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Desirable teeth: the medieval trade in Arctic and African ivory*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2009

Kirsten A. Seaver
Kirsten A. Seaver
Affiliation:
3638 Bryant Street, Palo Alto, CA 94306, USA E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

This article examines the Danish archaeologist Else Roesdahl’s hypothesis that, by the early fourteenth century, an abundance in Europe of elephant ivory from Africa caused a price drop that edged out walrus ivory, with a devastating economic impact on Norse Greenland that directly contributed to the colony’s collapse. While it seems clear that artisanal use of walrus ivory fell from the late fourteenth century onward, and that Greenland exports of walrus ivory decreased in the fourteenth century, evidence for a pre-1500 price drop for African elephant ivory in the European market is lacking. Nor can it be demonstrated that European demand for walrus tusks shrank prior to 1500. Roesdahl’s speculations about changes in the ivory trade and their effect on the Norse Greenland colony are therefore open to question as an explanation for the colony’s demise. An alternative view is proposed, namely that reduced export of Greenland walrus ivory was initiated by the Greenlanders themselves in response to political and economic changes in the Atlantic and North Sea region, at a time when codfish drew English fishermen and fish merchants ever farther west into the North Atlantic, and that the Greenlanders took part in that westward movement.

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Articles
Information
Journal of Global History , Volume 4 , Issue 2 , July 2009 , pp. 271 - 292
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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References

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2 Inge Bødkter Enghoff, ‘Hunting, fishing and animal husbandry at the Farm Beneath the Sand, Western Greenland’, Meddelelser om Grønland: Man and Society, 28, 2003, pp. 15, 30, 91. Many of the finds made during those excavations have not yet been analysed; there will be further Danish reports on the topic.

3 See, e.g., Thomas H. McGovern, ‘The economics of extinction’, in T. M. Wrigley, M. J. Ingram, and G. Farmer, eds., Climate and history: studies in past climates and their impact on man, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, pp. 404–29; Kirsten Hastrup, ‘Sæters in Iceland, 900–1600’, Acta Borealia 6, 1, 1989, pp. 72–85.

4 See, e.g., Niels Lynnerup, ‘The Greenland Norse: a biological-anthropological study’, Meddelelser om Grønland 24, 1998, pp. 126–8.

5 Valkendorf’s expedition (which never took place) received a papal indulgence dated 17 June 1514 (Diplomatarium Norvegicum, vol. 17, pp. 1260, 1263).

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7 For more on the taxonomic confusion involving northern marine species, see Kirsten A. Seaver, ‘“A very common and usuall trade”: the relationship between cartographic perceptions and fishing in the Davis Strait c.1500–1550’, British Library Journal, 22, 1, 1996, pp. 1–24, reproduced in Karen Severud Cook, ed., Images and icons of the New World: essays on American cartography, London: British Library Publications, 1996, pp. 1–26.

8 Diplomatarium Norvegicum, vol. 10, p. 30, letter to Ægidius Correnbitter in Bruges from Bishop Hákon in Bergen, 29 September 1338; Henrik Ludvigsson’s will, 8 May 1346, in Diplomatarium Suecanum, vol. 5, p. 4074.

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24 Concerning northern European artisanal use of walrus tusks during the Middle Ages, see Gaborit-Chopin, Ivoires, p. 15.

25 Ettinghausen, ‘Studies’, pp. 117–31; Zygmunt Abramowitcz, ‘The expressions “fish-tooth” and “lion-fish” in Turkish and Persian’, Folia Orientalia 12, 1970, pp. 25–32.

26 Martin Waldseemüller, Carta marina navigatoria, 1516, facsimile in The British Library, Maps *920 (536); Seaver, ‘“A very common and usuall trade”’, pp. 13–14; Lars Hamre, Erkebiskop Erik Valkendorf: trekk av hans liv og virke, Oslo: [Universitetsforlaget], 1943, p. 39; Valentin Kiparsky, ‘L’Histoire du morse’, Annales Academiae Scientiarium Fennicae, series B, 73, 1952, pp. 46–8; Albrecht Dürer, Head of a walrus, British Museum Department of Print and Drawings, BM.5261–167; John Rowlands, The age of Dürer and Holbein: German drawings 1400–1550, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 102–3.

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29 E.g., Gwyn Jones, Norse Atlantic saga, 2nd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986, p. 277.

30 Claus Andreasen, ‘Nordbosager fra Vesterbygden på Grønland’, Hikuin, 6, 1980, pp. 135–46; Ingrid Sørensen, ‘Pollenundersøgelser i møddingen på Niaqussat’, Grønland, 8, 1982, pp. 296–304; Kirsten A. Seaver, The frozen echo: Greenland and the exploration of North America ca. A.D. 1000–1500, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1996, pp. 21–22.

31 H. S. Møller, K. G. Jensen, A. Kuijpers, S. Aagaard-Sørensen, M.-S. Seidenkrantz, M. Prins, R. Endler, and N. Mikkelsen, ‘Late-Holocene environment and climatic changes in Ameralik Fjord, southwest Greenland: evidence from the sedimentary record’, The Holocene, 16, 5, 2006, p. 686.

32 ‘Grænlendinga tháttr’, in Gudni Jónsson, ed., Îslendinga sögur, Reykjavík: Islenzka Bókmenntafélag, 1968, vol. 1, pp. 391–411. Einar also brought a young polar bear and perhaps other gifts as well, but only walrus ivory could be depended on as a source of Church income.

33 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 395; Ólafur Halldórsson, Grænland í miðaldarítum, Reykjavík: Sögufélag, 1978, pp. 103–16, 401–5); Seaver, Frozen echo, p. 63. The first Icelandic tithing law dates from 1096 (Diplomatarium Islandicum, vol. 1, no. 22).

34 MacGregor, The small finds, pp. 982–5.

35 Gelsinger, Bruce E., Icelandic enterprise: commerce and economy in the Middle Ages, Columbia, SC: University of South Carolina Press, 1981, pp. 124–5Google Scholar, citing The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

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45 Diplomatarium Norvegicum, vol. 7, nos. 103–4.

46 Peter Andreas Munch, Pavelige nuntiers regnskabe, Christiania,1864, pp. 25, 29. See also Seaver, Frozen echo, pp. 80–2.

47 Diplomatarium Norvegicum, vol. 10, no. 30, letter to Ægidius Correnbitter in Bruges from Bishop Hákon in Bergen, 29 September 1338.

48 Diplomatarium Norvegicum, vol. 5, no. 152; Seaver, Frozen echo, pp. 44–90; Finnur Jónsson, ‘Grønlands gamle topografi efter kilderne: Østerbygden og Vesterbygden’, Meddelelser om Grønland, 20, 1899, p. 278; idem, ed., Det gamle Grønlands beskrivelse af Ivar Bárðarson: udgiven efter håndskrifterne, Copenhagen: Levin and Munksgaard, 1930, pp. 9, 32.

49 Diplomatarium Norvegicum, vol. 17B, p. 283; Gustav Storm, ed., Islandske Annaler indtil 1578, Oslo: Kjeldeskriftfondet, 1977 (reprint of 1888 edition), p. 229; Seaver, Frozen echo, pp. 140–1.

50 For a documented overview of this development, see Seaver, Frozen echo, pp. 61–112. Concerning Bishop Alf’s death, see Storm, Islandske Annaler, pp. 282, 354, 414.

51 Diplomatarium Norvegicum, vol. 3, p. 477; vol. 18, no. 33. See also Seaver, Frozen echo, p. 146.

52 Björn Thorsteinsson, ‘Henry VIII and Iceland’, Saga-Book 15, 1959, pp. 67–101, esp. pp. 68–9; Seaver, Frozen echo, p. 170.

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55 Maps of these fishing banks are found in Charles Drever, ‘Cod fishing at Greenland’, London, c.1972, typescript held in the British Library, x.313/380. See also Seaver, Maps, pp. 60–86.

56 For a documented account of this complex development, see Seaver, Frozen echo, esp. ch. 9.

57 Diplomatarium Islandicum, vol. 3, nos. 597 (1409), 630–2 (1414); vol. 4, no. 376 (1424). According to Finn Magnusen, Bishop Odd Einarsson of Skálholt made verified transcripts of both the original affidavit and the two subsequent confirmations.

58 For a documented discussion of this topic, see Seaver, Frozen echo, esp. chs. 7, 8, and 9 and Appendix A and B.

59 See especially the ‘Cantino’ planisphere of 1502 and the Ruysch world map of 1507/8.

60 See, for example, Diplomatarium Islandicum, vol. 16, no. 8, and cargo lists in E. M. Carus-Wilson, The overseas trade of Bristol, London: Merlin Press, 1967, pp. 252–3. See also Seaver, Frozen echo, pp. 192–5.

61 Bent Fredskild, ‘Palaeobotanical investigations of some peat bog deposits of Norse age at Quagssiarssuk, South Greenland’, Meddelelser om Grønland, 204, 5, 1978, pp. 1–41; idem, ‘Agriculture in a marginal area: south Greenland from the Norse landnam (A.D. 985) to the present (1985)’, in Hilary H. Birks, H. J. B. Birks, Peter Emil Kaland, and Dagfinn Moe, eds., The cultural landscape: past, present and future, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988, pp. 381–94.

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63 Jette Arneborg, Jan Heinemeier, Niels Lynnerup, Henrik L. Nielsen, Niels Rud, and Árny E. Sveinbjörnsdóttir, ‘Change of diet of the Greenland Vikings determined from stable carbon isotope analysis and 14C dating of their bones’, Radiocarbon, 41, 2, 1999, pp. 157–8; Thomas McGovern, ‘The economics of landnám: animal bone evidence from Iceland and Greenland’, Report, Conference on ‘The North Atlantic Saga’, Reykjavík, 9–11 August 1999; Seaver, Frozen echo, pp. 238–48.

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66 Eleanora Mary Carus-Wilson, The merchant adventurers of Bristol, Bristol: Local History Pamphlet 4, 1962, pp. 15–16.

67 See, e.g., Henry Percival Biggar, The precursors of Cartier, Ottawa: Publications of the Canadian Archives no. 5, 1911, pp. 40–59; David Beers Quinn, Alison M. Quinn, and Susan Hillier, eds., New American world: a documentary history of North America to 1612, 5 vols., New York, 1979, vol. 1, pp. 103–9, 117–21; David Beers Quinn, England and the discovery of America, 1481–1620, London: Allen & Unwin, 1974, pp. 114–15, 121; David Beers Quinn, North America from earliest discoveries to first settlements: the Norse voyages to 1612, London: Harper and Row, 1977, pp. 124–5; James A. Williamson, The Cabot voyages and Bristol discovery under Henry VII, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press for the Hakluyt Society, 1962, pp. 235–47; Alwyn A. Ruddock, ‘The reputation of Sebastian Cabot’, Bulletin of the Institute for Historical Research, 47, 1974, p. 98; Carla Rahn Phillips, ‘The growth and composition of trade in the Iberian empires, 1450–1750’, in James D. Tracy, ed., The rise of merchant empires, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, p. 48, n. 21; John Hatcher, Plague, population and the English economy, 1348–1530, London: Macmillan, 1977, pp. 27–30, 43, 55–8, 60–4; Paul Slack, The impact of plague in Tudor and Stuart England, London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985, pp. 15–17, 56–68, 70–3 (esp. fig. 1, p. 71), 84–9, 112, 185–7; William H. McNeill, Plagues and peoples, Garden City, NY: Anchor Press, 1976, p. 169; Seaver, Frozen echo, ch. 9.