Alt. Hist. request, Vikings make a go of the "New World"?

[Amarok]

Fine i'll concede the point 

[The Grand Nudger]

That hurdle being overcome, the situation for the norse in greenland takes on a macabre tone.  It's still true that igloos are superawesome and that the natives continued to persist on greenland, for a time...even though they didn't live in igloos on greenland...and also that the norse colony disappeared.

So what gives?  They were adaptive and did adapt.  Their technology was superior.  Why did the Thule culture replace norse settlements from around 1500 and in addition to this.....why did the thule presence on greenland vanish by the 1800's?  Like the norse settlement..we found their camps but not the people.  

Answering the first is an exercise in irony.  The thule culture did well for the time in which they did well precisely -because- they incorporated iron into their toolkit..specifically in the form of iron harpoon heads.   The answer to the latter references the former.  By 1600, kayak and umiak hunting of whales (now mit iron barbs) in the high arctic had effectively ceased, lacking agricultural means and reduced (as the norse were reduced) to hunting seal and walrus....the proto inuit abandoned the latitude in favor of more southerly climes.  Breaking apart and dispersing.   They went home or dwindled and died, as it were..just as the norse before them...the dorset before them, the independence before them, and the saddaq before them.  Greenland has always been a meatgrinder - with a very narrow range of suitability for maintaining a legitimate mvp.

Both the norse and the thule did everything a society could have reasonably done to make greenland work. The problem was greenland, and particularly at that time, not either culture. The natives fared no better in the exhange than the norse...and ofc, by the 1800's...would fare immensely worse across the board.

I think that there are interesting parallels between what happened to the norse in greenland, the thule culture in greenland and all of the high arctic, and our modern world. Pressed between the limits of their tech, reduced economic viability, and climate change (the norse and the thule were dealing with pandemic, as well..at their respective points of dissolution), each culture responds in a similar fashion to the other. First they improvise and adapt, then they become refugees, and then....well....the norse and the thule collapsed. One wonders what will happen to us. They both got it as right as they could have given their circumstance, and that didn't prevent The End™ for either of them.

[Minimalist]

This is interesting, timing-wise.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=5613

  A giant volcanic eruption in the South Pacific in the 15th century that until recently was known only in island legends has been confirmed by a Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist.

Using clues as diverse as growth rings visible in the wood frames of British portraits and crop records from China, Pang fixed the year of 1453 as when the legendary volcanic explosion must have taken place.

Pang said such an eruption, equivalent to two million Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, would have changed the world's climate. His research, which delved into records around the world, proved that to be true.
In his study, Pang drew on evidence found in tree rings, ice cores and in the historic records of civilizations in Europe and China. Oak panels of contemporary British portraits had abnormally narrow rings in 1453-55.
In Sweden, corn tithes fell to zero as the crops failed; western U.S. bristlecone pines show frost damage in 1453; and the growth of European and Chinese trees was stunted in 1453-57.

How much deterioration of the climate would it have taken to make Greenland untenable?

[The Grand Nudger]

As a self sufficient then-modern colony?  Not much.  The capacity of the island, then..wasn't much more than a few thousand people and that;s after the land was improved for agriculture.  The growing season was short, what could be grown severely limited, and it conflicted with the hunting season.  Both were required to maintain that population above.  The majority of greenlands product and export is and has always been marine product, it's 89% today.  Further, there has never been a society on greenland that didn't depend on import of goods.  Their top three imports are machinery and transport equipment, manufactured goods....and food.

Consider this, Global Warming is a solution to their massive food problem.  Global Cooling only exacerbated it.

[Anomalocaris]

This is interesting, timing-wise.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=5613

  A giant volcanic eruption in the South Pacific in the 15th century that until recently was known only in island legends has been confirmed by a Jet Propulsion Laboratory scientist.

Using clues as diverse as growth rings visible in the wood frames of British portraits and crop records from China, Pang fixed the year of 1453 as when the legendary volcanic explosion must have taken place.

Pang said such an eruption, equivalent to two million Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, would have changed the world's climate. His research, which delved into records around the world, proved that to be true.
In his study, Pang drew on evidence found in tree rings, ice cores and in the historic records of civilizations in Europe and China. Oak panels of contemporary British portraits had abnormally narrow rings in 1453-55.
In Sweden, corn tithes fell to zero as the crops failed; western U.S. bristlecone pines show frost damage in 1453; and the growth of European and Chinese trees was stunted in 1453-57.

How much deterioration of the climate would it have taken to make Greenland untenable?

The background story is actually fascinating. We've know for a long time from icecore samples that a very large volcanic eruption happened somewhere on earth as recently as the middle of 15th century. But it is humbling to see that despite over half century of satellites we still know parts of our planet so poorly that until recently we had no idea where the volcano responsible for such a large and recent eruption was.

[Minimalist]

Sometime man needs a kick in the ass.