{"id":10329,"date":"2017-03-10T08:52:04","date_gmt":"2017-03-10T13:52:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/?p=10329"},"modified":"2017-03-10T08:52:04","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T13:52:04","slug":"did-climate-kill-viking-farmers-in-greenland-or-was-it-something-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/2017\/03\/did-climate-kill-viking-farmers-in-greenland-or-was-it-something-else\/","title":{"rendered":"Did climate kill Viking farmers in Greenland or was it something else?"},"content":{"rendered":"

For about 400 years centered around 1200 AD, Viking farmers lived in two colonies in Greenland, growing a few crops and raising herds of cattle and sheep. \u00a0As many as 2500\u00a0Vikings may have inhabited the two colonies before they disappeared.<\/p>\n

Conventional wisdom says that they died out as the climate got colder after the end of the Medieval Warm Period, capped by a huge eruption in Indonesia on Lombok Island in 1257 AD that is ranked the most powerful in the last 7000 years by geologists, according to a recent article in Smithsonian<\/em> magazine. \u00a0Large volcanic eruptions are known to cause significant cooling of climate over several years due to reflection of sunlight back to space from small sulfuric acid drops lofted high into the atmosphere during the eruption. \u00a0You can read more about this fascinating history at\u00a0https:\/\/www.smithsonianmag.com\/history\/why-greenland-vikings-vanished-180962119\/<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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The remnants of a Viking barn still stand at what had been the settlement of Gardar. (Ciril Jazbec)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

For about 400 years centered around 1200 AD, Viking farmers lived in two colonies in Greenland, growing a few crops and raising herds of cattle and sheep. \u00a0As many as 2500\u00a0Vikings may have inhabited the two colonies before they disappeared. Conventional wisdom says that they died out as the climate got colder after the end […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":58,"featured_media":10330,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10329","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-and-ag-in-the-news","category-history"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10329","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/58"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10329"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10329\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10331,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10329\/revisions\/10331"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10330"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10329"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10329"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/site.extension.uga.edu\/climate\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10329"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}