Walrus DNA reveals Viking encounters with Eskimos

Published 24 October 2024 at 18.20

Domestic. By examining DNA from walruses, an international research team has traced the trade routes for walrus ivory during the Middle Ages. They found that Norse Vikings and Arctic indigenous peoples likely met and traded ivory in remote parts of High Arctic Greenland – centuries before Christopher Columbus “discovered” North America.

Share the article

TwittraShare< p>In medieval Europe, there was a huge demand for luxury goods, including walrus ivory. The Vikings played an important role in the ivory trade, which led the Norsemen to expand their hunting area to the North Atlantic, to Iceland and then to Greenland, where they looked for new sources of ivory.

– What really surprised us was that a large part of the walrus ivory that was exported back to Europe came from very remote hunting grounds deep in the High Arctic, that is, north of where the tundra ends. In the past, it has always been assumed that the northerners simply hunted walrus near their most important settlements in southwest Greenland, says Peter Jordan, professor of archeology at Lund University.

The researchers used genetic “fingerprints” to reconstruct exactly from where the items from the walrus trade came.

– We extracted ancient DNA from walruses collected in a variety of locations in the North Atlantic Arctic. With this information in place, we were then able to match the genetic profiles of walrus artifacts that Greenland's northerners traded to Europe back to very specific Arctic hunting grounds, says Morten Tange Olsen, associate professor at the Globe Institute in Copenhagen, in a press release.

As the new findings began to emerge, another important question arose: if ivory was brought from the High Arctic, did Greenland's northerners have the seafaring skills and technology required to venture so deep into ice-filled Arctic waters?

Greer Jarrett , who is a member of the research group, searched for answers to this question in a unique way: he reconstructed sailing routes and made experimental trips in traditional brick-built Norwegian boats.

– The walrus hunters probably left the Nordic settlements as soon as the sea ice retreated. Those who set their sights on the northernmost regions had a very narrow seasonal window in which they could travel up the coast, hunt walrus, process and store the hides and ivory aboard their ships, and return home before the sea froze again, says Greer Jarrett, PhD student at Lund University.

What might the northerners have encountered during their perilous journeys? The remote hunting grounds of the High Arctic were not an empty polar wilderness at this time; but inhabited by the Thule Inuit and possibly other arctic indigenous peoples, who also hunted walrus and other marine mammals.

The new research provides further independent evidence for the long-debated existence of very early encounters between the European northerners and the North Americans the indigenous peoples, and it also confirms that the North Water Polynya, which is a huge “ice hole” between Greenland and Canada, was an important arena for these intercultural encounters.

– This must have been a meeting between two completely different cultural worlds. The northerners who lived in Greenland had European features, were probably bearded, dressed in woolen clothes, and sailed in plank-built ships; they hunted walrus at capture sites with iron-tipped lances, says Peter Jordan.

The Thuleinuit, on the other hand, were specialists in arctic conditions and used sophisticated harpoons that enabled them to hunt walrus in open water. They probably wore warm and insulating fur clothing and had more Asian facial features; they kayaked and used open umiak boats, all made from animal skins stretched over frames.

– We will never know for sure, but on a more human level these encounters in the vast and terrifying landscapes should have awakened both curiosity and fascination. It probably encouraged social interaction, willingness to share and possible exchanges. We need to do a lot more research to understand these interactions and motivations, especially from an indigenous perspective as well as a more “Eurocentric” Nordic perspective, says Peter Jordan.