The Eskimo are one of the few races of hunters on the earth who with their peculiar culture have still been able to hold their own fairly well in spite of contact with European civilisation; the reason for this is partly that they live so far out of the way that the contact has been more or less cursory, partly also, as far as Greenland is concerned, that they have been treated with more or less care, and it has been sought to protect them against harmful European influences. In spite of this it has not been possible to prevent their declining and becoming more and more impoverished. The increase of their population in recent years might doubtless give a contrary impression; but here other factors have to be reckoned with. When the Eskimo first came in contact with European culture, it was, as will be shown in the next chapter, their own culture which in these surroundings gained the upper hand as soon as communication with Europe was cut off. This would happen again if European and Eskimo could be left to themselves, entirely cut off from the outer world. But as this is impossible, the Eskimo culture is doomed to succumb slowly to our trivial, all-conquering European civilisation.

CHAPTER XI

The Eastern and Western Settlements in Greenland seem, as we have said, to have grown rapidly immediately after the discovery of the country and the first settlement there. Their flourishing period was in the eleventh, twelfth, and part of the thirteenth centuries; but in the fourteenth they seem to have declined rapidly; notices of them become briefer and briefer, until they cease altogether after 1410, and in the course of the following hundred years the Norse population seems to have disappeared entirely. The causes of this decline were many.[72] It has been thought that it was chiefly due to an immigration into Greenland on a large scale of Eskimo, who gradually overpowered and exterminated the Norsemen; but, as will be shown later, there is no ground for believing this; even if hostile encounters took place between them, these cannot have been of great importance.

In the first place the decline must be attributed to changes in the relations with Norway. From the “King’s Mirror” (cf. vol. i. p. 277), amongst other authorities, we see that the Greenlanders doubtless had to manage to some extent without such European wares as flour and bread; they lived mainly by sealing and fishing, and also by keeping cattle, which gave them milk and cheese. But there were many necessary things, such as iron for implements and weapons, and to some extent even wood[73] for larger boats and ships, which had to be obtained from Europe, besides the encouragement and support which were afforded in many ways by communication with the outer world. This was not of small moment to people who lived in isolation under such hard conditions, at the extreme limit at which a European culture was possible; it wanted little to turn the scale. It is therefore easy to understand that as soon as communication with the mother country declined, the conditions of life in Greenland became so unattractive that those who had the chance removed elsewhere, and doubtless in most cases to Norway.

But at the same time there was certainly a physiological factor involved. For the healthy nourishment of a European cereals (hydro-carbons) are necessary, and there can be no doubt that a prolonged exclusive diet of meat and fat will in the case of most Europeans reduce the vital force, and not least the powers of reproduction. This agrees with my own experience and observation under various conditions, as, for instance, during ten consecutive months’ exclusive diet of meat and fat. It is also confirmed by physiological experiments on omnivorous animals. The Greenlanders were reduced to living by sealing, fishing, and keeping cattle; milk, with its sugar of milk, was their chief substitute for the hydro-carbons in cereals; besides this, they no doubt collected crowberries, angelica and other vegetables; but even during the short summer this cannot have been sufficient to counterbalance the want of flour. It is therefore probable that their powers of reproduction underwent a marked decrease, and they became a people of small fecundity. The Eskimo have had thousands of years for adapting themselves through natural selection to their monotonous flesh-diet, since those among them who were best fitted for it had the better chance of producing offspring; there is certainly a great difference between individuals in this respect; some of us are by nature more vegetarian, while others are more carnivorous. It is therefore natural that the present-day Eskimo should be better suited for this diet; but it is none the less striking that the rate of productiveness among them is also low.

As, then, the Greenlanders’ communications with Norway fell off more and more, their imports of corn and flour finally ceased altogether. Their cattle-keeping must then have declined as well, since they would have little opportunity of renewing their stock or getting other kinds of supplies, when bad years intervened and the greater part of the stock had to be slaughtered or died of hunger. Consequently the people became still more dependent on sealing; and thereby the cattle must have been neglected. In this way their diet would become even less varied, since milk would be lacking, and their reproduction would be further restricted. Add to this that their average proficiency in sealing, at first in any case, was doubtless not to be compared with that of the Eskimo, and that they were without salt for preserving their catch, which therefore had to be dried or frozen. They were thus not able to lay up a large provision, and were always more and more dependent on occasional catches. It is easy to understand that their power of resistance was not great, when bad seasons for sealing occurred, or when they were ravaged by disease, and it is not surprising if the population decreased.

The cessation of the communication of Greenland with Iceland and Norway came about in the following way: between 1247 and 1261, during the reign of Håkon Håkonsson, Greenland voluntarily became subject to the Norwegian crown, whilst before this it had been a free State like Iceland. In 1294, trade with the tributary countries of Norway, Greenland among them, was declared a sort of royal monopoly or privilege, which the king could farm out to Norwegian subjects. The result of this was that only the king’s ships—and of these there was as a rule only one, called “Knarren,” for the Greenland traffic—were permitted to sail there for the purposes of trade,[74] and this was the beginning of the end. Even before that time communication with Greenland was rare. Thus we read in the “King’s Mirror” that people seldom went there. But now, when the royal trading ship was practically the only one that made the voyage, things were to be much worse. Frequently several years were occupied on one trip. As some time elapsed also between each voyage, it will be understood that, at the best, the communication was not lively. But when it occasionally happened that “Knarren” was wrecked, things were still worse. That the communication may have been defective as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century is seen from a letter from Bishop Arne, of Bergen, to Bishop Tord in Greenland, of June 22, 1308, wherein it is taken for granted that the death of King Eric nine years before, in 1299, was not yet known in Greenland. In the middle of the fourteenth century, for instance, “Knarren” returned to Bergen in 1346 safe and sound and with a very great quantity of goods; but perhaps did not sail again until 1355, and we hear nothing of her return before 1363 (?). In 1366 we hear that “Knarren” was again fitted out; but she was wrecked north of Bergen in the following year, probably on the outward voyage. In the year following a new trading ship must actually have arrived with the new bishop, Alf; but it is stated that Greenland had then been without a bishop for nineteen years. In 1369 the Greenland ship seems again to have been sunk off Norway.[75]

It looks as if these voyages of “Knarren” became rarer and rarer, until at the beginning of the fifteenth century (1410) they presumably ceased altogether; in any case, we hear no more of them. Even though the Greenland traffic may have paid, it cost money to fit out “Knarren,” and when there was so much doing in other quarters, it was not always easy to procure the necessary funds. Another reason for the decline was the growing influence and power of the Hanseatic League over trade and navigation in Norway. Together with the Victualien Brethren and the adherents of the captive King Albrekt of Sweden, the Leaguers took and sacked Bergen in 1393. In 1428 the town was again taken by the Hanseatic League. It may easily be understood that events of this kind had a disturbing and perhaps entirely paralysing effect on the Greenland traffic, which had its headquarters in this town. Moreover, Norway had before this been much weakened by the Black Death, which visited the country in 1349. It raged with special virulence in Bergen; but there is no notice of the disease having spread to Greenland; perhaps that country was spared through “Knarren” not having sailed there before 1355, and probably no other ship having made the voyage in the interval. In 1392 there was again a severe pestilence throughout Norway, and many people died. In that year too a great many ships were wrecked. There were thus a number of misfortunes at that time, and the people of Norway had enough to occupy them in their own affairs. Another circumstance unfavourable to the communication with Greenland was the union of Norway with Denmark, and for a time with Sweden. The seat of government was thereby removed to Copenhagen, and interest in Norway, and especially in its so-called tributary countries, was further greatly diminished by the larger claims of Denmark and Sweden.

It is reasonable to suppose that under such conditions the settlements in Greenland, which were almost entirely cut off, must have decayed; comparatively few, perhaps, were able to get a passage, and left the country by degrees; but the people declined in numbers; they adopted an entirely Eskimo mode of living, and mixed with the Eskimo, who perhaps at the same time spread southwards in greater numbers along the west coast of Greenland. It was remarked in the last chapter that the Norsemen, when they arrived in the country, evidently looked down upon the stone-age, troll-like Skrælings, whom they could hunt and ill-use with impunity; with their iron weapons, their warlike propensities, and their larger vessels, they may perhaps have been able to maintain this imaginary superiority in the early days, so long as they still had some kind of supplies from abroad. But it is obvious that these relations must have been fundamentally changed when this communication gradually ceased, and they were reduced, without any support from Europe, to make the best of the country’s resources; then the real superiority of the Eskimo in these surroundings asserted its full rights, and the Greenlanders had to begin to look upon them in a very different light. It is therefore perfectly natural that from this very fourteenth century a fundamental change in the relations between Norsemen and Skrælings set in. And that such was the case seems to result in many ways from the meagre information we possess.

In the Annals of Bishop Gisle Oddsson, written in Iceland in Latin before 1637, we read under the year 1342 [G. Storm, 1890a, pp. 355, f.; Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 459]:

It is not known from whence Gisle Oddsson took this statement. As the expression “the people of America” (“Americæ populi”) is a curious one, and as the statements in the bishop’s annals following that quoted above are entirely myths and inventions taken from Lyschander’s “Grönlands Chronica” (but originally derived from Saxo and Adam of Bremen), Storm regarded the whole account as spurious and lacking any mediæval authority. Interpreting, curiously enough, “ad Americæ populos se converterunt” to mean that the Greenlanders had emigrated to America, Storm supposes that this may be a hypothesis “formed to explain the disappearance from Greenland of the old Norwegian-Icelandic colony.” But the meaning of the passage can scarcely be interpreted otherwise than as translated above, that the Greenlanders had forsaken Christianity, given up good morals and virtues, and had been converted to the belief and customs of the American people (i.e., the Skrælings). The people of America must be a strained expression the bishop has used to denote the heathen Skrælings (who inhabited Greenland and the American lands) in contradistinction to the Christian Europeans. Greenland was frequently regarded in Iceland in those times as a part of America (cf. the map, p. 7). Hans Egede, for example, thought the natives of Greenland were “Americans.” In other words, the statement simply means that in 1342 a report came that the Greenlanders were associating amicably with the heathen Skrælings (which was forbidden by the ecclesiastical law of that time), and had begun to adopt their mode of life; which, in fact, is extremely probable.

The question is, then, from whence Gisle Oddsson may have derived this, which is not known from any other source. Storm thought it out of the question that it was taken from Lyschander (from whom the same annals have borrowed so much else); but we cannot be so sure of this. After having related the volcanic eruption and disasters in Iceland in 1340 (also recorded by Gisle Oddsson), Lyschander continues:

“Norway and Sweden and Greenland also
They were hereafter well able to perceive
That such things boded ill to them.
These kingdoms they came into the hands of the Dane,
And Greenland went astray on the strand,
Not long after these times.”

Whatever may be meant by this strained, obscure expression about Greenland (is “strand” a misprint for “stand”—“went astray in its condition” ?), it might at any rate be interpreted to mean that its inhabitants had been converted (gone astray) to a heathen religion (the people of America); “not long after these times” (i.e., after 1340) may thus have been made into 1342. But the mention of a definite date—which, it may be remarked, would suit very well for the time when the Greenlanders passed into Eskimo in larger numbers, at any rate in the Western Settlement (cf. Ivar Bárdsson’s description, see below, p. 108)—may possibly indicate that some ancient authority or other is really the foundation for the statement, and perhaps also for the lines quoted from Lyschander. Finn Magnussen [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 459] thinks that Gisle Oddsson may have derived much information from the archives and library of Skálholdt cathedral, which was burnt in 1630.

Whether genuine or not, this statement may correctly describe the fate of the Greenland settlements. Deserted by the mother country, and left to their own resources, the Greenlanders were forced to adopt the Eskimo mode of life, and became absorbed in them. This took place first in the more northerly and more thinly populated Western Settlement, and later in the Eastern Settlement as well. The Eskimo with their kayaks and their sealing appliances were the superiors of the Greenlanders in sealing (as appears from the account of Björn Jorsalafarer), and their mode of life was better suited to the conditions of Greenland; it is therefore incredible that their culture should not gain the upper hand in an encounter, under conditions otherwise equal, with that of Europeans, even though there were certain things that they might learn of the Europeans, especially the use of iron.[76] Furthermore, the Greenlanders’ stock of cattle, goats and sheep had, as we have seen (p. 97), greatly declined owing to the long severance from Europe, and for this reason also they were obliged to adopt more of the Eskimo way of life. But then their places of residence within the fjords, far from the sealing-grounds, were no longer advantageous, and by degrees they entirely adopted the Eskimo’s more migratory life along the outer coast. Then, again, the Eskimo women were probably no less attractive to the Northerners of that time than they are to those of the present day, and thus much mixture of blood gradually resulted. The children came to speak the Eskimo language, and took at once to a wholly Eskimo way of life, just as at the present day the children of Danes and Eskimo in Greenland do. As the Norsemen at that time must also have been very inferior to the Eskimo in numbers, they must by degrees have become Eskimo both physically and mentally; and when the country was rediscovered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were only Eskimo there, while all traces of the Norwegian-Greenland culture seemed to have disappeared.

Ruins of church at Kakortok in the Eastern Settlement (after Th. Groth)

Let us suppose that we could repeat the experiment and plant a number of European sealers in Baffin Land, for instance, with their women, together with a greater number of Eskimo, and then cut off all communication with the civilised world. Can we have any doubt as to the kind of culture we should find there if we could come back after two hundred years? All the inhabitants would be Eskimo, and we should find few traces of European culture.

Salmon-fishing in Vazdal by Ketils-fjord in the Eastern Settlement
(see map, vol. i. p. 265), where the “birch forest” is as high as 20 ft.
From a photograph by Dr. T. N. Krabbe (A. S. Jensen, 1910)

It would doubtless seem reasonable to expect that the descendants of the ancient Norsemen of Greenland and of the Eskimo with whom they became absorbed should have shown signs in their external appearance of this descent, when discovered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but unfortunately we have no descriptions of them from that time which allow of any conclusions being drawn on the subject. It is true that Hans Egede says [1741, p. 66] that the Eskimo of Greenland “have broad faces and thick lips, are flat-nosed and of a brownish complexion; though some of them are quite handsome and white”; but nothing definite can be concluded from this, and in the period after Egede’s arrival the natives on the west coast became so mixed that it is now hopeless to look for any of the original race. It is, however, remarkable that Graah found in 1829-1831 Eskimo on the east coast of Greenland, many of whom struck him as resembling Scandinavians in appearance—a fact which he sought to explain by European sailors having perhaps been wrecked there.

But if it is now difficult to prove in this way the partially Norse descent of the natives on the southern west coast of Greenland, it is to be expected that there should be many vestiges in their myths and fairy-tales which would give evidence of this. And this is precisely what we find. In an earlier work [1891, pp. 207, ff.; Engl. ed., pp. 248, ff.] I think I have pointed out numerous features in their tales that bear a resemblance to the Norse mythical world, and that must have been derived from thence; and many more might be adduced. The similarities are sufficiently numerous to bear witness to a quite intimate intellectual contact, and are in full agreement with what we should expect. But it may seem strange that their religious ideas did not show more Christian influence, especially when we see that even so late as 1407 Christianity was powerful enough in the Eastern Settlement for a man to be burnt for having seduced another’s wife by witchcraft. There are, however, many features in their conceptions of another world, of which Egede speaks, which appear to be necessarily of Christian origin; we must suppose, too, that Christian education was at a very low ebb in Greenland at the close of the fourteenth century, and soon ceased altogether.

Only a few words in the language of the Greenland Eskimo on the southern west coast have been shown to be of Norse origin. Hans Egede himself pointed out the following: “kona” (== wife, Old Norse kona), “sava” or “savak” (== sheep, O.N. sauðr, gen. sauða), “nisa” or “nisak” (== porpoise, O.N. hnísa), “kuanek” (== angelica, O.N. hvǫnn, plur. hvannir). Some of these words recur in Labrador Eskimo, but may have been introduced by the Moravian missionaries from Greenland. We may also mention the name the Eskimo of southern Greenland apply to themselves, “karālek” or “kalālek,” which may come from the word Skræling (which in Eskimo would become “sakalālek”). This, as the Eskimo told Egede, was the name the ancient Norsemen had called them by; otherwise the Eskimo call themselves “inuit” (== human beings); and curiously enough “kalālek” is not used by the Eskimo of northern Greenland; on the other hand, it is known to the Labrador Eskimo, but may have been brought by the missionaries, although the latter asserted that it was known when they came. It is perhaps of more importance that, according to H. Rink, a similar word (“kallaluik,” “katlalik” or “kallaaluch,” for chief or shaman) occurs in the dialects of Alaska.

Through all the notices of Greenland and its condition, especially those from religious sources, there runs after the fourteenth century a cry of apostasy, which is ominous of this mixture of the Norsemen with the Skrælings: we see it in the doubtful statement from 1342 about their conversion to “the people of America”; a little later, according to Ivar Bárdsson’s account (see p. 108), the heathen Skrælings were predominant in the Western Settlement; furthermore, the trading ship was fitted out in 1355 to prevent the “falling away” of Christianity [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 122]; Björn Einarsson’s account (see below, p. 112) concludes with the statement that when he was there (1386) “the bishop of Gardar was lately dead, and an old priest ... performed all the episcopal ordinations” [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 438]; after that time no bishop came to Greenland; and finally the papal letter of 1492-93 describes the Greenlanders as a people abandoned by bishop and priest, for which reason most of them had fallen from the Christian faith, although they still preserved a memory of the Christian church service (see later).[77] This may all point in the same direction: that the Norsemen in Greenland became more and more absorbed by the Eskimo.

Of course there may have been occasional hostile encounters between the Eskimo and Norsemen in Greenland, especially as the latter, as pointed out in the last chapter, must frequently have acted with a heavy hand when they had the power. But that the Eskimo should have carried on a regular war of extermination, which resulted in the complete destruction first of the Western and then of the Eastern Settlement, as has been generally assumed until quite recently—this is incredible to any one who knows the Eskimo and considers what their conditions of life were. Where should they have developed this warlike propensity which was afterwards foreign to them, and where should they have had training in the art of war? This idea of the destruction of the settlements by hostilities is the result mainly of three statements about Greenland, of which one is very improbable and on many points impossible, another deals possibly with an actual attack, and the third is demonstrably false. We must here examine these notices a little more closely.

In 1341 Bishop Hákon of Bergen sent a priest, Ivar Bárdsson, to Greenland. He was for a number of years steward of the bishop’s residence at Gardar, and is said also to have visited the Western Settlement. We do not know for certain how long he was in Greenland, but in 1364 he again appears in Norway [cf. G. Storm, 1887, p. 74]. There exists in Danish a description of the fjords, more especially of the Eastern Settlement, which, according to its own words, must to a great extent be derived from oral communications of this Ivar (see below). These must originally have been taken down by another Norwegian, in Norwegian, and were thence translated into Danish [cf. F. Jónsson, 1899, p. 279]. There is thus a double possibility that the third-hand version we possess may contain many errors and misconceptions, of which, in fact, it bears evident marks. After speaking of the fjords in the Eastern Settlement, it says of the Western Settlement and of the journey thither:[78]

From an Icelandic MS. of the fourteenth century

Strangely enough no author has expressed a doubt of the credibility of this description, although as usually interpreted it contains an impossibility, which must strike any one on a closer examination. It is still commonly interpreted as though Ivar Bárdsson had found the whole Western Settlement destroyed by Eskimo.[80] But if this was so, how could he have found there wild cattle, sheep, horses and goats? The whole Western Settlement must then have been destroyed the summer that he was there; for the wild cattle could not possibly have supported themselves through the winter in Greenland; evidently the author, who was unacquainted with the conditions in Greenland, did not think of this. Besides, can any one who knows the Eskimo imagine that they slaughtered the men, but not the cattle? This represented food to them, and that is what they would first have turned their attention to. It is not stated which fjord of the Western Settlement it was that Ivar visited; but in any case it is hardly to be supposed that it was all the fjords, which thus would all have been destroyed at the same time. The conclusion that Ivar found the whole Western Settlement laid waste is therefore in any case unfounded; it can at the most have been one fjord, or perhaps only one homestead (?). If there should really be some historical foundation for the description of Ivar Bárdsson’s voyage, then it may perhaps be interpreted in an altogether different way. The people of the Western Settlement, where the conditions for keeping cattle were far less favourable than farther south in the Eastern Settlement, undoubtedly became earlier absorbed among the Eskimo and went over to their mode of living. This may also be what is alluded to in the perhaps approximately contemporary statement of 1342, already quoted (p. 101), which says that the Greenlanders “turned to the people of America.” It is possible that it was just this same state of things that was the cause of Ivar’s being sent to expel the Skrælings from the Western Settlement. When he arrived in the summer at the fjord which he possibly visited, the people may therefore, in Eskimo fashion, have been absent on sealing expeditions somewhere out on the sea-coast and living in tents, while the cattle were turned out at pasture round the homesteads.[81] This would explain how they came to be found alive. The men of the Eastern Settlement then, with or against their better conscience, stole and carried off the property of the half-Eskimo men of the Western Settlement during their absence, and when the latter returned they found their homesteads plundered, not by Eskimo but by Greenlanders. But it is perhaps very questionable whether the whole account of this voyage is particularly historical. The statement about the whirlpools, for one thing, is mythical, pointing to an idea that this was near the end of the earth, and in the description immediately following like and unlike are mixed together in a way that is calculated to arouse doubt. We read thus:

As will be seen, one absurdity succeeds another. It may be objected that as it is not stated that this last paragraph is due to Ivar the Greenlander, it may have been added later; but it contains an admixture of statements that must come from Greenland—e.g., about the white bears, whales’ tusks (i.e., of walrus or narwhale), walrus hides, soapstone (steatite), of which they make pots, and large vessels; it is also stated that “there are many reindeer,” and it seems probable that it is all derived from the same untrustworthy source.

To what has here been said some will object that, even if this description ascribed to Ivar Bárdsson bears evident marks of being inexact, it shows at any rate that in Norway, when it was taken down, the view prevailed that the Western Settlement had been destroyed by an attack of the Skrælings. But nothing of the kind is really stated in the account (cf. above, p. 108, note 3); and the possibly contemporary statement (of 1342 ?) which has already been given (p. 100) shows that in Iceland, at any rate in the seventeenth century, the contrary view prevailed, unless indeed we are to explain this statement as having arisen through a misunderstanding of Lyschander.

Under the year 1379 the so-called “Gottskalks Annáll” (of the second half of the sixteenth century) has a statement which cannot be regarded as certain, as it is not found in the other Icelandic annals, but which may have been taken from older sources. It reads [G. Storm’s edition of Islandske Annaler, 1888, p. 364]:

It is possible that this may have some historical foundation, and in that case it doubtless refers to some collision or attack, perhaps at sea, in which the Eskimo were superior and the Greenlanders were defeated, which latter circumstance is the reason of our hearing something about it; in the contrary case it would not have been reported. That the Eskimo took two boys is conceivable if they were quite young, so that they could be trained for sealing; they would thus provide an increase of the capital of the community. It is not unlikely that rumours of some such collisions as this may have contributed to form the ideas prevalent in Norway as to the formidable character of the Skrælings,[83] while at the same time there existed ideas of their flying from Europeans, which appear in the reports of the Pygmies (cf. the letter to the Pope, about 1450, and Walkendorf, above, p. 86). Whether the encounter referred to took place in the Western or in the Eastern Settlement (or perhaps in Nordrsetur ?) we do not know. If we are to place any reliance on Ivar Bárdsson’s description, we must suppose that the Western Settlement and its fate were little known at that time. But that friendly relations between the Greenlanders and the Eskimo may have prevailed also in the Eastern Settlement later than this seems to result from the account of the widely travelled Icelander Björn Einarsson Jorsalafarer’s stay in Greenland from 1385 to 1387. On a voyage to Iceland in 1385 he was in distress, and was driven out of his course to the Eastern Settlement with four ships, which all arrived safe and well in Iceland in 1387.[84] It seems that there was a difficulty in feeding all these crews, but Björn is said to have had the district of Eric’s fjord handed over to him while he was there (?), and received as a contribution 130 fore-quarters of sheep (?). There is also related a fable that on his coming there and going down to the sea to look for seals he happened to witness a combat between a polar bear and a walrus, “who always fight when they meet,[85] and he afterwards killed them both.”

The description of Björn Einarsson’s voyage is full of extravagances and anything but trustworthy; but his stay in Greenland with the four ships is certainly historical; and the description of the two young Eskimo has many features so typical of the Eskimo—such as the girl’s fondness for children, her making a hood of whale’s guts, and their superior skill in sealing—that they show without doubt that at that time there was intercourse with the Eskimo in the Eastern Settlement.

From an existing royal document of 1389 it appears that, when Björn and his companions came from Iceland to Bergen in 1388, they were prosecuted for illegal trading with Greenland, which was a royal monopoly; but they were acquitted, since they had been driven there in great distress and were obliged to trade in order to obtain food [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. pp. 139, f.].

A document to which much weight has been attached is a papal letter which has been preserved, from Nicholas V. in 1448 to the two bishops of Iceland. It is there said of Greenland, amongst other things [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 170]:

As the barbarians here must undoubtedly mean the Eskimo, it has been regarded as a historical fact that the latter about 1418 made a devastating attack on the Eastern Settlement, and this document has thus lent weighty support to the general opinion that the Greenland settlements perished as the result of an Eskimo war of extermination. But the letter itself shows such obvious ignorance of conditions in Greenland, especially with regard to the Eskimo, that there must be some doubt about the complaint on which it is based. To begin with, it is in itself unlikely that the peaceful and unwarlike Eskimo, who can have had no practice in warfare, since they had previously had no one to fight with, except walruses and bears, should have come with a “fleet” and made an organised attack in large masses, and destroyed people and houses and churches in the Eastern Settlement. Even if they might have been provoked to resistance or even revenge by ill-usage on the part of the Greenlanders, or perhaps have coveted their iron implements, it is an impossibility that they should have organised themselves for a campaign. But it is added that they carried off the inhabitants of both sexes to use them as slaves; for what work?—in sealing they were themselves superior, in preparing skins and food their women were superior; and other work they had none. To a Greenland Eskimo it would be an utterly absurd idea to feed unnecessary slaves, and it betrays itself as of wholly European origin. The statement that after the incursion only nine parish churches were left also betrays ignorance; as pointed out by Storm, there were never more than twelve, even in the flourishing period of the Settlement, and by about 1418 there were certainly not nine in all. Furthermore, the letter is not addressed to the two bishops really officiating in Iceland, but to the two impostors, the German Marcellus and his confederate Mathæus, who by means of false representations had induced Pope Nicholas V. to consecrate them bishops of Iceland [cf. G. Storm, 1892, p. 399]. The probability is that the two impostors themselves composed the complaint from Greenland which was the cause of the papal letter, and which thus did not reach the Pope until thirty years after the alleged incursion; their object must have been to obtain further advantages. The papal document of 1448 must therefore be entirely discarded as historical evidence so far as its statements about Greenland are concerned.

Consequently the only possibly historical statement left to us, to prove that the Eskimo took the offensive, is that of their “harrying” in 1379; but from this we can doubtless only conclude that at the most there was a collision between Eskimo and Greenlanders. It has also been adduced that the Eskimo of Greenland have a few legends of fighting with the ancient Norsemen, and one which tells how the last of the Norsemen was slain. It must, however, be remembered that these legends were taken down in the last century, when the Eskimo had again been in contact with Europeans for several hundred years, and when Norwegians and Danes had been living in the country for over a hundred years. Some of the legends certainly refer to recent collisions with Europeans, and it is not easy to say what value can be attached to the others as evidence of an extermination of the last Norsemen. It is also to be remarked that the Norsemen, or Long-Beards, are not spoken of with ill-will in these legends, but rather with sympathy, which is difficult to understand if there had been such hatred as would account for a war of extermination. Add to this that the particular encounter which led to the last Long-Beard being pursued and slain arose, according to the tale, quite accidentally, which is difficult to imagine if it was the conclusion of a lengthy war of extermination, in which homestead after homestead and district after district had been harried and laid waste. The legends of the Eskimo cannot therefore be cited as evidence of the probability of any such war.