The Scandinavian pasturage system called shieling has been practiced since at least the Norse expansion period, and perhaps as early as the first century AD, but it is best known from the Viking colonies on Iceland and Greenland.
Abandoned Shieling in Scotland. Photo by Graham Lewis
Shieling involved moving cattle from winter to summer pasturages, and that practice was a small part of the agricultural system of landnám, long thought to have had a role in the Viking colony failures such as the Eastern Settlement on Greenland. While the climate change that put an end to the Viking colonies on Greenland was apparently inevitable, it is possible, say some scholars, that the practice of shieling actually mitigated the rapidity of the environmental degradation.
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