In Northern Mists Volume Ii Part 7

"Item there lies in the north, farther than the Western Settlement, a great mountain which is called 'Hemelrachs felld' [or 'Himinraz fjall,' cf. vol. i. p. 302], and farther than to this mountain must no man sail, if he would preserve his life from the many whirlpools which there lie round the whole sea."

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Bardsson 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 Bardsson'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 Skraelings from the Western Settlement. When he arrived in the summer at the fjord which he possibly visited, the people may therefore, in Eskimo fas.h.i.+on, 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:

"Item in Greenland there are silver-mines [which are not found there], white bears having red spots on the head [sic!].... Item in Greenland great tempests never come. Item snow falls much in Greenland, it is not so cold there as in Iceland and Norway, there grows on high mountains and down below fruit as large as some apples and good to eat, the best wheat that can be grows there."[82]

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 (steat.i.te), 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 Bardsson 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 Skraelings. 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.

[Sidenote: Eskimo attack in 1379]

Under the year 1379 the so-called "Gottskalks Annall" (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]:

"The Skraelings harried the Greenlanders and killed of them eighteen men and took two boys and made slaves of them."

[Sidenote: Bjorn Jorsalafarer's account, 1385-87]

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 circ.u.mstance 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 Skraelings,[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 Bardsson'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 Bjorn 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 s.h.i.+ps, which all arrived safe and well in Iceland in 1387.[84] It seems that there was a difficulty in feeding all these crews, but Bjorn 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."

"Then Bjorn the franklin found maintenance for his people through one of the largest rorquals being driven ash.o.r.e, with a marked harpoon belonging to Olaf of Isafjord in Iceland, and finally it was also of importance that he came to the a.s.sistance of two trolls [i.e., Eskimo], a young brother and sister, on a tidal skerry [i.e., one that was under water at high tide]. They swore fidelity to him, and from that time he never was short of food; for they were skilled in all kinds of hunting, whatever he wished or needed. What the troll girl liked best was when Solveig, the mistress of the house, allowed her to carry and play with her boy who had lately been born. She also wanted to have a linen hood like the mistress, but made it for herself of whale's guts. They killed themselves, and threw themselves into the sea from the cliffs after the s.h.i.+ps, when they were not allowed to sail with the franklin Bjorn, their beloved master, to Iceland."

The description of Bjorn Einarsson's voyage is full of extravagances and anything but trustworthy; but his stay in Greenland with the four s.h.i.+ps 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 doc.u.ment of 1389 it appears that, when Bjorn 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 [Gronl. hist. Mind., iii.

pp. 139, f.].

[Sidenote: Papal letter of 1448 on an Eskimo attack]

A doc.u.ment 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 [Gronl. hist.

Mind., iii. p. 170]:

"From the neighbouring coasts of the heathens the barbarians came thirty years ago with a fleet, attacked the people living there [in Greenland] with a cruel a.s.sault, and so destroyed the land of their fathers and the sacred edifices with fire and sword that only nine parish churches were left in the whole island [Greenland], and these are said to be the most remote, which they could not reach on account of the steep mountains. They carried the miserable inhabitants of both s.e.xes as prisoners to their own country, especially those whom they regarded as strong and capable of bearing constant burdens of slavery, as was fitting for their tyranny. But since, as the same complaint adds,[86] in the course of time most of them have returned from the said imprisonment to their own homes, and have here and there repaired the ruins of their dwellings, they long to establish and extend divine service again, as far as possible...." Then follows a lengthy discourse on their religious needs, and what might be done to relieve them, without costing the rich Papacy anything.

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 doc.u.ment 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 ma.s.ses, 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 s.e.xes 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 flouris.h.i.+ng 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 Mathaeus, 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 doc.u.ment of 1448 must therefore be entirely discarded as historical evidence so far as its statements about Greenland are concerned.

[Sidenote: Eskimo legends of fighting with Nors.e.m.e.n]

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 Nors.e.m.e.n, and one which tells how the last of the Nors.e.m.e.n 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 Nors.e.m.e.n. It is also to be remarked that the Nors.e.m.e.n, 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.

[Sidenote: Unwarlike disposition of the Eskimo]

It has been said that even if such warlike proceedings would be entirely incompatible with the present nature, disposition and way of thinking of the Greenland Eskimo, it may formerly have been otherwise. But in any case no long time can have elapsed between the alleged final overthrow of the Eastern Settlement, perhaps about 1500, and the rediscovery of Greenland in the sixteenth century. It is not likely that the Eskimo should have so completely changed their nature in the few intervening years; those whom the discoverers then found seem, from the accounts, to have strikingly resembled those we find later. And if one reads Hans Egede's description of the Eskimo among whom he lived and worked, it appears absolutely impossible that the same people two hundred years earlier should have waged a cruel war of extermination against the last of the Nors.e.m.e.n.

There is, it is true, a possibility, as Dr. Bjornbo has pointed out to me, that the mixture of race which gradually took place between Eskimo and Nors.e.m.e.n may for a time have produced a mixed type, which possessed a more quarrelsome disposition than the pure Eskimo, and may have inherited the not very peaceful habits of the Nors.e.m.e.n, and that in this way, for instance, a possible attack in 1379 may be explained. But this can only have been the case at the beginning of the period of intermixture, and the type must have changed again in proportion as the Eskimo element in race and culture became preponderant.[87]

[Sidenote: No tradition of a war of extermination can be proved]

The allusion to the Pygmies of Greenland in the letter to Nicholas V., quoted above (p. 86), gives us the Eskimo as we are accustomed to see them; and the description of these small men, a cubit high, who fly in a body at the sight of strangers, gives a surer and truer picture of the Skraelings than when they are represented as warlike and dangerous barbarians. The statements about the Pygmies in Claudius Clavus also enable us to see how the Nors.e.m.e.n sometimes treated the Eskimo, when they caught them

"at sea in a hide-boat, which now hangs in the cathedral at Trondhjem; there is also a long boat of hides [i.e., a women's boat] which was also once taken with such Pygmies in it."

But that these little Pygmies, a cubit high, were regarded as formidable warriors, engaged in exterminating the Nors.e.m.e.n, is difficult to believe,[88] even though Michel Beheim attributes warlike qualities to them (cf. p. 85). Walkendorf, who had so carefully collected all traditions about Greenland, describes (circa 1520) the Skraelings as an "unwarlike" and harmless people (see above, p. 86). It is impossible to reconcile this with a tradition of a war of extermination.

There are therefore good grounds for supposing that Arne Magnussen was approximately correct when he said in 1691 [Gronl. hist. Mind., iii. p.

138]:

"It is probable that owing to the daily increase of the ice and its drifting down from the Pole, it thus befell Greenland, and the Christian inhabitants either died of hunger or were constrained to practise the same Vitae genus as the savages, and thus degenerated into their nature."

[Sidenote: Last known voyage to the Eastern Settlement]

In the year 1406 the Icelanders Thorstein Helmingsson, Snorre Thorvason and Thorgrim Solvason, in one s.h.i.+p, were driven out of their course to Greenland. "They sailed out from Norway, and were making for Iceland. They stayed there [in Greenland] four winters" [cf. Islandske Annaler, ed.

Storm, 1888, p. 288]. While they were there, in the following year [1407]

"a man named Kolgrim was burnt in Greenland for that he lay with Thorgrim Solvason's wife, who was the daughter of a 'lagmand' of high standing in Iceland. This man got her consent by black art; he was therefore burnt according to sentence; nor was the woman ever after in her right mind, and died a little later."

In 1408 one of the Icelanders married in Greenland, which is of interest from the fact that several doc.u.ments bearing witness to the marriage are extant. In 1410 "Thorstein Helmingsson and Thorgrim Solvason and Snorre Thorvason and the rest of their crew sailed to Norway." Whether this was in their own s.h.i.+p we do not know; but as they sailed to Norway and not to Iceland it is doubtless most probable that their s.h.i.+p was destroyed and that they had to wait these four years for a pa.s.sage to Norway. In 1411[89] a small vessel was wrecked on the coast of Iceland; on board her came Snorre Thorvason from Norway. His wife, Gudrun, had during his absence married another man in 1410. She "now rode to meet him. He received her kindly." "Snorre took his wife to him again, but they only lived a little while together before he died, and she then married Gisle [the other man] again."

This is the last certain information we have of any voyage to the ancient settlements of Greenland. After that time all notices cease. As Holberg says [Danm. Hist., i. 531], after the time of Queen Margaret the succeeding kings had so much to do that they had no time to think of old Greenland.[90]

[Sidenote: Trade with Norway's tributary countries]

In 1431 King Eric of Pomerania complained to the English king, Henry VI., of the illegal trading which the English had carried on for the previous twenty years (that is, since 1411) with "Norway's Lands and Islands": Iceland, Greenland, the Faroes, Shetland, the Orkneys, Helgeland and Finmark; and of the acts of violence and piratical incursions, with fire and rapine, that they had committed in this period, by which they had carried off many s.h.i.+ps laden with fish and other goods, and many people had perished.[91] As early as 1413 King Eric's amba.s.sador to the English king, Henry V., had made a strong protest against all foreign and unprivileged trade with these countries. On Christmas Eve, 1432, a treaty was signed between the two kings, whereby Henry VI. engaged himself to make good all the damage the English had caused to King Eric's subjects in the said countries, and all the people who during those twenty years had been violently carried off were, by the direction of the English king, wherever they might be found in his dominions, to receive payment for their services and to return freely to their native places. Further, the old prohibition of trading with the Norwegian tributary lands was renewed.

The same prohibition was renewed and enforced on the English side by Henry VI. in 1444, and by a new treaty between him and Christiern I., concluded at Copenhagen, July 17, 1449; but this was only to remain in force till Michaelmas 1451. After that time the English merchants, some of whom no doubt were Norwegians established at Bristol, seem to have seized upon nearly the whole of the trade with Iceland, and often conducted themselves with violence there. But in 1490 this trade was made free on certain conditions.

These negotiations give us an insight into the state of things in Northern waters at that time. At the same time there were difficulties with the Hanseatic League, which tried to seize upon all trade.

Among these so-called Norwegian tributary countries was Greenland, which is mentioned with the others in the complaint of 1431; but whether this means that the English extended their trading voyages, which frequently became piratical expeditions, so far, we do not know; in any case it is not impossible, although of course the voyage to Iceland with its rich fisheries was much more important. We know that this was carried on from Bristol in particular, where, as has been said, many Norwegians were established.

[Sidenote: Possibility of voyages to Greenland in the 15th century (?)]

The statements about Greenland contained in the papal letter of 1448 were, as we have seen, false. Perhaps not very much more weight is to be attached to the story, in Peyrere's "Relation du Groenland" (Paris, 1647), of Oluf Worm of Copenhagen having found in an old Danish MS. a statement that about 1484 there were more than forty experienced men living at Bergen, who were in the habit of sailing to Greenland every year and bringing home valuable goods; but as they would not sell their wares to the Hanse merchants, the latter revenged themselves by inviting them to a supper and killing them all at night. This then was said to be the end of the Greenland voyage, which had to cease thenceforward, because no one knew the course any more [cf. Gronl hist. Mind., iii. pp. 471, f.]. The story as given here is in many respects improbable; but even if the forty or more men and the annual voyage are exaggerations, there are other indications that about that time there may have been some sort of communication with Greenland or the countries to the west of it, as will be mentioned later. The royal monopoly of the Iceland trade was no longer in force, and the same may have applied to Greenland. It is then conceivable that merchants may have gone there; and if their trading prospered they had every reason to keep it as secret as possible, lest others should interfere with their livelihood. This would explain why such voyages are not mentioned by historical authorities. Just then, too, was an uneasy time, with a sort of war of privateers between England and Denmark-Norway, which was not concluded until the provisional peace of 1490; there were thus many pirates and privateers in Northern waters, who may well have extended their activity upon occasion to the remote and unprotected Greenland, where they could plunder with even greater impunity than in Iceland, and perhaps they increased the ruin of the settlements there.

[Sidenote: Papal letter on Greenland, 1492]

Of great interest is a letter from Pope Alexander VI.[92] of the first year of his papacy, 1492-1493, which was written in consequence of a Benedictine monk named Mathias having applied to the Pope to be appointed bishop of Greenland, and declared himself willing to go there personally as a missionary to convert the apostates. The letter runs:

"As we are informed, the church at Gade [i.e., Gardar] lies at the world's end in the land of Greenland, where the people, for want of bread, wine and oil, live on dried fish and milk; and therefore, as well as by reason of the extreme rarity of the voyages that have taken place to the said land, for which the severe freezing of the waters is alleged as the cause, it is believed that for eighty years no s.h.i.+p has landed there; and if such voyages should take place, it is thought that in any case it could only be in the month of August, when the same ice is dissolved; and for this reason it is said that for eighty years or thereabouts no bishop or priest has resided at that church.

Therefore, and because there are no Catholic priests, it has befallen that most of the paris.h.i.+oners, who formerly were Catholics, have (oh, how sorrowful!) renounced the holy sacrament of baptism received from them; and that the inhabitants of that land have nothing else to remind them of the Christian religion than a corporale [altar-cloth]

which is exhibited once a year, and whereon the body of Christ was consecrated a hundred years ago by the last priest who was there." For this reason, "to provide them with a fitting shepherd," Pope Alexander's predecessor, Innocent VIII., had appointed the Benedictine monk Mathias bishop of Gade [Gardar], and he "with much G.o.dly zeal made ready to bring the minds of the infidels and apostates back to the way of eternal salvation and to root out such errors," etc. Then follow exhortations to the Curia, the chancellors, and all the religious scriveners under pain of excommunication to let the said Mathias, on account of his poverty, escape all expenses and perquisites connected with the appointment and correspondence, etc.

The statements in the letter agree remarkably well with what we gather from other historical sources. In 1410--that is, eighty-two years before the date of the letter--the last s.h.i.+p of which we have any notice arrived in Norway from Greenland (see above, p. 118). This agrees with the statement in the letter that no s.h.i.+p had been there for eighty years. In 1377 the last officiating bishop of Gardar died, and six years later the news reached Norway, that is, 109 years before the date of the letter.

This agrees with what is said about the altar-cloth being used a hundred years before by the last priest ("ultimo sacerdote," perhaps meaning here bishop ?) at the administration of the sacrament. The a.s.sertion that it was not until August that Greenland became free of ice and that voyages could be made thither also shows a certain local knowledge; for it was not till late in the summer, usually August, that "Knarren" was accustomed to sail from Bergen to Greenland.