One of the great mysteries of late medieval history is why the Norse (people who inhabited the now Scandinavian countries including Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Iceland) had abandoned southern Greenland where they established successful settlements.
The consensus view has long been that colder temperatures, associated with the Little Ice Age, helped make the colonies unsustainable. However, new research, led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst and published recently in the journal Science Advances, upends that old theory, suggesting that what helped drive the Norse from Greenland was drought.
