The Viking Exploration of Greenland and North American

Dr. Verena Höfig will present a lecture: "The Viking Exploration of Greenland and North American: Or How to Survive in a Challenging Environment" in Old Main, Room 5.

She is an assistant professor of Germanic languages and literatures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This talk part of a series of lectures funded by the Marianne and Marcus Wallenberg Foundation.

Description: What happened to the Vikings in Greenland? This talk will explore what the medieval Icelandic sagas and recent archaeological finds reveal about the Viking settlements in Greenland, and subsequent (temporary) colonies of Norse explorers in North America. 

Archaeological evidence has confirmed that Viking settlers came to Greenland just before the year 1000 A.D., and explored the northeastern coast of the American continent shortly afterwards. 

What do we know about the everyday realities of life in this remote environment? How and why did the Norse settlers thrive for several centuries in Greenland, but then, with a last sign of life in 1408, why did their colony suddenly disappear? 

And lastly, what do we know about their relationship to the aboriginal populations of Greenland and Arctic North America?

Dr. Höfig's research focuses on the intersection of literature, material culture, and social history in Scandinavia from the Viking Age until today. Her first book, "Icelandic Origins - A History of Iceland's First Viking Settler," examines cultural representations of the first Icelander, Ingólfr Arnarson.