Archive

Part 4 of 4 linked installments on the Norse Greenlanders and how climate change impacted their society, which died out 500 years after original settlement in the Viking Age. Focus of this segment: How the fate of this medieval society is relevant to present-day challenges.

Through the ages societies have faced major crises. Historian Mahesh Rangarajan reminds us that, historically speaking, environmental and economic crises have resulted not only in societal decline or collapse, but in reform as well as social and political reorganization. Adopting broader historical perspectives of long-term change, he argues, can be one way to avoid the traps of paralyzing despair or naïve optimism in times of socio-ecological crisis.

Rising sea levels, storminess, and coastal erosion, among other effects of climate change, pose significant threats to heritage and the environmental archive, resulting in potential losses of knowledge that archaeologist Thomas McGovern compares to the burning of the Great Library of Alexandria.