PRACTICE IT: Cause and Effect
Read the article “How Vikings Lived” before answering Numbers 1 through 4.
How Vikings Lived
by Martha Pickerill
Greenland is not very green at all. Most of the world’s largest island is frozen,
buried beneath endless fields of snow. More than a thousand years ago, Erik the
Red, a Viking explorer, left his home in Iceland and discovered a rich supply of fish,
whale, walrus and seal in uninhabited Greenland’s waters. But he needed help to
harvest the riches. He guessed that an attractive name might lure fellow Vikings
from their cold homeland to an even colder place. So he called the new land
Greenland.
Some Vikings must have been tricked by the name. About 5,000 of them packed up
long ships and made the dangerous crossing. Warriors and tradesmen began
exploring. Families set up homes along the narrow inlets1, called fjords.
Like a freezer, Greenland’s cold climate has preserved traces of these ancient
settlements. Scientists thought they had found them all until 1992, when Inuit2
hunters stumbled across some unusual pieces of wood floating into a fjord near the
capital of Nuuk. They had found a lost Viking settlement.
In 1997, a team of archaeologists from around the world finished the painstaking
job of exploring it. Known as the “village beneath the sand,” the settlement was
actually a large farm where Vikings lived for more than 300 years. Six buildings of
stone and peat3 had up to 30 rooms each.
Digging through ancient store-rooms and kitchens, the scientists found a treasure
chest of Viking daily life: kitchen utensils, walrus-tooth dice and reindeer-bone
necklaces. Miniature boats and wooden boxes may have been children’s toys. “It was
a hard life,” says Danish archaeologist Jette Arneborg, “but not without its
comforts.”
Why was the farm abandoned? Viking colonies began disappearing from Greenland
in the 1300s. Arneborg suggests that “the weather got worse and trade dried up.
Europe was no longer interested in the materials that Greenland could provide.”
1 inlet:
a narrow water passage cutting through land
the Eskimo people of Greenland
3 peat: a type of soil containing partially decayed plants
2 Inuit:
Answer Numbers 1 through 4. Base your answers on “How Vikings Lived.”
1. According to the article, archaeologists have discovered many Viking
settlements because
A. local Inuit hunters knew the locations of all the settlements.
B. the settlements were abandoned, not destroyed in fires.
C. the Vikings made tools out of wood, stone, and bone.
D. the cold temperatures kept the artifacts from decaying.
2 Read the sentence from the article.
“It was a hard life,” says Danish archaeologist Jette Arneborg,
“but not without its comforts.”
2. What does Arneborg mean when he says, not without its comforts?
F. Vikings lived in large houses with as many as 30 rooms.
G. The new colony rejected many Viking traditions and practices.
H. Finding dice and jewelry suggests the Vikings had free time
and wealth.
I. Living in the cold climate led the Vikings to create
comfortable dwellings.
3
3. According to the article, why were Viking colonies unable to survive on Greenland?
A. Groups from Europe continually attacked the colonies.
B. The climate grew colder and their goods grew less valuable.
C. The settlements were built on sand and they began to sink.
D. Too few settlers came because of the harsh conditions.
4. What is the author’s purpose for writing the article?
F. to inform readers about recent Viking discoveries
G. to entertain readers with stories about Viking families
H. to explain the disappearance of Vikings from Greenland
I. to describe different ways archaeologists make discoveries