ABSTRACT

The Norse colonists in Greenland settled in two areas on the West Coast, misleadingly named "The Eastern Settlement" in the Qaqortoq District, and the "Western Settlement" further north, around Nuuk. A Viking Period/Early Medieval type of society would lack the characteristic features of a society of the High Middle Ages: a central authority, a military organization, towns, full-time artisan production, a market economy, coined money, and an independent church organization. The chapter discusses the origin of the Christian tradition in Greenland, second the church as landowner, and third the question of church reforms. In the older literature on Norse Greenland, the breakdown of the overseas contact with Norway was often held to be the main reason for the extinction. A collapse of a society as complex as that of Norse Greenland may have lead to a very fast deterioration of the social mechanisms needed for survival.