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102 GREENLAND OR GREEN ISLAND
the average fifty miles wide and occasionally much wider. It was partly shut in by forbidding headlands and perverse currents, but feasible of access when the true course was disclosed. Some parts of this region were, and still are, green with grass and bright with summer flowers. Nansen, who certainly ought to know, declares that the Greenland sites chosen would have seemed more attractive than Iceland to an Icelander. Rink, who was connected with the Greenland government for a full generation, mentions certain places with special approval and regards life in most parts of the inhabited region quite contentedly. 13 Pro- fessor Hovgaard tells us: 14
ICELANDIC SETTLEMENT
It was on this strip of land that the Icelanders settled at the end of the tenth century. Though barren on the outer shores and islands and on the hills, it is covered at the inner part of the fiords on the low level by a rich growth of grass together with stunted birch trees and various bushes, par- ticularly willows. On the north side of the valleys crowberries (Empetrum nigrurri) may be found. . .
Eric settled in Ericsfiord, the present Tunugdliarfik, at a place which he called Brattahlid, now Kagsiarsuk, in 985 or 986. Two distinct colonies were founded, the Eastern Settlement, extending from about Cape Fare- well to a point well beyond Cape Desolation, comprising the whole of Julianehaab Bay and the coast past Ivigtut, and the Western Settlement, beginning about one hundred and seventy miles farther north at Lysu- fiord, [i.e. Agnafiord], the present Ameralikfiord, comprising the district of Godthaab.
The fiord next Ericsfiord in the Eastern Settlement was Einarsfiord, now Igalikofiord. These fiords were separated at their head by a low and narrow strip of land, the present Igaliko Isthmus. It was here, at Gardar, that the Althing of Greenland met, and here was also found the bishop's seat, established at the beginning of the twelfth century. There were as many as sixteen churches in Greenland, for almost every fiord had its own church on account of the long distances and difficult traveling between the fiords.
The unfamiliar localities above named may be followed by the aid of the accompanying map (Fig. 15) copied from Finnur
1S Henry Rink: Danish Greenland, Its People and Its Products, London, 1877, pp. 306-312 and passim.
14 William Hovgaard: The Voyages of the Norsemen to America (Scandinavian Monographs, Vol. i), American-Scandinavian Foundation, New York, 1914, pp. 25 and 26.
ICELANDIC SETTLEMENT
103
J6nsson's maps, 16 which embody the results of the research of the best experts and scholars with the aid of relics on the ground and surviving records. It is apparent that from the first to last the heart of Greenland was about the low, fairly
FIG. 15 Map of the early Norse Western and Eastern Settlements of Greenland. Scale 1:6,400,000. (The inset below, 1:70,000,000, shows the relation of Norway, Iceland, and Greenland.)
fertile, favorable tract near the heads of the two fiords named for Eric and his friend, Einar, and not far from Eric's Green- land home. The Western Settlement was a comparatively small offshoot, with four churches only, yet it contrived to main- tain existence for between three and four centuries, being at last
15 Finnur J6nsson: Gronlands gamle Topografi efter Kilderne: Osterbygden og Vesterbygden, Meddelelser om Grdnland,Vo\. 20 (text, pp. 267-329), Pis. 2 and 3, 1899-
104
GREENLAND OR GREEN ISLAND
obliterated, as is supposed, by the Eskimos. The main settlement was still more enduring, having a continuous record of nearly half a millennium, a history not surpassed in duration by some far more populous and powerful nations.
This seems marvelous, if it be true that the entire population never exceeded 2,000 souls, as Nansen and Hovgaard have
FIG. 16 Section of the Clavus map of 1427 showing Greenland continuous with Europe. (After Joseph Fischer's hand-copied reproduction.)
supposed. Rink, on the other hand, estimated the maximum at io,ooo. 16 Some intermediate number would seem more likely than either extreme, if we may hazard a conjecture where doctors disagree. The prosperity of the colony, such as it was, seems to have been at its best in the eleventh and twelfth cen- turies but was never conspicuous enough to get an outline of Greenland into the maps until about the time of final extinction.
" Op. cil., p. 27.
iff
GREENLAND AS A PENINSULA 105
GREENLAND AS A PENINSULA
We must remember, though, that during the earlier part of this period there were not many maps extant which included the Atlantic, and of these the greater number were more concerned with theological conceptions and figures of wonder than with the sober facts of geography, especially in remote places. About 1300 a remarkable series of navigators' portolan maps, revolutionizing this attitude, began to add to the delineation of the Mediter- ranean, which they had already developed with considerable minuteness, something definite of the outer European coasts, islands, and waters. Step by step they advanced into the unknown or little known, but perhaps none of them, before the fifteenth century, can be confidently relied on as indicating Greenland.
This remained for the Nancy map of Claudius Clavus (Schwartz), 1427" (Fig. 16). Greenland is, however, made dis- tinctly continuous with Europe, being connected thereto by a long land bridge, far north of Iceland, in accordance with an hypothesis then prevailing. The second half of the same century saw this conception of Claudius Clavus greatly popularized. Divers maps 18 appeared, some showing Greenland as a prodig- iously elongated peninsula of Europe, having its tip in the correct location (Fig. 17), while others ran up a perverse trapezoidal Greenland from the north coast of Norway.
Probably one or more of the former kind suggested in part the memorable Zeno map of I558 19 (Fig. 19), professing to be a reproduction of a map prepared by the Zeni of a past generation and carelessly damaged by the final editor in boyhood. If not a total forgery, it is at least untrustworthy, as we shall see in
" A. E. Nordenskiold, Facsimile- Atlas, p. 49. Also copied by Joseph Fischer: The Discoveries of the Norsemen in America, With Special Relation to Their Early Cartographical Representation, transl. by B. H. Soulsby, London, 1903, p. 70.
18 Joseph Fischer, Pis. 1-8. See also the map of Henricus Martillus Germanus (1489) in E. G. Ravenstein: Martin Behaim, His Life and His Globe, London, 1908, p. 67. The name Greenland does not appear on the latter map, but the peninsula is there.
19 Kretschmer, atlas, PI. 4, map 4; better facsimile reproductions in the works by Major and Lucas cited in footnotes i and 2, Ch. IX.
io6 GREENLAND OR GREEN ISLAND
Chapter IX, and the same is true of an accompanying narrative of experiences in Greenland about 1400.
Another map of somewhat later date, by Sigurdr Stefansson, probably I59O 30 (Fig. 18), is a quite honest presentation of the traditional views of Icelanders at that time and is distinctly more modern than the Zeno map in the complete severance of Green- land from Europe and its union with the great western land mass which included Helluland, Markland, and Vinland, supposed to be divided by a fiord from "America of the Spaniards." Of course, that union with the Western continent is not precisely accurate and the eastward trend which he gives his great peninsula is still less so; but his map, often copied, remains a peculiarly interesting production.
LIFE OF THE ICELANDIC COLONY
To hark back to Adam of Bremen, the charges of special cruelty and predatory attacks on seafarers in the middle of the eleventh century awaken some surprise. The life of the people seems simple and innocent enough, as disclosed by their relics and remnants, which have been unearthed with great care. As seal bones predominate in their refuse piles, this offshore supply must have been their greatest reliance for animal food; but they had also sheep, goats, and a small breed of cattle. They spun wool and wove it; they carved vessels of soapstone, sometimes with decoration; they milked cows and made butter; they exported sealskins, ropes of walrus hide, and walrus tusks; they paid tithes to the Pope in such commodities; they boiled seal fat and made seal tar; they gathered tree trunks as driftwood far
^Thormodus Torfaeus: Gronlandia Antiqua, seu veteris Gronlandiae descriptio, Copenhagen, 1706, Tabula II, after p. 20. Also reproduced by Gustav Storm: Studies on the Vineland Voyages, MBmoires Soc. Royale des Antiquaires du Nord (Copenhagen), N. S., 1884-89, pp. 307-370 (map on p. 333); by Fridtjof Nansen: In Northern Mists, Vol. 2, p. 7; and by W. H. Babcock: Early Norse Visits to North America, Smithsonian Misc. Colls., Vol. 59, No. 19, Washington, D. C. t 1913, map facing p. 62; by Hovgaard, op. cit., opp. p. 118. These are two versions, the one appearing in Torfaeus (1706), reproduced herewith (Fig. 18) and by Nansen, the other a copy of about 1670 belonging to Bishop Thordr Thorlaksson, now preserved in the Royal Library of Copenhagen (Old Collection, No. 2881, 4to), of Stefans- son's original map, which was lost. The earlier version is reproduced by Storm, Babcock, and Hovgaard.
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