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> Even after their departure, the Norse continued to return to the Americas, most likely to pick up lumber since no trees grew on Greenland and Iceland. This a
by mxcrossb 6y ago
> Even after their departure, the Norse continued to return to the Americas, most likely to pick up lumber since no trees grew on Greenland and Iceland.
This actually never occurred to me, and it’s interesting that these famous seafarers would have resource constraints for building boats.
- bobthepanda 6y agoIIRC, the Middle East used to be heavily forested, but then you had thousands of yers of deforestation and now the cradle of civilization has little forest left. For similar reasons North American timber and fish were very much in high demand during the colonial period.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Grustaf 6y agoIceland also used to have trees.
- juniper_strong 6y agoIt still does. Several of them.
- japanuspus 6y agoThere was a lot of snarky comments in Danish news a couple of years ago when the Forestry Department sent the government a message stating that some oak-trees commissioned 200 years ago for the royal navy were now ready for harvest. To me, the most surprising thing I have learned about Viking ships and resources is that the _sail_ not the boat was the real constraint: A sail would take an entire village several years to make, while a ship crew could complete a ship in less than a month. I have heard stories of ship crews deliberately wrecking the ship in a place where they could recover the sail, rather than risk loosing the sail in an uncontrolled wreck. Don't know if there is any truth to this.