Atlantis Online
March 28, 2024, 10:46:27 am
Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Login with username, password and session length
News: Giant crater may lie under Antarctic ice
http://space.newscientist.com/article/dn9268
 
  Home Help Arcade Gallery Links Staff List Calendar Login Register  

Legendary islands of the Atlantic; a study in medieval geography

Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 [7] 8 9   Go Down
  Print  
Author Topic: Legendary islands of the Atlantic; a study in medieval geography  (Read 7150 times)
0 Members and 99 Guests are viewing this topic.
Autolocus
Superhero Member
******
Posts: 3198



« Reply #90 on: July 19, 2009, 03:39:15 am »

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.
Report Spam   Logged
Pages: 1 2 3 4 5 6 [7] 8 9   Go Up
  Print  
 
Jump to:  

Powered by EzPortal
Bookmark this site! | Upgrade This Forum
SMF For Free - Create your own Forum
Powered by SMF | SMF © 2016, Simple Machines
Privacy Policy