Why the Vikings Disappeared from Greenland

Greenland's history begins with a Viking exile. In 982, Erik the Red was banished from Iceland for murder and founded a colony on the world's largest island. From there, his son Leif Erikson set foot in North America almost five centuries before Columbus. The Norse who lived here traded walrus ivory with Europe, sold narwhal teeth as "unicorn horns," and both fought and bargained with the Inuit. Then, around 1500, the colonies vanished - and historians still argue about why. By the twentieth century, this frozen island had become the key to the North Atlantic. The United States tried three times to buy it - in 1868, 1910, and 1946. During World War II, fourteen American bases operated on its coasts, and US forces clashed with German weather stations on the eastern shore. During the Cold War, Thule Air Base held nuclear weapons, while engineers secretly designed an underground city of ballistic missiles beneath the ice - Project Iceworm. Today Greenland is a self-governing nation, and Arctic geopolitics increasingly turns on what happens here. TIMESTAMPS : 00:00 Vikings, Iceland, and the Discovery of Greenland 02:30 Erik the Red: The Viking Exile Who Founded a Colony 06:30 Leif Erikson and the Vikings' Discovery of America 09:10 Christianity and Norway's Rule Over Greenland 11:15 The Inuit: Saqqaq, Dorset, and Thule Cultures 13:20 The Disappearance of the Greenland Vikings 16:10 The Age of Discovery: Returning to the Island 18:20 Hans Egede and Denmark's Second Colonization 23:40 Why America Tried Three Times to Buy Greenland 26:45 World War II: Greenland Becomes a Strategic Prize 29:40 The Cold War, Thule Air Base, and Project Iceworm 31:55 Autonomy and Arctic Geopolitics Today #history