Around the year 900, when the vikings first came to Iceland, the landscape was "filled with trees from the highlands to the see". This is stated in Icelandic scripts, which were probably written in the 13th century. Today there are hardly any trees left. The vanishing of the forests has been attributed to the introduction of the vikings' sheep into the fragile ecosystem but also to a change in the climate. In Greenland, which is an island almost totally covered by an ancient glacier, we can find hints about how the climate was a thousand years ago by drilling deep into the ice and studying the tiny air bubbles that where trapped there a long time ago. It also shows that the climate was warmer a thousand years ago. However, Iceland never had "large fields of grapes". These were the words the viking Leif the Luky used to describe the land he found sailing south-west of Greenland. In the year 1000 he discovered America and called it Wineland the Good.
Slashdot Mirror
The problem with common sence, is that it's not so common.
Around the year 900, when the vikings first came to Iceland, the landscape was "filled with trees from the highlands to the see". This is stated in Icelandic scripts, which were probably written in the 13th century. Today there are hardly any trees left. The vanishing of the forests has been attributed to the introduction of the vikings' sheep into the fragile ecosystem but also to a change in the climate.
In Greenland, which is an island almost totally covered by an ancient glacier, we can find hints about how the climate was a thousand years ago by drilling deep into the ice and studying the tiny air bubbles that where trapped there a long time ago. It also shows that the climate was warmer a thousand years ago.
However, Iceland never had "large fields of grapes". These were the words the viking Leif the Luky used to describe the land he found sailing south-west of Greenland. In the year 1000 he discovered America and called it Wineland the Good.