A dogged search for walrus ivory may have brought two unlikely cultures together — the Thule Inuits of the Arctic and the Norse of Greenland — hundreds of years before Christopher Columbus set ...

At its peak, walrus ivory was a valuable medieval commodity ... the East and down to the Black Sea in the south. A raid on Constantinople, the then-centre of the Byzantine Empire was unsuccessful ...

Recently discovered evidence, however, indicates Norse sailors weren’t only the first Europeans to likely meet Indigenous societies—genetic analysis of walrus DNA indicates their ivory trade ...

The Crusades prevented elephant ivory trade via the Middle East so walruses from the Arctic became important sources of the commodity. However, the precise sources of the traded walrus ivory and ...

However, a recent study of medieval artifacts from across Europe suggests it may have been due to the over-hunting of walrus. The ivory from walrus tusks was a valuable commodity in medieval times ...