The Little Ice Age: How Climate Made History 1300-1850 by Brian Fagan Page B

their carcasses duly abounded. Quite different, cold-tolerant carrion fly species lived in the cool larder. Once the house was abandoned,
the cold-loving flies swarmed into the now empty living quarters as the
fires went out. Telomerina vanishes. The uppermost layer of all, accumulated after the house was empty, contains species from outside, as if the
roof had caved in.
    There were no human skeletons in the house-no remains of dead
the survivors were too weak to bury, no last survivor whom no one was
left to bury. With but a few seals for the larder, the Nipaatsoq farmers
may have simply decided to leave. Where and how they ended up is
anybody's guess. Had they adopted toggling harpoons and other traditional ice-hunting technology from their Inuit neighbors a few kilometers away, they could have taken ring seal year round and perhaps
avoided the late spring crises that could envelop them even in good
years. Perhaps they had an aversion to the Inuits' pagan ways, or their
cultural roots and ideologies were simply too grounded in Europe to
permit them to adapt.
    Another isolated Norse settlement, known to archaeologists as Gard
Under Sander (Farm Beneath the Sand) lay inland, close to what was once
fertile, rich meadowland just ten kilometers from Greenland's ice cap.
Farm Beneath the Sand began as a long house used first as a human
dwelling, then as an animal shed. In about 1200 the hall burnt down. Several sheep perished in the blaze. The farmers now built a centralized farmhouse, like that at Nipaatsoq, with constantly changing rooms, not all of
them in use at one time, as the stone-and-turf farm changed over more
than two centuries. Late in the 1200s, the climate deteriorated, local glaci ers advanced and the pastures sanded up. Farming became impossible and
the settlement was abandoned. After abandonment, sheep that were left
behind continued to shelter in the empty houses, as did overnighting
Thule hunters."

    The Norse kept a foothold at the warmer Eastern Settlement for another 150 years. Here they lay close to the open North Atlantic, where
changing fish distributions, southern spikes of pack ice, and new economic conditions brought new explorers instead of the traditional knarrs.
Basques and Englishmen paused to fish and to trade for falcons, ivory,
and other exotic goods. But above all, they pursued whales and cod.

    In the eighth century, the Catholic Church created a huge market for
salted cod and herring by allowing the devout to consume fish on Fridays,
the day of Christ's crucifixion, during the forty days of Lent and on major
feast days. The ecclesiastical authorities still encouraged fasting and forbade sexual intercourse on such occasions, also the eating of red meat, on
the grounds it was a hot food. Fish and whale meat were "cold" foods, as
they came from the water, and were thus appropriate nourishment for
holy days. But fish spoils quickly, and in the days before refrigeration,
drying and salting were about the only ways to preserve it. Dried salt cod
and salted herring quickly became the "cold" foods of choice, especially
during Lent. Salted cod kept better than either salt herring or whale meat
and was easily transported in bulk.
    Cod had been a European staple since Roman times. Dried and salted
fish was light and durable, ideal hardtack for mariners and armies. In
1282, preparing to campaign in Wales, King Edward of England commissioned "one Adam of Fulsham" to buy 5,000 salted cod from Aberdeen in northeastern Scotland to feed his army. Salt cod fueled the European Age of Discovery and was known to Elizabethan mariners as the
"beef of the sea." Portuguese and Spanish explorers relied heavily on it to
provision their ships during their explorations of the New World and the
route to the Indies around the Cape of Good Hope. No one held the
stuff in high esteem. On land and at sea, people washed it down with
beer, cider, malmsey wine, or "stinking water" from