Introduction
The prehistory of Greenland has witnessed several periods of human expansion and contraction. Climatic changes periodically affected Greenlandic flora and fauna such that the food sources available to human communities varied greatly (Gulløv, Reference Gulløv2004). Human presence in Greenland began c. 2500 bc (Friesen, Reference Friesen, Friesen and Mason2016). Around ad 985, Norse settlers from Iceland arrived in south-west Greenland, importing their pasture-based socio-ecological farming system. Concurrent with the beginning of the Little Ice Age in the fourteenth century ad, Norse settlements were abandoned (Arneborg, Reference Arneborg, Brink and Price2012), whereas the Inuit had spread almost all around Greenland at this time.
Much has been written about cultural responses to climatic change, both in the past and the present. Many studies have focused either on how climate change caused societal collapse (Douglas et al., Reference Douglas, Demarest, Brenner and Canuto2016; Richards et al., Reference Richards, Lupton and Allwood2021), how past communities survived climatic change (e.g. Degroot et al., Reference Degroot, Anchukaitis, Tierney, Riede, Manica and Moesswilde2022), or what we may learn from such scenarios (Jackson et al., Reference Jackson, Dugmore and Riede2018b, Reference Jackson, Arneborg, Dugmore, Harrison, Hartman, Madsen, Izdebski, Haldon and Filipkowski2022; Izdebski et al., Reference Izdebski, Haldon and Filipkowski2022). The role children played in climate change adaptation has received limited attention, despite them being central to our understanding of the human condition. By better grasping how children learn and contribute to salient innovation and adaptation in the past, we might be able to better understand the societal dynamics of past adaptations and use these insights in the future. Children are a primary vector through which innovations—or, at the very least, variation—are generated (Lancy, Reference Lancy2017; Sterelny, Reference Sterelny2021 with references). Therefore, looking at the diversity reflected in their play objects across time and societies can help detect whether a greater diversity of toys provides a richer background for innovation later in life.
Ethnographic and ethnohistoric observations suggest that Inuit society encouraged playful behaviour, including object play, while preparing children for surviving in the Arctic (Briggs, Reference Briggs1991). Norse toys relate mostly to agricultural pursuits and to strongly normative behaviour, as is also reflected in the material and textual sources in the wider Viking world (Raffield, Reference Raffield2019). Was it this normativity that made the Norse less adaptable? And did differences in cultural niches that promoted varying social learning practices play a role in the survival of the Inuit and the demise of the Norse (cf. Jackson et al., Reference Jackson, Arneborg, Dugmore, Madsen, McGovern and Smiarowski2018a)? Here, we catalogue, contrast, and contextualize their playthings diachronically to reveal how play changed in these cultures vis-à-vis changing climate. We discuss the role of play and play objects in the socialization of children in high-latitude environments, with a focus on the downstream effects of this behaviour for societal adaptation. An extensive dataset of material related to the children of the Inuit and the Norse settlers in Greenland in the second millennium ad underwrites our analysis (see Supplementary Material). We couple these data to emerging insights from developmental psychology and the anthropology of childhood to show how similarities and differences between the Inuit and Norse foreshadow the contrasting fates of these cultures. In conclusion, we suggest that a greater focus on children in prehistory not only allows us to capture a more inclusive picture of past societies but also illuminates the mechanisms by which these societies adapted to climate change.
Previous Investigations in Greenland
Spurred by national fervour (Ries, Reference Ries and Kjærgaard2006) and stimulated by initial excavations of Greenland's Eastern and Western Settlement (Bruun, Reference Bruun1895, Reference Bruun1917), interest in the fate of the Greenlandic Norse farms rose in the early 1900s (Arneborg, Reference Arneborg and Roesdahl2004). These investigations marked the beginning of systematic archaeological investigations of the Norse Greenlanders (Buckland et al., Reference Buckland, Sveinbjarnardóttir, Savory, McGovern, Skidmore and Andreasen1983), including their economy and their relationship with the Inuit (Arneborg & Seaver, Reference Arneborg, Seaver, Fitzhugh and Ward2000). Nørlund's (Reference Nørlund1924) excavations in the Eastern Settlement unearthed well-preserved medieval clothing and human remains in the churchyard of Herjolfsnes, evocatively illuminating Norse life in Greenland. Nørlund also excavated at Gardar (Nørlund, Reference Nørlund1930), Sandnes Farm (Roussel, Reference Roussell1936), and Brattahlid (Nørlund & Stenberger, Reference Nørlund and Stenberger1934). Roussell (Reference Roussell1941) continued after Nørlund with excavations around Hvalsey Church and the Austmanna Valley. Since 1945, the National Museum of Denmark has carried out several campaigns, among others at Vatnahverfi (Vebæk, Reference Vebæk1952, Reference Vebæk1992) and Narsaq (Vebæk, Reference Vebæk1993). Recent excavations of the ‘Farm Beneath the Sand’, an unusually well-preserved Norse inland farm site, have provided additional details (Berglund, Reference Berglund2020).
Early in the 1900s, interest in the precontact Inuit also gained momentum, especially in the context of the Thule Expeditions between 1912 and 1933. The Fifth Thule Expedition yielded extensive ethnographic and archaeological observations from Greenland to Alaska (Appelt et al., Reference Appelt, Feldt, Jørgensen, Pedersen and Riddersholm Wang2018) and allowed Therkel Mathiassen (Reference Mathiassen1927) to describe Inuit culture, including its prehistory for the first time (Mathiassen, Reference Mathiassen1930, Reference Mathiassen1931, Reference Mathiassen1933, Reference Mathiassen1934, Reference Mathiassen1936). This work was continued by Holtved (Reference Holtved1944a, Reference Holtved1944b, Reference Holtved1954). Larsen's (Reference Larsen1934) analysis of the artefacts from Dødemandsbugten on Clavering Island charted diachronic changes in Inuit material culture in this region, while others gained further insights into southern and north-eastern Greenland (Bandi & Meldgaard, Reference Bandi and Meldgaard1952; Tuborg Sandell & Sandell, Reference Tuborg Sandell and Sandell1991; Sørensen & Gulløv, Reference Sørensen and Gulløv2012). Recently, investigations of Inuit occupation, especially in south-western Greenland, have been undertaken (e.g. Panagiotakopulu et al., Reference Panagiotakopulu, Schofield, Vickers, Edwards and Buckland2020; Madsen & Lennert, Reference Madsen and Lennert2022).
Work at both Norse and Inuit settlements has been extensive, but the children's material culture has rarely been addressed. Toys have been found in many Inuit excavations, albeit seldom described in detail. For the Norse excavations, toys have rarely been documented (Berglund, Reference Berglund2020); no systematic compilations of play objects across Norse and Inuit societies exist. Here, we present a compilation of several thousand play objects from Inuit and Norse contexts in Greenland. Given recent breakthroughs in our understanding of children's material culture in the past and their role as motors of innovation (Milks et al., Reference Milks, Lew-Levy, Lavi, Friesem and Reckin2021; Lew-Levy et al., Reference Lew-Levy, Andersen, Lavi and Riede2022; Riede et al., Reference Riede, Walsh, Nowell, Langley and Johannsen2021, Reference Riede, Lew-Levy, Johannsen, Lavi and Andersen2023), we add our observations to existing explanations for the demise of the Norse and the success of the Inuit, based on the material culture of children and in relation to child developmental theory.
Inuit and Norse Cultures
The Norse Greenlanders and the Inuit had very different approaches to the environment and its affordances, and it is precisely these differences in their social structures and ecological relations, as reflected in their material culture, that make comparison valuable. Crucially, these differences were culturally constituted (Appelt & Gulløv, Reference Appelt, Gulløv, Maschner, Mason and McGhee2009); play objects are an important part of the socialization process among foragers and agriculturalists alike (Janik & Cooney Williams, Reference Janik and Cooney Williams2018; Raffield, Reference Raffield2019). Earlier analyses on Norse toys remain scarce (Morgan, Reference Morgan2016; McGuire, Reference McGuire2019). As for Inuit play objects, Whitridge (Reference Whitridge2021: 242) has recently used the small wooden dolls for querying socialization among Inuit girls, showing that dolls reflect a ‘semantically rich core of Inuit cultural life’. Nonetheless, studies like this are rare for Inuit material culture, too (Park, Reference Park1998; Hardenberg, Reference Hardenberg2010).
Precontact Inuit culture encompasses a variety of chronologically and geographically differentiated ‘branches’ (Figure 1). The Thule District in north-western Greenland represents the Classic Thule (from ad 1000) and the entry point from Canada. A subsequent phase, the Ruin Island Phase, evolved in the region from ad 1200 to 1400 (Holtved, Reference Holtved1954; Gulløv, Reference Gulløv2004). From north-western Greenland, the culture branched out in two directions: to western and south-western Greenland, where it developed into the Inugsuk culture (ad 1200–1900; Mathiassen, Reference Mathiassen1936), and to north-eastern Greenland, where a distinctive variant also emerged (ad 1400–1900). From north-eastern Greenland, migrations into south-eastern Greenland eventually led to the emergence of the recent Angmagssalik branch during the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries (Sørensen & Gulløv, Reference Sørensen and Gulløv2012).
Left: mean annual temperature for Greenland through time (data from Vinther et al., Reference Vinther, Jones, Briffa, Clausen, Anmdersen and Dahl-Jensen2010). Centre: timeline for the Inuit (blue bars) and the Norse in Greenland (green bars). Right: distribution map of the Inuit and the Norse (modified after Madsen et al., Reference Madsen, Grønnow, Harmsen and Smith2020: 4763).
Norse settlers
Archaeological and written sources suggest that the Norse reached Greenland from Iceland around ad 985 (Gulløv, Reference Gulløv2004), in the waning Medieval Warm Period. This warmth translated into a relatively rich vegetation. Fjords and inland regions yielded game and driftwood from Siberia and North America allowing them to successfully establish settlements in Greenland (Arneborg, Reference Arneborg and Roesdahl2004): the Eastern Settlement in southern Greenland, and the Western Settlement in the west. The settlers took their ancestral farming systems with them to the North Atlantic islands, primarily relying on livestock (Madsen et al., Reference Madsen, Grønnow, Harmsen and Smith2020; Zhao et al., Reference Zhao, Castañeda, Salacup, Thomas, Daniels and Schneider2022). Documentary and archaeological sources further demonstrate that the Norse attempted to cultivate cereals in Greenland (Henriksen, Reference Henriksen and Gulløv2014).
The settlement pattern, farm layout, architecture, and economy of the farms reflect a stratified society—a true copy of the social system that prevailed across the Viking world. To complement the pastoral economy, hunting trips northwards were organized in spring and autumn. The distribution of animal bones recovered from the farmsteads shows that all farms are likely to have contributed to these hunting expeditions, albeit unequally so (Arneborg, Reference Arneborg, Brink and Price2012; Buckland, Reference Buckland, Brink and Price2012).
Children started working on the farms at an early age (Arneborg, Reference Arneborg and Roesdahl2004). Finds of miniatures (Figure 2) that reflect adult Norse society reveal that play was part of the life of Norse children, and that the simulation of grown-up life was—as in most societies past and present—an important part of children's play. A clear gender division for the toys has been proposed, reflecting the strongly normative organization of adult life on the farms (Berglund, Reference Berglund2020): women took care of the house, food, and textile production, while men took care of work outdoors and tool production (Berglund, Reference Berglund2001).
Norse toys. a: bird figure (wood; redrawn after Berglund, Reference Berglund2020: 112); b: toy sword (wood; redrawn after Vebæk, Reference Vebæk1993: 36); c: doll (steatite; redrawn after Roussell, Reference Roussell1941: 265); d: cooking pot (soapstone; redrawn after Berglund, Reference Berglund2020: 112); e: knife (wood; redrawn after Berglund Reference Berglund2020: 113); f: disc for spinning top (whale bone, redrawn after photograph on the Archive of the National Museum of Denmark in Copenhagen); g: ship stem post (wood; redrawn after Roussell, Reference Roussell1936: 100); h: fish figure (wood; redrawn after Berglund, Reference Berglund2020: 113); i: bowl (soapstone; redrawn after Nørlund, Reference Nørlund1930: 156). Not to scale.
Precontact Inuit
Precontact Inuit are a part of the Neo-Eskimo culture originating from northern Alaska and expanding across Canada into Greenland (Friesen, Reference Friesen, Friesen and Mason2016). The Inuit migration is the later of two dispersal episodes that spanned the entire breadth of the North American continent. Most probably, this migration was initiated by extended families from various locations along the northern and western Alaskan coasts who sought a better life (Friesen, Reference Friesen, Friesen and Mason2016). Often described as remarkably rapid, with no evidence for lengthy pauses through the areas of the eastern Arctic, this migration may have started as early as ad 1000 (Park, Reference Park2023). When the Inuit arrived in Greenland, they quickly spread along both the southern and north-eastern coasts and had completely circumnavigated the landmass by the early sixteenth century ad (Madsen et al., Reference Madsen, Grønnow, Harmsen and Smith2020).
Inuit culture is characterized by considerable diversity in material culture, refined weaponry, and transport technologies (Pfeifer, Reference Pfeifer2022). Especially the umiaq (skin boat) and the dog sled, two advanced transport technologies introduced to Greenland by the Inuit, allowed them to move on land/ice and on water at greatly reduced risks and costs (Friesen, Reference Friesen, Friesen and Mason2016; Vitale et al., Reference Vitale, Rasmussen, Grønnow, Hansen, Meldgaard and Feuerborn2023). Over time, technologies were refined to include specialized weapons, instruments, and facilities (see Oswalt, Reference Oswalt1987).
Inuit children can readily be identified in the archaeological record (Figure 3). Within Inuit society, children were lavishly equipped with miniature tools and weapons, dolls, and figurines. These represent objects of play and learning. The miniature weapons and tools mirror adult material culture and are thus linked to learning specific skills (Riede et al., Reference Riede, Walsh, Nowell, Langley and Johannsen2021; Pfeifer, Reference Pfeifer2022). Inuit youngsters had to learn how to use a wide range of implements, as well as how to manufacture them (Whitridge, Reference Whitridge2021). This knowledge was expected to be acquired almost entirely through observation and experimentation with functional miniatures of incrementally increasing size (Park, Reference Park, Friesen and Mason2016).
Inuit toys from the collection of the National Museum of Greenland in Nuuk. a: sledge runner and upstander (wood), b: disc for spinning top (wood), c: doll (wood), d: sealing stool (for sitting on when hunting seals on the ice (bone), e: harpoon (baleen), f: cooking pot (soapstone), g: lamp with ledge (soapstone), h: ajagaq (bone), i: snow knife (wood), j: ulo blade (women's knife; slate), k: harpoon head (bone). Not to scale.
Materials and Methods
To interrogate the material culture across the two cultures in question in a comparative study, we catalogued and analysed a large number of play objects. Most of the material has been collated from the published literature, while the unpublished material was accessed directly at the National Museum in Nuuk. Of the latter, we found 497 items from seventeen sites classified as Inuit toys; a few (n = 6) Norse items were also recorded, all from site Ø34. Fifteen items categorized as toys from Greenland were found in the photographic archives of the National Museum in Copenhagen.
Excavation reports provide an overview of the material culture related to children found at both Norse and Inuit locations. In most of the reports from Inuit sites, detailed lists of the material including toys and games made recording straightforward, even if the information provided on each object was usually limited. The Norse material was less readily accessible. It is also not extensive, with a total count of items (not counting clothing related to children) recorded from the literature and directly at the National Museum in Nuuk amounting to seventy-two. Of the more than sixty sites in the Western Settlement and 200+ sites in the Eastern Settlement, only twelve locations contain material thought to be toys. Dice and gaming pieces are related to the adult sphere and thus not included. In comparison, the Inuit material is extensive, with 3014 items related to children from seventy-one different sites. Ranging from ad 900 to 1900, the material also includes a few earlier and more recent finds. For the present analysis, all items related to these, and finds that could not reasonably be dated within a 200-year margin were excluded, bringing the Inuit material to 2397 items, including unpublished items.
Each object was described, and metadata noted alongside relevant miscellaneous observations. Their dating is based on typology and, where available, archaeometric dating. Each object was assigned to a 200-year timespan, although this was not possible in all cases. The objects were sorted into five categories for comparison: skill play, social play, transport, tools, and weapons (Table 1). These analytical categories are aligned with those used in the excavation reports to describe adult material culture. Skill play and social play have been assigned to play objects that do not fit into any of the other ‘utilitarian’ categories. The difference between the two categories is that the items in the social play category relate to play of a more social character, where there is some degree of coordination of activities between individuals (e.g. play tents), while the objects in the skill play category require skill and physical exercise (e.g. spinning tops).
The five categories of items found in the Norse and Inuit material, with the item types in each category and the total number of items listed. The astragali (*), used mainly as dice in adult games, have been included as they are interpreted as having been used as animal representation in the context of domestic pretence play.
Results
Toys are only rarely found on Norse farms, whereas on the Inuit sites it is unusual not to find miniatures or other play objects. The difference in the number of toys noted for each culture alone is compelling, especially given the larger number of Norse sites. Across the 200-year phases—starting at ad 1000 and ending with items dated to 1800 or later—changes in the relative frequencies of different play object classes can be seen in both the Norse and the Inuit material (Figure 4), although the percentage values for the Norse material must be treated with due caution given the small sample size. We do not believe that taphonomic factors have skewed our results as the taphonomic conditions affecting Norse and Inuit playthings are largely identical. The visibility and density of the Norse settlements are greater than those of the Inuit; the Norse were also sedentary, and the site count is higher compared to Inuit locales. Together, this lends credence to the notion that the Norse had fewer and less varied play objects than their Inuit contemporaries.
Percentages of play object categories in each timeslot for a) Norse, and b) Inuit.
Focusing on the period of overlap between the Norse and the Inuit (ad 1000–1200 and 1200–1400), weapons make up a much larger percentage of the Inuit material than among the Norse and no change in this category can be detected over time. Tools constitute a large proportion of the Norse material, while it is more modest in the Inuit material. There does not seem to be a marked change over time in this category either.
Looking at the absolute numbers of play objects in each category over time, a substantial increase is visible in all categories for the Inuit material, while the Norse material remains modest (Figure 5). The increase in the Inuit material coincides with the climatic changes that occurred during the Little Ice Age.
Absolute numbers of play objects per category for the Inuit and the Norse over time.
To further quantify and hence differentiate between Norse and Inuit play object use, we used the so-called Shannon Diversity Index and its associated values of evenness and richness to describe basic dimensions of our corpus of objects (Table 2). The index, which is just one way to describe diversity in archaeology (see Dunnell, Reference Dunnell, Leonard and Jones1989) and a range of other disciplines, estimates diversity, here the number of object classes within the categories of play objects relative to the overall number of objects (Nolan & Callahan, Reference Nolan, Callahan and O'Donnel2006). Diversity is directly connected to innovation (Kuhn, Reference Kuhn2020) and environmental risk (Fitzhugh, Reference Fitzhugh2001): without diversity, there is no cultural evolution and hence no adaptation (cf. Eren & Buchanan, Reference Eren and Buchanan2022). We here use it to describe variation within our play object categories where low richness values reflect poor toy assemblages and low evenness values highly normative ones.
Shannon Diversity Index for each of the categories of toys per timeslot. H: diversity index; E: evenness; R: richness of the sample (i.e. how many different classes are contained in each category). When there is only a single class, then H = 0 and evenness cannot be calculated. The closer the evenness is to 1, the more diverse the sample is.
The number of classes within each category of play objects does not differ substantially over time for the Norse material, whereas it differs markedly among the Inuit, except for the ‘social’ category that remains stable for almost all timeslots (Figure 6). These changes in the number of classes coincide with the rise in the total number of play objects, which occurs in a period of increasing climatic stress. Another significant rise in both total numbers and number of classes appears between 1600 and 1800, a period in which the Inuit again encountered Europeans.
Change in the number of play object categories in the Inuit material over time.
The qualitative differences and the diversity of the individual forms of objects within the object classes corroborate the notion that Inuit play objects grew more diverse during the Little Ice Age. The Inuit material exhibits more variants in tools, transport, and weapons than the Norse. Table 2 illustrates a tendency towards a higher number of object classes within the five categories for the Inuit material. Within these classes, there is substantive variation in the details and materials used to produce the same play objects (Figure 7): For the ajagaqs (ring-and-pin toy), for instance, the material is always bone but the type of bone can vary from seal penis bones to whole mandibles. Their shape and size also vary depending on the properties of the bone. The number of holes in each ajagaq varies, too. As for the spinning tops, the material can be either wood or bone, and their shape ranges from perfectly round to oval and square. Some are very small and thin, others are larger and thicker.
Inuit play objects. Left: a collection of ajagaqs made from the bones of different animals. Right: spinning top discs made of wood and bone.
Discussion
Many theories for the demise of the Norse in Greenland have been proposed. Declining temperature has long been considered the best explanation, together with grazing-induced land degradation (e.g. Arneborg, Reference Arneborg and Roesdahl2004). Recent research suggests that persistent drying may have aggravated the impact of deteriorating temperatures (Zhao et al., Reference Zhao, Castañeda, Salacup, Thomas, Daniels and Schneider2022). Sea-ice accumulation, too, probably played a role in controlling access to marine foodstuffs and affected sailing conditions, which hindered trade and increased the risk of injury or death at sea (Kuijpers et al., Reference Kuijpers, Mikkelsen, Ribeiro and Seidenkrantz2014). In the 1400s, official passages from Norway ceased. This coincided with more frequent and violent storms and rising sea levels during the Little Ice Age (Arneborg, Reference Arneborg, Brink and Price2012; Kuijpers et al., Reference Kuijpers, Mikkelsen, Ribeiro and Seidenkrantz2014). In sum, drier summers with decreased pasturage and winter fodder production (Zhao et al., Reference Zhao, Castañeda, Salacup, Thomas, Daniels and Schneider2022), sea level changes and reductions in valuable grassland (Borreggine et al., Reference Borreggine, Latychev, Coulson, Powell, Mitrovica and Milne2023), loss of contact with the homelands (Arneborg, Reference Arneborg and Roesdahl2004, Reference Arneborg, Brink and Price2012), and increased storminess (Kuijpers et al., Reference Kuijpers, Mikkelsen, Ribeiro and Seidenkrantz2014) contributed to the Greenlandic Norse's demise. These drivers are often foregrounded, yet climate change alone cannot explain the colonies’ disappearance. As Adger et al. (Reference Adger, Barnett, Brown, Marshall and O'Brien2013) point out, any society's response to climate change is culturally mediated (see also Jackson et al., Reference Jackson, Arneborg, Dugmore, Madsen, McGovern and Smiarowski2018a; Thomas et al., Reference Thomas, Hardy, Lazrus, Mendez, Orlove and Rivera-Collazo2019; Burke et al., Reference Burke, Peros, Wren, Pausata, Riel-Salvatore and Moine2021). Isotope evidence has revealed changes in the Norse diet over time, towards an increasing use of marine resources (e.g. Arneborg et al., Reference Arneborg, Lynnerup and Heinemeier2012; Nelson et al., Reference Nelson, Heinemeier, Lynnerup, Sveinbjörnsdóttir and Arneborg2012; Zhao et al., Reference Zhao, Castañeda, Salacup, Thomas, Daniels and Schneider2022); yet farming strategies remained essentially unchanged throughout.
In this context, we have here considered the role of children and innovation in adaptability. It has been suggested that the physical resources, including play objects, that shape child development as part of the so-called ontogenetic niche might have significant structuring effects on the youngsters becoming innovative adults (Riede et al., Reference Riede, Johannsen, Högberg, Nowell and Lombard2018). Neural plasticity—in interaction with material culture (Iriki & Taoka, Reference Iriki and Taoka2012)—is fundamental to the acquisition and mastery of complex motor, cognitive, and social activities. Object play serves to acquaint children with the technologies of adult life in the relatively safe environment of the home base or household (Riede et al., Reference Riede, Johannsen, Högberg, Nowell and Lombard2018). Miniature weapons, tools, boats, dolls, and figurines play an important role in the establishment of gender roles and identities, as well as in the guided transmission of specific ecological and technological knowledge (Riede et al., Reference Riede, Walsh, Nowell, Langley and Johannsen2021).
The diversity of objects related to children in the Inuit culture is significantly higher than among the Norse settlers in terms of the number of objects found, the number of objects across different categories of play, and the technological and morphological variation within each object category. Given that both Norse and Inuit assemblages have been preserved under essentially identical taphonomic conditions, the small number of Norse toys may reflect an actual dearth of toys in that society. Norse and Inuit population sizes were broadly comparable (Madsen & Arneborg, Reference Madsen and Arneborg2017; Park, Reference Park2023), but robust estimates are scarce and both populations likely fluctuated over time (Minc & Smith, Reference Minc, Smith, Halstead and O'Shea1989; Constandse-Westermannn, Reference Constandse-Westermannn and Buijs1993; Lynnerup, Reference Lynnerup2014). Despite demographic comparability, Inuit material culture is notably extensive and complex (Oswalt, Reference Oswalt1987; Mason, Reference Mason, Prentiss, Kuijt and Chatters2009), suggesting a recursive relationship between play object diversity and overall technological complexity. While acknowledging that it is difficult to recognize all objects that have been played with (Crawford, Reference Crawford2009), we contend that the difference in the number and diversity of play objects manufactured solely for the purpose of being played with between these two cultures reflects a clear difference in their early-life learning environments as well as perceptions of childrearing. Sedentary societies tend to be more normative when teaching children, while foragers often allow for less formal learning (Lew-Levy et al., Reference Lew-Levy, Reckin, Lavi, Cristóbal-Azkarate and Ellis-Davies2017). Our analysis of Inuit and Norse toys supports this observation and provides a deeper-time material culture correlate of pertinent ethnographic and literary accounts of the contrasting childrearing environs in recent Inuit (e.g. Briggs, Reference Briggs1971) and Viking (Raffield, Reference Raffield2019) societies, respectively. Moreover, most objects analysed here can be confidently identified as play objects made for children rather than merely casual playthings; hence they do reflect the time, energy, and resources invested in the creative scaffolding of these youngsters.
Norse settlers did try to adapt to the changing environment over time by shifting their diet towards more marine-based resources (e.g. Nelson et al., Reference Nelson, Heinemeier, Lynnerup, Sveinbjörnsdóttir and Arneborg2012). This change is, however, not reflected in the play objects, since figures of seal or fish do not increase over time. Almost all the figures recorded are of horses or birds. The increase in toy weapons in the Inuit material can be argued to correspond to innovations in hunting implements. The most diagnostic Inuit artefacts are indeed harpoon heads, originally divided into five types by Mathiassen (Reference Mathiassen1927; Gulløv, Reference Gulløv2004). Among the play objects, there is a rise in the number of flat harpoon heads, especially in the timeslot 1600–1800. Winged harpoons first appear in the Inuit material around 1500 (Sørensen & Gulløv, Reference Sørensen and Gulløv2012), which is also reflected in the play objects, where winged harpoons are only represented in the timeslots 1400–1600 and 1600–1800. Thus, the play objects of the Inuit can be said to reflect changes in hunting implements that occurred in response to the increasingly harsh environment. Playful experimentation with different weapon designs allowed them to become familiar with a wider range of uses and options. This, we argue, would enable them to better match technology to environment in later life. The opposite can be said about Norse children who were not presented with a ‘toy kit’ that supported exploration; at any rate it was available to a far lesser extent than among the Inuit (cf. Frankenhuis & Gopnik, Reference Frankenhuis and Gopnik2023). It is through exploration that variation is generated; without explorative play during childhood, it is not easy to grow up and become an innovative adult able to adapt to differing climatic conditions.
Although children have been identified in various societies (e.g. Milks et al., Reference Milks, Lew-Levy, Lavi, Friesem and Reckin2021; Lew-Levy et al., Reference Lew-Levy, Andersen, Lavi and Riede2022), they have seldom been discussed as part of the adaptation process during periods of climate change. Differences in the ‘cultural niches’ influence how children are brought up, ranging from strongly normative to more explorative. The developmental psychologists Flynn and colleagues (Reference Flynn, Laland, Kendal and Kendal2013) refer to this as the ‘ontogenetic niche’ and a very normative upbringing can hinder an individual from being flexible enough when facing changing environments. The Norse learned the landscape of Greenland in a manner tied to their agriculturalist way of life (Rockman, Reference Rockman and Wendrich2012); as climate changed, their ecological and technological knowledge became increasingly ill matched to the prevailing conditions, and new generations of youngsters were poorly equipped to innovate adequately.
Conclusion
The ontogenetic niche is vital for human adaptation, physically, cognitively, socially, and materially. For children, this involves different resources, including play objects and especially functional miniatures, provided by older peers and adults. These resources have a significant influence on children becoming innovative as adults, as they allow children to acquaint themselves with the technologies of their society (Riede et al., Reference Riede, Johannsen, Högberg, Nowell and Lombard2018). The rich variants of play objects nurtured Inuit children towards explorative play, enabling them to become more innovative, and thus more adaptable, as adults.
Play is an important part of early-age innovation, which in turn is important for a society's ability to adapt to changing climatic and environmental conditions. Greenland during the Little Ice Ace presents an effective completed natural experiment of history, where two different cultures faced identical climatic pressures. We have argued that the Inuit way of learning, of giving children autonomy and a diverse ‘toy kit’, was part of a pedagogical approach that enabled their children to be experimental, innovative, and independent (cf. Briggs, Reference Briggs1991). In contrast, the seemingly more normative upbringing of Norse children resulted in a similarly normative adult culture that, in the face of deteriorating conditions, was unable to accommodate novel forms of technology and behaviour. Children and their material culture are not the only component of how Inuit and Norse societies adapted to climatic change, but our study has, for the first time, examined their contribution to the production and reproduction of social norms and technologies through play and materially guided cultural transmission.
We have used play objects as a direct proxy for children's learning contexts, specifically in relation to technological categories such as weaponry and transport. Our analysis highlights substantive differences in the number and diversity of play objects among the Norse and the Inuit. The Norse material does not show changes in diversity or number over time despite the changing climatic conditions of the Little Ice Age. In contrast, the Inuit's expanding and diverse ‘toy kit’ reflects the innovations and changes in adult material culture that occurred in response to an increasingly harsh environment. Our data support the notion that the objects that filled the cultural niches of these societies had a vital effect on their ability to adapt and survive adverse environmental conditions across multiple generations and centennial timescales. Whether the diversity and abundance of the Inuit toy assemblage compared to the Norse stems from a greater focus on implement diversity in Inuit culture requires further study. Future analysis should address the relationship between the diversity of the play objects and adult objects in each society. Furthermore, the chronology of the play objects that we have been able to study is poorly resolved, limiting what can be said about dynamic processes and associated causality. Going forward, increasing the chronological resolution and including additional material will expand the comparative scope to wider regions and societies.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by Aarhus University as part of Mathilde Vestergaard Meyer's PhD grant. The Elisabeth Munksgaard Foundation (Copenhagen, Denmark) funded research in Nuuk, Greenland, where most of the data were collected.
Supplementary Material
To view the Supplementary Material (dataset) for this article please visit https://zenodo.org/records/10806222.
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