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Vikings shipped walrus ivory from Greenland all the way to Kyiv. Source: Nejron Photo /Adobe Stock

Vikings Shipped Walrus Ivory to Medieval Islamic Merchants 4000km Away!

With the accelerated pace of climate change and global warming wreaking havoc on the ice sheets of the world, particularly Greenland, new evidence emerges from the ice-capped country. Greenland was a...
Northern Lights, Aurora borealis at Kirkjufell in Iceland. Representative of Icelandic Viking Settlement.           Source: tawatchai1990

The Icelandic Viking Settlement Challenging the History Books

Demanding a rewrite of Icelandic history , in November 2015 a report in IcelandMag said archaeologists at an excavation in Fjarðabyggð, in east Iceland, found an old Viking farmstead at Stöð in...
Walrus carving from medieval Trondheim. Viking colonies in Greenland relied on walrus ivory for trade. Source: Credit: Åge Hojem NTNU University Museum

Viking Colonies Collapsed Through Over Hunting Walruses

The mysterious disappearance of Greenland's Norse colonies sometime in the 15th century may have been down to the overexploitation of walrus populations for their tusks, according to a study of...
The Icelandic walrus began extinct at the arrival of the Norse. Source: Calvin / Adobe Stock.

Norse Settlers Wiped Out Icelandic Walrus 1100 Years Ago

An international collaboration of scientists in Iceland , Denmark , and the Netherlands has for the first time used ancient DNA analyses and C14-dating to demonstrate the past existence of a unique...
Left: Upper jaw bones of a walrus, with tusks removed. Right: an elaborately-carved ecclesiastical walrus ivory plaque.

Lost Norse of Greenland Fueled the Medieval Ivory Trade, Ancient Walrus DNA Suggests

The Icelandic Sagas tell of Erik the Red: exiled for murder in the late 10th century he fled to southwest Greenland, establishing its first Norse settlement. The colony took root, and by the mid-12th...
Viking boat

Was it treasured Walrus Ivory that drove Vikings to sail thousands of kilometers to Greenland?

One of the puzzling mysteries of the Viking settlement during the Nordic Middle Ages may be solved by archaeologists armed with a pioneering scientific method and some ancient walrus tusks. The...