Greenland’s Lost Norse: Parables of Adaptation from the North Atlantic

What lessons for contemporary climate adaptation can we learn from the Viking-era Norse settlement on Greenland, which was founded in the midst of the Mediaeval Warm Period and disappeared during the Little Ice Age? Prof. Thomas McGovern, an environmental archaeologist and world leading authority on Medieval Arctic cultures, shares his insights from decades of fieldwork in the North Atlantic into how historic societies succeeded or failed to adapt to a changing climate and shifting socio-economic circumstances, and how this may inform the present period of environmental change and geopolitical interest in the region.