Who’s To Blame For Bj�rk?

Update: Seems the Inuit can’t be blamed for Bj�rk Gu�mundsd�ttir, they never really made it to Iceland – but they did take all of Greenland from the Vikings/Danes when they got there, later. The Inuit it turns out are a relatively recent arrival on the scene (approx 1350 AD). So the “skraelings” the Vikings battled against, well, mostly traded with, in Greenland must have been a culture of different ethnicity. In any case, when the Europeans sent explorers to find out why the Greenland colonies weren’t sending ships any more, a mini-Ice Age had made Greenland uninhabitable for people relying on European agricultural technologies of the day and the colonies had disappeared. These sort of climate changes in marginal regions are often lethal. Oh, and the 14th Century was generally not a good time, black death and crappy weather and social upheaval meant that nobody really bothered to go sailing out to the Iceland/Greenland colonies with supplies – or could easily pass through the drifting ice. This ice-age ended in the 17th century, which ushered in Europe’s Age of Enlightenment when, suddenly, a lot more people than before had enough to eat, were warm and so could start worrying about the bigger picture.