Inuit and Norsemen in Arctic Canada
A.D. 1000 to 1400

Approximately 1000 years ago, the climate in the northern hemisphere warmed considerably, and for several centuries the Arctic was milder than it is today. While this warmer climate prevailed, there was a marked decrease in sea ice. About the beginning of this period, two groups of people began migrations into Arctic North America. From the west came Alaskan Inuit (Eskimos), known as Thule culture people, the ancestors of the present Inuit of Arctic Canada and Greenland. They spread rapidly eastward, travelling in large skin boats and living primarily on whales and other sea mammals. By approximately A.D. 1000, groups of them had reached northwestern Greenland.

From the east came the Icelandic Norse, embarking from the colonies they had established in southwestern Greenland during the late tenth century (click here to see a map of the colonies). Norse sagas and historical accounts tell of explorations of the eastern coast of North America and the building of settlements that were occupied briefly. Scientists and laymen have long tried to pinpoint the lands of the sagas: Helluland (Flat Stone Land), Markland (Forest Land) and Vinland (Wineland). It is now generally agreed that barren, rocky Baffin Island is Helluland, the heavily wooded coast of Labrador is Markland, and Vinland corresponds to the coasts of the Gulf of St. Lawrence. The majority of archaeologists now accept as the only evidence of Norse occupation in North America an archaeological site at L'Anse aux Meadows, on the northern tip of Newfoundland. The indigenous population of these new lands are referred to as "Skraelings" in the sagas, but whether the Skraelings were Indian or Inuit cannot be determined from the vague descriptions of them; archaeological investigation suggests that both groups were encountered by the Norse.

There is only slight documentary evidence for contacts between the Inuit and the Norse of the Greenland colonies, however recent scattered archaeological finds of Norse objects in Canadian Arctic Inuit sites entitle us to consider the possibilities. In order to estimate what the contact between these groups was, and to find the answer to how objects of Norse origin found their way into Inuit sites, we have three main resources: the Icelandic sagas and other records of that period; the traditional Inuit legends; and archaeological research.

The Icelandic Sagas

According to the Norse sagas, Eric the Red discovered Greenland in approximately A.D. 982, and within a few decades the Icelanders had established two settlements on the southwestern coast. The population of these settlements reached up to 3000 people, and the settlements themselves survived until the fifteenth century A.D. When Eric landed in this new country, he found no human occupants, but he did find evidence of former occupations: fragments of boats and stone tools, likely the remains of Dorset culture, the Eskimo or Eskimo-like race that had occupied Arctic North America since approximately 2000 B.C. and who are presumed to have been exterminated by the invading Inuit. When the Icelanders Thorgils Orrabeinsfostre, was shipwrecked for three years on the eastern coast of Greenland about A.D. 1000, he may have encountered these people. The sagas tell of the strange and terrible adventures experienced by Thorgils and his men. In one of the stories, they saw two "witches" butchering a sea mammal beside a hole in the ice. They cut off the hand of one witch, the witches fled and the Norse claimed the sea mammal.

Between A.D. 1000 and A.D. 1030, the Norse mounted at least four expeditions to Vinland and Markland. In Markland, they encountered people who slept under their boats, one of whom killed the expedition leader with an arrow. In Vinland, they met people who travelled in boats with whom they traded red cloth for furs, but the second contact with these people led to a battle. These Skraelings of Markland and Vinland were almost certainly Indians, the ancestors of the historic Montagnais and Beothuk peoples.

As well as the record of Norse-Inuit contact in the sagas, brief mentions are found in letters and other accounts. One such account states that in A.D. 1266, Norse hunters venturing further north than usual, perhaps as far as Melville Bay, found traces of Skraeling occupation. The thirteenth century History of Norway states, "... that further to the North, hunters have come across small people, whom they call Skraelings; when they are hit their wounds turn white and they do not bleed, but when they die there is no end to their bleeding. They possess no iron, but use walrus tusk for missiles and sharpened stones instead of knives." This is the first mention of a meeting with the Inuit, although the Inuit had reached northwestern Greenland at about the same time as the Norse had colonized the southwestern coast of that land.

About A.D. 1350, Ivar Bardson was sent on a relief expedition to the Western Settlement in Greenland, but he found it to be abandoned. He met no Inuit on the expedition, but the account implies that Inuit may have had a hand in the extinction of the settlement. Some thirty years later, in 1379, the sagas tell of a Skraeling attack on the Eastern Settlement of Greenland, in which the Inuit killed eighteen men and captured two boys and a woman. A rather dubious papal letter of 1448 has the last statement of possible contact, mentioning that the Greenland settlement had been attacked thirty years previously "from the nearby shores of the heathens", and that most of the churches had been destroyed.

From these few brief records the suggestion is that contacts between Inuit and Norse were few and violent, and the idea that the Norse colonies in Greenland were exterminated by the Inuit has become entrenched in writings on the subject. However, as the sagas were written several centuries after the events they described and after the stories had been passed on orally for generations, it is likely that the dramatic events, including warfare and violence, had been highlighted and exaggerated to some extent by the story tellers.

Traditional Inuit Legends

Traditional Inuit accounts suggest that the Norse may have been as eager to trade as to fight, and given the economic realities of mediaeval Greenland, this would seem likely. Metal was in short supply for the Greenlandic Norse as it had to be imported from Europe, as did their requirements of grain, timber and luxury goods. Payments for these imports were made in skins of walrus, polar bear and other animals, and primarily in walrus and narwhal ivory. In order to acquire the vast amounts of walrus ivory that records show were traded for European imports, the Norse had to travel 500 kilometres north of their settlements to the hunting grounds where walrus were numerous. Once there, it would have been to their advantage to trade small pieces of metal or worn-out tools to the Inuit for walrus ivory, hides and other local products, enabling them to return more speedily to their settlements where their manpower must have been needed. If this were the case, it would help to explain the widespread scatter of Norse objects among twelfth and thirteenth century Inuit sites in Arctic Canada.

The Archaeological Record

Archaeological investigation so far does not confirm the picture of only brief and violent encounters between the two peoples. In the Greenland Norse settlements there is no evidence of massacres, or destruction of farmsteads, or re-occupation by Inuit. In Inuit settlements throughout Greenland, there is evidence of acquisition of Norse materials, but no indication as to whether this material was acquired through trading, warfare or looting of abandoned sites. Archaeological specimens of smelted iron, bronze and copper widely distributed throughout Arctic Canada probably indicate that metal was an extremely valuable trade commodity to the Inuit of the period.

In fourteenth- to sixteenth-century Inuit settlements in Greenland, items of European origin are common, but this would be after the Norse abandoned their western Greenland settlement, and the items could have come from the looting of the abandoned farmsteads. However, far to the north, in the Thule district of northwestern Greenland, Inuit sites of the twelfth or thirteenth centuries have produced a fragment of chain mail, the leg of a metal cooking pot, a comb, a checkers man, and a fragment of woollen cloth. To the west of the Thule district in the vicinity of Alexandra Fiord on the east coast of Ellesmere Island, a site dating to the twelfth or thirteenth century has also yielded a fragment of chain mail, woollen cloth, metal clinch nails (of the type used in Norse boats) and a piece of oak wood. A most interesting artifact was recently recovered from a Thule period site on the west coast of Ellesmere Island: a hinged bronze bar that is part of a folding balance (click here to see a picture of it), very similar to those used by mediaeval Norse traders for weighing coins and other small objects. These finds suggest that Norse hunting and trading parties may have reached this northern area.

In twelfth or thirteenth-century Thule culture Inuit sites in Arctic Canada, iron fragments are a common find. Although it is mostly of meteoric origin, some of the iron is smelted and, along with pieces of smelted copper and bronze, probably originated in the Norse colonies. From the saga evidence, it seems almost certain that the Norse knew of Baffin Island, the "Helluland" described as a stony and barren country located to the north of Markland and Vinland. The sailing route from Greenland to Markland and Vinland appears to have taken ships north along the Greenland coast, then across Davis Strait at its narrowest point to make a landfall on Cumberland Peninsula of Baffin Island. Voyages to Markland (Labrador), probably to cut timber, continued until at least 1347, when a ship bound from Markland to Greenland is recorded to have been driven to Iceland. In the three centuries before this, the Norse must have sailed, at least occasionally, along the eastern coast of Baffin Island, and it seems almost inevitable that some landings would have been made. If at that time trading relationships had been established with Greenland Inuit, it was likely that trade was profitably extended to the Thule culture Inuit of Baffin Island.

Archaeological research in a thirteenth-century Inuit house on southern Baffin Island has yielded a unique specimen. This is a small wooden carving (click here to see a picture of it), typical of Thule carvings of the time, but representing a person in a long robe with what appears to be a cross on the chest. The clothing is like the European clothing of the day, suggesting that the carver had seen someone dressed in this fashion. Carvings of Norsemen by Greenland Inuit have been found on sites in Greenland, but this small figure is different in style from the conventional Greenlandic carvings, leading one to believe that it was carved by a local artist.

The number of archaeological sites which have been excavated is an extremely small proportion of sites which exist across Arctic Canada dating to the period prior to the abandonment of the Norse colonies (click here to see a picture of a Thule house). Further archaeological investigation will undoubtedly uncover additional evidence of relationships between the Norse and the Inuit. It could be that all of the iron, bronze, copper and cloth artifacts found in the Canadian Arctic Inuit sites may have been obtained by a few raids on Greenlandic farms or parties on hunting trips and then traded northward through Inuit communities to the Thule district and west and south across Arctic Canada, but it seems likely there is more to the story. It is doubtful that the relationship between Inuit and Norse could be only one of occasional brief and violent encounter. Rather it would seem possible that these people engaged in mutually beneficial trading activities over a period of several centuries, and that these activities may have encouraged occasional Norse penetration of parts of the eastern Canadian Arctic.

SUGGESTED READING

Bornsted, Johannes. 
The Vikings. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin Books, 1965. Translated by Kalle Skov.

Graham-Campbell, James and Dafydd Kidd. 
The Vikings. London, British Museum Press, 1980.

Ingstad, Helge. 
Land Under the Pole Star. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1966. Translated by Naomi Walford.
Westward to Vinland. New York, St. Martin's Press, 1969.

Jones, Gwyn. 
The Norse Atlantic Saga. Oxford, Oxford University Press, Second Edition, 1986.

Magnusson, Magnus and Hermann Palsson. 
The Vinland Sagas: The Norse Discovery of America. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, Penguin Books, 1965.

McGhee, Robert
Canada Rediscovered. Canadian Museum of Civilization, Hull, 1991.