Tracing the walrus ivory trade to the Viking Age reveals early interactions between Europeans and indigenous North Americans

By examining ancient walrus DNA, an international research team led by Lund University in Sweden has traced trade routes for walrus ivory to the Viking era. They discovered that Norse Vikings and indigenous peoples of the Arctic met and probably traded ivory in remote areas of Greenland’s high Arctic, several centuries before Christopher Columbus “discovered” America from the North.

The study is now published in Scientific advances.

In medieval Europe, there was a huge demand for elite products, including walrus ivory. With the Vikings playing a vital role in the ivory trade, this pushed Norse expansion towards the North Atlantic to Iceland and then Greenland; as they searched for new sources of ivory.

“What really surprised us was that much of the walrus ivory exported to Europe came from very remote hunting grounds deep in the High Arctic. Previously, it was always assumed that the Norse were simply hunting walrus near their main settlements in southwest Greenland,” says Peter Jordan, professor of archeology at Lund University.

Researchers used genetic “fingerprints” to precisely reconstruct the provenance of traded walrus artifacts.

“We extracted ancient DNA from walrus samples recovered from a wide range of locations across the North Atlantic Arctic. With this information in place, we could then match the genetic profiles of the walrus artifacts exchanged by the Norse from Greenland to Europe with very specific Arctic hunting grounds,” explains Dr. Morten Tange Olsen, associate professor at the Globe Institute in Copenhagen.

As the new findings began to emerge, another key question arose: If ivory was obtained in the High Arctic, did the Greenland Norse possess the maritime skills and technologies necessary to venture that deep in ice-filled Arctic waters?

Research team member Greer Jarrett sought answers to this question in a unique way: he actually reconstructed likely sailing routes, carrying out experimental voyages aboard traditional Norwegian clinker-built boats.

“Walrus hunters probably left the northern colonies as soon as the sea ice retreated. Those who aimed for the far north had a very narrow seasonal window to travel up the coast, hunt walrus, process and store the skins and ivory on board their ships, and return home before the sea freezes again,” says Greer Jarrett, a doctoral student at Lund University.

Once the Scandinavians completed their perilous journeys, what might they have encountered? It is important to note that these isolated High Arctic hunting grounds were not empty polar wildernesses; they would have been inhabited by the Thule Inuit and perhaps other indigenous peoples of the Arctic, who also hunted walrus and other marine mammals.

The new research provides additional independent evidence for the long-disputed existence of very ancient encounters between indigenous peoples of Northern Europe and North America. It also confirms that the North Water Polynya was an important arena for these intercultural encounters.

“It would have been the meeting of two completely different cultural worlds. The Norse people of Greenland had European facial features, were probably bearded, dressed in woolen clothing and sailed on plank boats; they hunted walruses on sites of ‘stranding with iron spears,’ explains Jordan.

In contrast, the Thule Inuit were specialists adapted to the Arctic and used sophisticated toggle harpoons that allowed them to hunt walrus in open waters. They would have worn warm, insulated fur clothing and had more Asian facial features; they paddled kayaks and used open umiak boats, all made from animal skins stretched over frames.

“Of course, we will never know precisely, but on a more human level, these remarkable encounters, framed in the vast and daunting landscapes of the High Arctic, would likely have sparked some degree of curiosity, fascination and excitement , encouraging all social interactions and possibly exchange.

“We need to do a lot more work to fully understand these interactions and motivations, particularly from an Indigenous perspective as well as a more ‘Eurocentric’ Nordic perspective,” concludes Jordan.