Medieval walrus ivory may reveal trade between Norse and Indigenous Americans hundreds of years before Columbus, study finds

A recreation of a medieval era Norse ship sails on dark waters, with mountains in the background. .

A dogged search for walrus ivory may have brought two unlikely cultures together — the Thule Inuits of the Arctic and the Norse of Greenland — hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus set sail, a new study suggests.

By analyzing samples of Atlantic walrus (Odobenus rosmarus rosmarus) tusk ivory collected by Norse explorers in Greenland and later exported to Europe for trade, archaeologists have pinpointed locations where the Norse and Inuit likely overlapped, they reported in a study published Sept. 27 in the journal Science Advances.