[SunkenCiv]

This is an example of an elaborately-carved ecclesiastical walrus ivory plaque from the beginning of the medieval walrus ivory trade, featuring the figure of Christ, together with St Mary and St Peter, and believed to date from the 10th or 11th century. Found in North Elmham, Norfolk, UK, in the 19th century, and currently exhibited in the University of Cambridge’s Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology. Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Cambridge

[Bartholomew Roberts]

You post the best articles!

Thanks!

[Vigilanteman]

Life was good for the first four centuries of the Norse in Greenland. You look at that carving and imagine the detail before the faces and most protruding parts wore off with time. Then look at typical artwork of that era where even portraits of royalty are just a little more sophisticated than your average 8 or 9 year old's crayon drawing.

The elaborate cathedrals built by the Norse in Greenland (a relatively small population which probably never exceeded 25,000 in total in all locations) is yet another testimony to the high civilization they built.

It could have taken as little as a decade for them to collapse. The larger eastern settlement discovered that the western settlement had collapsed and carefully buried the dead sometime around 1415. In just a few short years thereafter, they suffered the same fate and there was nobody around to bury them.

Not long thereafter, the little ice age made it to their ancestral homeland of Iceland and brought widespread starvation and near collapse. It was only because of a massive change in diet to include copious amounts of fish that Iceland managed to survive.

[rdl6989]

That is beautiful.

[nutmeg]

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