Your country's greatest achievment

[Savonarola]

So Jimmy was Magna, eh?  Liberaltard 

Wait Jimmy is a feminine noun?

Magna is an adjective; "Carter" must be the feminine noun.

[Barrister]

All your achievements pale in comparison to the invention of the financial bond.

L.

I see your financial bond and raise you Canada's greatest invention: the push-up bra. 

[Grey Fox]

I think the Alkaline Battery is much more important then the push up bra.

[Pedrito]

All your achievements pale in comparison to the invention of the financial bond.

L.

I see your financial bond and raise you Canada's greatest invention: the push-up bra. 

In some circles, persons get excited by a bond rather than by a bra.

L.

[Barrister]

I think the Alkaline Battery is much more important then the push up bra.

I don't.

[Admiral Yi]

The push up bra has killed one of the greatest joys known to man, the visible nipple erection.

[katmai]

The push up bra has killed one of the greatest joys known to man, the visible nipple erection.

I must see a lot of women sans push up bra, or it pays to be in cold climate..

[Sahib]

Limited Government (although we're giving it back voluntarily).

Most of the ancient and medieval world had "limited government" as well.

[Caliga]

I must see a lot of women sans push up bra, or it pays to be in cold climate..

Alot of chicks around her show nip, probably because very few of them need pushup bras.  Southern diet FTW 

[Pat]

I think that they basically just starved out.  The question of when the Norse settlement finally ended in Greenland is an interesting one as well.  Seems like anytime between 1450 and 1690 is possible, with something like 1500-1550 being most likely.

I thought the Danish crown started searching for the Norse as soon as like 1525 and found only ruins?

Anyway, if there was a final famine that wiped them out, you'd think there would have been more late-period remains found than actually were unearthed.  The suggestion is that they abandoned the settlements rather than died there, but it's unclear why and if they did so voluntarily.

I don't think that there was a "final famine" per se, just gradually deteriorating conditions.  There weren't that many of them to start with.  With a really low population, you don't need a catastrophic event for a settlement to die out.  And while it wouldn't surprise me if some of them went to Iceland or back to Europe, towards the end, I don't think they had the means to leave if they had wanted to.

Archeology has show that there is a progressive change in midden heap composition from cow in the early 1400s to goats and sheep 20 years later and seals and whales after 1450. Not to mention the last recorded ship in 1410.

The marginal farmland experienced the change first and was abandoned first, the best land did it last. It seems to have been a slow decline from about 1000 people to 0 in about 100 years.

No or very little fish.

The "no or very little fish" is interesting - in Jared Diamond's "Collapse" he explains that usually archeologists who come to Greenland can not believe they didn't eat fish, given how the surrounding waters are so full of it, and so they start looking for the fish-bones that have got to be there somewhere. But they never find any. Diamond theorize that they developed a taboo against fish, for some reason.

He does seem to draw a picture of death by final famine - he describes, for example, how the bones of the dogs are found at the top along with the seeds that would have grown next years harvest, which is to say they were eaten only when no hope remained.

[Caliga]

Don't fish bones decompose alot more quickly that cow/human/dog bones, though?  Also, maybe they ate the bones?

[Ed Anger]

I must see a lot of women sans push up bra, or it pays to be in cold climate..

Alot of chicks around her show nip, probably because very few of them need pushup bras.  Southern diet FTW 

Mew

[Viking]

Don't fish bones decompose alot more quickly that cow/human/dog bones, though?  Also, maybe they ate the bones?

No.

Fish were taken in iceland and the rest of scandinavia. Diamond speculates that they developed a taboo. But I'm leaning towards the idea that fishing was difficult or inconvenient rather than a taboo.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inuit_diet

The Inuit today don't really eat alot of fish. Catching fish under the ice is hard and a low volume means of getting food. Net fishing on european boats in the local fjord is how norsemen caught fish. If you run out of nets or boats you can't fish. If the fjord is icebound half the year then you can't fish during that time.

I find the taboo hard to accept for my own cultural reasons. We've had a taboo on horse flesh and crabs in iceland for religious and cultural reasons. (we now eat crab and lobster and they are delicious). But a taboo on fish? Impossible.

The norsemen were taking seal and whale so they were getting out onto the ice-sheet presumably with boats. So that leaves nets.

This is a marginal society which gets cut off from the homeland and is put under environmental stress. They didn't have ships and if there was something they couldn't make, well, then they didn't have it. The Inuit do not fish with nets. They fish with lines.

[Caliga]

Maybe they developed a taste for Greenland shark rather than bony fish.... and maybe cartilage decomposes much more rapidly?  I'm taking shots in the dark here.

[Viking]

Maybe they developed a taste for Greenland shark rather than bony fish.... and maybe cartilage decomposes much more rapidly?  I'm taking shots in the dark here.

We'd see shark teeth in the middens. But here is a more considered view.

http://www.archaeology.org/online/features/greenland/

Greenland sharks as food

The flesh of a Greenland shark is poisonous. This is due to the presence of the toxin trimethylamine oxide, which, upon digestion, breaks down into trimethylamine, producing effects similar to extreme drunkenness. Occasionally, sled dogs that end up eating the flesh are unable to stand up due to the neurotoxins. However, it can be eaten if it is boiled in several changes of water or dried or rotted for some months to produce Kæstur Hákarl, often Hákarl for short. Traditionally this was done by burying the shark in boreal ground, exposing it to several cycles of freezing and thawing. It is considered a delicacy in Iceland and Greenland.