The Vanished Settlers of Greenland - In Search of a Legend and Its Legacy

For four hundred years, Norse settlers battled to make southern Greenland a new, sustainable home. They strove against gales and winter cold, food shortages and in the end a shifting climate. The remnants they left behind speak of their determination to wrest an existence at the foot of this vast, icy and challenging wilderness. Yet finally, seemingly suddenly, they vanished; and their mysterious disappearance in the fifteenth century has posed a riddle to scholars ever since. What happened to the lost Viking colonists? For centuries people assumed their descendants could still be living, so expeditions went to find them: to no avail. Robert Rix tells the gripping story of the missing pioneers, placing their poignant history in the context of cultural discourse and imperial politics. Ranging across fiction, poetry, navigation, reception and tales of exploration, he expertly delves into one of the most contested questions in the annals of colonization.

Introduction; Prologue: The Medieval Settlements in Greenland; 1. Land of Wealth and Violence: Early Representations of Greenland; 2. Greenland and Discourses of Possession; 3. Beyond the Horizon: Greenland in Eighteenth-Century Perspectives; 4. 1818: British Greenland; 5. Greenland's Fall and Restoration; 6. The Surpassing Adventures of Allan Gordon; 7. Arctic Adventure Tales: Science and Imperialism; 8. Vanished Settlers: A Return to New Beginnings; Conclusion.