Erik The Red And Greenland Poem by Tor Magnor Solvang

Driven from home by a fiery hand,
Erik the Red found a glacial land.
Along the green fjords where the cold waters ran,
The Norse built a home and a century began.

They pastured their cattle and tended their sheep,
With stone-carved churches for spirits to keep.
They hunted the walrus in deep freezing seas,
And traded the ivory for iron and freeze.

For five hundred winters
the colony stood,
Taming the wild as best as they could.
Until the warm summers began to decline,
And ice choked the waters and trapped every line.

The oceans rose up as the glaciers advanced,
While Africa's elephant ivory enhanced.
The markets of Europe no longer would buy,
And ships from old Norway no longer came by.

They left the Thule culture
to hunt on the ice,
Refusing to follow the Inuit advice.
By fourteen-hundred and-eight, it is said,
The last pair of lovers at Hvalsey were wed.

No bodies were scattered, no skeletons stayed,
They packed up their belongings as history decayed.
They sailed away quietly back to the east,
Leaving the ruins to winter's cold beast.