Why did the vikings leave Greenland? We may finally have the answer:
... [+]Sometime before the year 1000, Norse settlers arrived in Greenland to continue the period of expansion and settlement that defined much of the Viking Age. For hundreds of years, a few thousand people lived along the southern coast of Greenland. Their stories were told in the Icelandic sagas and backed up by archaeological evidence.
But why the descendants of the Norse settlers suddenly left Greenland in the 15th century has long puzzled historians. Many people assume cold was the decisive factor, but new scientific research suggests an alternative reason.American researchers did not find evidence of extreme cold or prolonged cold periods. Instead, they have discovered that long periods of drought may have driven the Norse people away.
Over several years, the researchers investigated mud layers at the bottom of a lake in the south of Greenland, close to where the Norse lived. Led by the University of Massachusetts Amherst, the results were recently published in