Retracing walrus ivory trade of Viking Age reveals early interactions between Europeans and Indigenous North Americans
By examining ancient walrus DNA, an international research team led by Lund University in Sweden have retraced the walrus ivory trade routes of the Viking Age. They found that Norse Vikings and Arctic Indigenous peoples were ...
In Medieval Europe, there was an enormous demand for elite products, among them—walrus ivory. With the Vikings playing a vital part in the ivory trade, this drove the Norse expansion into the north Atlantic to Iceland and then Greenland; as they looked for new sources of ivory.
"What really surprised us was that much of the walrus ivory exported back to Europe was originating in very remote hunting grounds located deep into the High Arctic. Previously, it has always been assumed that the Norse simply hunted walrus close to their main settlements in southwest Greenland," says Peter Jordan, Professor of Archaeology at Lund University.
The researchers used genetic "fingerprinting" to reconstruct precisely where traded walrus artifacts were coming from.
"We extracted ancient DNA from walrus samples recovered from a wide range of locations across the North Atlantic Arctic. With this information in place, we could then match the genetic profiles of walrus artifacts traded by Greenland Norse into Europe back to very specific Arctic hunting grounds," explains Dr. Morten Tange Olsen, Associate Professor at the Globe Institute in Copenhagen.
As the new results started to emerge, another key question arose: if ivory was being obtained from the High Arctic, did the Greenland Norse have the seafaring skills and technologies to venture so deep into ice-filled Arctic waters?
Members of the research team (Greer Jarrett) undertook voyages with experimental vessels to understand Greenland Norse seafaring capabilities: Sailing at night in one of the larger expeditionary vessels likely used by the Norse to harvest walrus ivory at the North Water Polynya in High Arctc Greenland. Credit: Greer Jarrett
Norse transported "packages" of ivory back to Europe (with tusks attached to skull) Package 1 (Natural History Museum Denmark). Credit: Mikkel Høegh-Post
Norse transported "packages" of ivory back to Europe (with tusks attached to skull) Package 2 (Natural History Museum Denmark). Credit: Mikkel Høegh-Post