North Atlantic climate c.ad 1000: Millennial reflections on the Viking discoveries of Iceland, Greenland and North America

Abstract

“The country seemed to them so kind that no winter fodder would be needed for the livestock: There was never any frost all winter and the grass hardly withered at all.” (A description of Vinland from Granlendinga saga.) It has been suggested that the North Atlantic region experienced a relatively mild climate around the time of the Vikmg expansion (c. AD 800-1 100) and thus during the Norse settlement of Iceland (LAD 870) and Greenland (CAD 985) and during the voyages of the