludge, but this particular wet, marshy site had created what archaeologists call “good preservation conditions.” With a wide grin, he retrieved a small plastic bag containing a tiny wooden horse that fit easily in his massive palm. It was dark and damp, the grain gleaming after many centuries hidden in the earth. “So cool,” Nielsen said, turning the horse to catch the light in the basement of the Greenland National Museum in the capital, Nuuk. Whoever carved it had gone to great trouble to shape knots into the mane—tiny nubs along a graceful neck. They lent the animal a stunning kind of life. Many similar horses have been found at sites in Greenland, and as far as anyone can guess, th…
