THE ICELANDIC COLONY IN GREENLAND

BY VILHJÁLMUR STEFÁNSSON

NOTE. - There are three chief sources used in the following article : (1) the various Icelandic sagas, some of which deal largely with Greenland and Greenlanders, while others refer to Greenland events only incidentally; (2) the Icelandic Annals, for and including the years 1288 to 1411; and (3) Diplomatic Papers, mostly papal documents relating to church affairs, although some of them are records of ecclesiastical courts, and similar chronicles. These three sources have been included in a three-volume compilation, Grænlands Historiske Mindesmærker, published in Copenhagen, 1838-45. The author of the present paper has relied chiefly on this authority so far as the Latin papers and the Annals are concerned; in the case of the sagas he has used the Icelandic editions of them in the library of Harvard College.

The Northmen who inhabited the coasts of Norway, Sweden, and Denmark were, when history brings them into view, a seafaring people. At first they hugged their own coasts; later they crossed the Baltic and the North sea and beat up and down the shores for purposes of trade or pillage - —often discharging a merchant cargo and then turning to piracy. Becoming bolder with experience they "sailed directly west", as the sagas have it, and discovered the Shetlands; a little later they came upon the Orkneys and the north coast of Scotland. About the middle of the ninth century the Faroes became known to the Northmen, and in 874 the first settlement was made in Iceland. By 930 all of Iceland had been colonized, chiefly by those of the Norwegian nobility, with their retainers, who found the overlordship of Harald the Fairhaired too irksome. Harald became the first king of all Norway after the battle of Hafrsfjord in 872, when the opposition of the independent petty kings, of whom Harald had been one, was finally crushed.

The discovery of Greenland was the logical result of the settlement of Iceland combined with the lack on the part of the mariner of that time of compass or of means of accurately reckoning his position at sea, for a ship from Norway, failing to strike Iceland and not knowing its location, was almost certain to reach Greenland.

Thus it happened about the year 900 that a certain Gunnbjörn, of Norway, missed Iceland and found himself close to some skerries, with land in sight to the west. Though he had never been to Iceland he knew from descriptions that the shores before him were another land, and so he turned back. The skerries were thereafter known by the name of this navigator, and the tradition of them was preserved.

About the year 950 a man named Eirikr the Red was outlawed in Norway for the killing of several people for whom he had a personal dislike. He went to Iceland, but there also certain persons did not please him; he killed some of them and was again outlawed, this time for three years.

Not wishing apparently to trust himself where he might find a disagreeable neighbor on each hand, Eirikr set sail for Gunnbjörn's skerries and the land that lay beyond. It was in 982 he sailed, and the next three years he spent in exploring the coast, especially that part of it lying between Cape Farewell and Ikersuak, which he called Broad Firth. He selected a site for a homestead, named many mountains, islands, and bays, and called the country GreenLand. He "said that people would desire going to it all the more if the land had a fair name." In 984 Eirikr went to Iceland for his worldly possessions, and the next year he returned to Greenland as his new home.

This was the beginning of the colony in Greenland, which may fairly be called Icelandic, for the records show that most of the settlers came from Iceland. In one summer 25 ships left the west coast of Iceland bound for the new settlements; only 14 of these reached their destination, the rest being either lost at sea or driven back by ice and unfavorable weather. Allowing 50 emigrants to a ship, and this is considered a reasonable estimate by authorities on the navigation of the period, probably some 700 Icelanders went to Greenland the first summer. After this time the records mention only a few families who went there from either Iceland or Norway. What the population numbered when the colony was at its best, say in the twelfth century, must remain a matter for conjecture.

Grænlandia Vetus Chorographia, an ancient manuscript now lost, is quoted by the medieval historian Björn Jönsson. It gives some interesting facts about the colony and furnishes a basis for an estimate of its population.

There were two Icelandic colonies in Greenland: the Eastern and the Western. Both were on the southwest coast, for the east coast was then, as now, barricaded with ice. The Eastern settlement is considered to have reached from 60° to 61° north latitude, while the Western settlement was between 64° and 65°. After naming and describing various bays, islands, and other features in the Eastern settlement, Jönsson's account goes on to say:

"Thence (from the E. Settlement) it is vi days, rowing for vi men to the Western Settlement, then it is vi days, rowing to Lysu-firth, thence vi days to the Karl-Booths, thence III days to Bear Island and twelve days around it. . . . It is said there are CLXXXX dwellings in the Eastern Settlement and xc in the Western."

It seems reasonable to suppose that there were at least 10 persons on a farm, for in Iceland, the country most nearly analogous, the average is more than 20 to a farm. On the basis of 280 farms in the two colonies, the total population of Greenland at the time under consideration should have fallen not far short of 3,000.

The literary sources, as well as modern excavations and researches, give evidence that the manner of life in the colonies was essentially the same as in Iceland. Horses, cattle, sheep, and goats were brought from Iceland, and the barns provided for them are shown to have been of a type of construction essentially similar to that common in the mother country.'

The two things that tended most to differentiate the conditions of life in Greenland from those prevailing in Iceland were (a) the greater difficulty in communicating from Greenland with the outside world on account of greater distance and more dangerous seas, and (b) the abundance in Greenland of game of various kinds either scarce or unknown in Iceland — bears, deer, foxes, seals, walrus, and other animals.

At first, communication between Greenland and Iceland and Norway was fairly frequent. After the new country was Christian

1 Grænlendinga Saga, by Professor F. Jónsson: Copenhagen, 1899.

ized in the year 1000, church documents throw considerable light on the life of the people; after 1124, when the first bishop of Greenland as a separate and independent bishopric was consecrated, papal letters and documents come to be of considerable interest. They show, among other things, that Greenland contributed, in walrus ivory, oil, and ropes of hide, its share toward the maintenance of the Crusades.

During the first two centuries of their history the Greenlanders proved themselves intrepid voyagers, sailing to Markland (probably Newfoundland) for "merchandise"; such is the term used in the Iceland annals, though house timber is probably meant. A ship which had "previously been in the Markland trade" from Greenland was driven upon the west coast of Iceland in 1347. This is probably the last authentic mention in Icelandic records of voyages to America.

It was early found useful to establish summer hunting stations far up the west coast of Greenland, for game was much more abundant there than near the settlements; besides, in many cases, those who killed game within the limits of the colony were forced to give a certain proportion of it to the church. Voyages to the north therefore became frequent, and it is from the account of one of these that we get the earliest intimation that the colonists were beginning to dread the approach of the Eskimo. Our authority is the Icelandic Hauk's-Book; the voyage spoken of took place in the year 1266.

"The summer that the priest Arnaldr left Greenland . . . there were found in the sea pieces of wood that had been hewn with small axes or knives, and one piece that had stuck in it rows of teeth and pieces of bone. That summer also there came from Northr-Seta (one of the summer hunting stations to the north) men who had gone farther north than anyone else, so far as was known. They found no dwellings of savages except in the heath above Krok-Firth, and it is therefore men think that that is the nearest way for the savages to come (upon the settlements) from the lands which they inhabit.

"Then the clergy fitted out ships to discover what there was farther north than they had ever been before, and they sailed beyond Krok-Firth Heath until the land became lower.1 Then there came a south wind, with

1 This may possibly mean that they sailed out to sea, i. e., toward America, until the receding land looked low on the horizon.

When it cleared they saw seal, whales, and a great num

darkness, and they had to drift before it. many islands and various kinds of game ber of bears. They went quite to the bottom of the bay, and all the land was lower that way, both the land to the south and the glacier, for there was a glacier to the south of them as far as the eye could reach. They found some old-looking savage dwellings, but they could not land for fear of the bears. Then they proceeded another three days and found more savages' dwellings in some islands south of Snow Head."

Later on, in describing the land in which these most remote hunting stations were situated, the same account says:

"No wood grows there, but there is driftwood. This northward extension of Greenland especially abounds in trees and other drift materials that come from Markland. The Greenlanders must continually keep up sailings to the north, both for game and for driftwood.'

To show how far north these earliest arctic voyagers penetrated, the Danish archeologist and traveler, Daniel Bruun, cites the fact that in 1824 there was found 20 miles north of the most northerly Danish post, Upernavik (north latitude 72° 55′ 20′′) a small Icelandic runic stone. This was discovered in one of three ancient stone heaps which are built there in a hillside, evidently as a landmark to sailors. The inscription on the stone reads: "Erlingr Sighvatsson, Bjarni Thortharson, and Indrithi Oddsson, the Saturday before Rogation Day (i. e., April 25) raised these vörthur and leveled the surrounding ground."

In the fourteenth century contact with the Eskimo became more frequent and the settlers began to feel their nearness as a source of impending danger. Their fears were soon realized, for about the middle of the century the Western settlement was completely destroyed. No eye-witness escaped to tell the tale to the Eastern colony, whose people, after passing some years without communication with the sister settlement, finally fitted out an expedition under the command of one Ivar Barthsson, a Norwegian who came to Greenland in 1341 as superintendent of the bishopric farm of Garthr. Later this man went back to Norway, and there told to another person, who transcribed them, the facts which go to make up the well-known Description of Greenland, by Ivar Barthsson. A translation of a few lines from this work follows: