The Colonization of Eastern Greenland

had been sighted a few years previously by his countryman Gunnbj6rn. Encountering ice Eric turned to the south until he rounded the southern promontory of the huge land mass and, still following the ice towards the northwest, found an opening amongst the floes, which allowed him to penetrate towards the coast. Compared with his former home on the bleak and desolate northern part of Iceland Eric found the new land good and inviting. He explored several of the fiords, chose that he considered best, and took land after the old Icelandic manner, calling it Greenland and proclaiming himself master over all he saw. When his time of outlawry had been served he persuaded other Icelanders to join him. The colony throve. About the year I200 when it attained its highest development several thousand people lived in the so-called Western and Eastern Settlements. There were some 280 farmsteads, I6 churches, even monasteries and nunneries. A bishopric was founded, the see being the present Igaliko, the old Gardar, and here, as well as at Brattahlid, the farm of Eric the Red, many ruins have been found, among others of the cathedral and the houses of the farmstead itself, which shows that at one time there must have been a very considerable occupation in cattle raising and sheep farming. The subsequent fate of the settlers is, however, shrouded in mystery. Communication with Europe became less and less frequent, the last official sailing being in I4IO. Thrown entirely on its own resources, the old Norse colony gradually declined,' whether owing to degeneration caused by intermarriage, by a deterioration of the climate, or for other unknown reasons is uncertain; but there seems to be no doubt that about the beginning of the sixteenth century the last survivors had succumbed to the more powerful native inhabitants of the country, the Eskimos

Archaeology · Colonization · Geography · Settlement (finance · Sound (geography · Arctic and Russian Policy Studies · Geology · History · Indigenous Studies and Ecology · Oceanography · Polar Research and Ecology

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