Between roughly 950 and 1250 CE, the North Atlantic went through the Medieval Warm Period. Average temperatures crept up by perhaps 1°C.
That sounds small. But for sailors and farmers living at the edge of the habitable world, it changed everything.
Warmer seas meant less pack ice blocking the sailing lanes between Norway, Iceland, and Greenland. Warmer summers meant a longer season for planting, grazing, and — crucially — for sailing before the ice closed back in.
Historians treat this warming as a condition, not a cause on its own: it made Norse voyaging possible, but it took skilled sailors and hungry settlers to actually make the journey.
Climate as an enabling condition: The concept of cause and consequence reminds us that events result from actors operating within conditions. The Medieval Warm Period did not force anyone onto a boat — it simply removed some of the deadliest obstacles (sea ice, storms, short seasons) that had made the journey too risky before.
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Norse sailors already knew how to island-hop: Norway to the Faroe Islands, then on to Iceland, settled from about 874 CE. The Medieval Warm Period pushed that chain further west.
Around 985 CE, Erik the Red led settlers from Iceland to Greenland after being exiled for manslaughter. He had explored its coast a few years earlier and needed to persuade others it was worth the risk.
Iceland to Greenland
A roughly 500-nautical-mile crossing, only safe once warmer seas cut back the drifting sea ice that had blocked the route in colder centuries.
Greenland to Vinland
Leif Erikson, Erik's son, sailed further west around 1000 CE, reaching a land of wild grapes and timber he named Vinland — likely the coast near modern Newfoundland.
A workable, not permanent, corridor
The route stayed usable for decades but was never an easy motorway — sailors relied on landmarks, bird flight, and swell patterns, with no compass.
Norway → Faroes → Iceland → Greenland → Vinland: each hop pushed further west as the ice retreated.
This matters for Paper 1 because these sea routes are exactly the kind of specified content a source set might describe. A saga extract, a map, or an archaeologist's report could all be used as evidence for how the routes worked — but each would show a different slice of the story.
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Once Norse settlers reached Greenland and Vinland, climate kept shaping their choices.
Two very different lands
- Greenland — its fjords offered grassy lowland, good enough for grazing sheep, goats, and cattle, but almost no land fit for growing grain
- Vinland — further south, it had a milder climate, wild grapes, and, vitally, timber, which Greenland almost entirely lacked
Greenland: marginal but liveable
- Grazing land in the fjords supported livestock, especially through the warmer decades
- Farming was marginal — barley struggled, so settlers relied on animals and hunting/fishing
- No native timber, so wood had to be imported from Norway or Vinland
Vinland: rich but exposed
- Timber and wild grapes made it valuable as a supply source
- Milder climate suited crops better than Greenland did
- Too far from Norway to sustain long-term supply lines, and contact with local Skrælingjar added risk
So how would a historian actually use a source about this? Take an imagined Source A: an extract from the Saga of Erik the Red describing Vinland's grass and grapevines.
Its content — what it says — can be used directly to answer an inquiry question like "How did climate conditions shape innovation?": it shows settlers noticing a milder climate and adapting their plans around resources Greenland lacked.
Worked example — reading Source A for content: Ask: what specific detail in this source connects to the inquiry question? The saga's mention of wild grapes and self-sown wheat shows settlers recognising Vinland's climate as more favourable than Greenland's — direct evidence that environmental conditions shaped where and how they tried to settle. A strong Q1 answer names this specific detail, not just "the source talks about Vinland."