Understanding how the Viking societies were impacted by past climate variability and how they adapted to it has hardly been investigated. Here, we have carried out a new multi-proxy investigation of lake sediments, including geochemical and palynological analyses, to reconstruct past changes in temperature and agricultural practices of pre-Viking and Viking societies in Southeastern Norway during the period between 200 and 1300 CE. The periods 200-300 and 800-1300 CE were warmer than the 300-800 CE period, which is known as the Dark Ages Cold Period. This cold period was punctuated by century-scale more temperate intervals, which were dominated by the cultivation of cereals and hemp (before 280 CE, 420-480 CE, 580-700 CE, and after 800 CE). In between, cold intervals were dominated by livestock farming. Our results demonstrate that the pre-Viking societies changed their agricultural strategy in response to climate variability during the Late Antiquity. (C) 2022 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.
Bajard, M; Ballo, E; Hoeg, HI; Bakke, J; Storen, E; Loftsgarden, K; Iversen, F; Hagopian, W; Jahren, AH; Svensen, HH; Krüger, K
Climate adaptation of pre-Viking societies
Quaternary Science Reviews