their main export of walrus ivory collapsed in favor of African ivory, and Europe was devastated by the Black Death, meaning there were far fewer supply ships bringing food they could no longer grow. It was a perfect storm of climatic, mercantile and historical events that made the colony unlivable.

It was only a mystery because there were no records of mass evacuations from the colony. There wouldn't have been, it seems it was an old pattern, younger people leaving for better economic prospects, old people not willing to move and staying behind, the last few dying alone to be found hundreds of years later in the ruins of their homes.

What they didn't do was deplete the soil or overfish/overhunt local food stocks. The colony seems to have fizzled out slowly, the last documented event a wedding in 1408, after which the couple left, and burials up to 1450. After that, silence, no one left to bury the last few who died of starvation or cold.

People ask why the more northern colony on Iceland continued to thrive. Well, for one thing, it's warmer, warmed by the top of the Gulf Stream, which also keeps summer sea ice to a minimum. Greenland is kept frozen by the Labrador Current, which also keeps sea ice present (and dangerous) year round. Sheep grow well in Iceland, while it was a struggle to keep them alive in Greenland. Those are the main reasons.

I read once that part of the puzzle was not finding bodies.

Is there a record of young people from Greenland arriving in Norway, Iceland, or elsewhere?

and the saddest was one found with the bones of his hunting dog, the dog showing signs of having been slaughtered and butchered. Once the dog was gone, there is no way the man could have continued to hunt.

You might be thinking of the western colony, which had disappeared completely with no bodies present. The bodies they found in their homes were in the eastern settlement, on farmsteads.

A lot of theories have been put forth about the western colony joining the Inuit (although there are no DNA traces( or traveling down the coast of N. America until they found a tribe willing to tolerate them. The most likely scenario, I'm afraid, is the colony loading themselves into boats, trying to make it to the eastern colony or even to Iceland, but the sea ice was too bad and they didn't make it.