The discovery of a medieval church in Greenland has unveiled important clues about how Viking society on the island was organized more than 800 years ago, the National Museum of Denmark said yesterday.
Probably dating back to the 13th century, the church was built when the Vikings founded a colony on the vast arctic island, which ceased to be in the 1400s, under circumstances that remain mysterious.
“This is a sensation, it’s shedding light on the significance of this whole area,” said archeologist Christian E.K. Madsen, who led the research at Qinngua near Narsarsuaq in the south of the Danish autonomous territory.
Photo: Reuters
After the Vikings converted to Christianity from paganism, “churches were vital in Norse society,” Madsen said.
“When you build a church, you are making a claim for religious power, [which] is also part of your economic power, because then you get access to the church revenues,” he added.
The Vikings first colonized Greenland in the 10th century, several millennia after the island was populated by the Inuit of the arctic at least 3,000 years ago.
Having likely been built sometime before 1450, the church is believed to predate Denmark’s modern colonization of Greenland in the 18th century by nearly 300 years.
At least one grave lies next to the church, which measures about 8m to 10m long and 3m to 4m wide.
Surrounded by three farms, the building long eluded archeologists, but a clue found in the last hours of excavations carried out last year led to its discovery.
“It’s how villages started in Greenland: This is a proto village,” Madsen said, adding that the three farms probably shared fields and resources.
The settlers did not live solely from agriculture, he said.
“It’s a very marginal area for farming and the settlement was also about accessing the arctic resources,” he said, adding that they would have hunted for the teeth of walruses and narwhals alongside polar bear skins.
The resources would then be fed “back into the European markets and all the way to the Middle East and central Eurasia,” he said.
“Essentially the farms become a base for marine hunting in this area,” he said.
The discovery “should allow us to approach the story of how this particular settlement developed over time, how it was built and collapsed,” Madsen said.
“According to written sources, which turned out to be very reliable, the church was part of a network with smaller Catholic churches. They were the first Catholic churches on the North American continent,” he said.
“It’s telling us how people took Christianity there and kept and tried to hold up a life in the roughest place they could find to live in,” he added.
ON THE MOVE: Trump unexpectedly cut short a trip to return to the White House, while the State Department warned Americans to avoid travel to the Middle East The US on Saturday warned that hostilities between Saudi Arabia and Iran-backed Houthis could “escalate rapidly” after a missile attack targeted Riyadh for the first time since the Yemen conflict resumed. US President Donald Trump on Saturday cut short a weekend at Camp David, a secluded presidential complex in rural Maryland, to return unexpectedly to the White House. The White House gave no explanation for the early return, which comes as a new threshold was crossed in the conflict between Saudi Arabia and the Houthis, who control a large part of Yemen and are fighting government forces backed by a coalition led
The US military came close to boarding a Chinese vessel in the Middle East earlier this year based on a flawed intelligence report prepared with the help of artificial intelligence (AI), CNN said on Friday. US intelligence indicated the ship was carrying nuclear weapons-related components, leading US forces to prepare to intercept it, the broadcaster reported, citing four anonymous sources familiar with the incident. However, the operation was called off after officials determined that an AI chatbot used by an analyst had misidentified the material the ship was carrying. The report was “entirely false,” but “almost started a war,” CNN quoted one source
World leaders gather in New York this week for the UN General Assembly, bracing for US President Donald Trump’s return to the rostrum for a second year running, with talks centering on the widening conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and the risks of artificial intelligence (AI). Nearly 130 heads of state meet with the post-World War II order under strain and with the UN itself struggling to remain relevant and weathering attacks from Trump, who has slashed the US’ contributions and withdrawn from dozens of UN bodies. Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), who last addressed the diplomatic jamboree via video
Typhoon Dujuan forced the cancellation of at least 275 flights in Japan today and prompted warnings of potentially record-breaking rainfall as the storm nears Tokyo. The typhoon, which is accompanied by high winds, has also led to the early closure in Tokyo of one the world’s biggest video game trade fairs and knocked out power for thousands. The Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) warned yesterday that rain and winds were expected to intensify even before the typhoon’s arrival. “The total rainfall through Tuesday could exceed the average monthly rainfall for September, resulting in record-breaking heavy rain,” the agency said. The typhoon’s wind speeds were at
RSS