keeping and improving. And this has been the well grounded opinion of
our late monarchs of Denmark, and many of their chief counsellors, who
have made so much of Greenland, that they have spared no costs in
fitting out several ships for its discovery, of which hereafter farther
notice shall be taken. This discovery has been chiefly undertaken to the
end, that the Christian religion, which has been unfortunately worn out
in these parts of the world, might again be re-established, and the poor
inhabitants, _viz._ the offspring of the old Northern Christians, if
through God’s mercy any such may yet be found there, as true subjects to
Denmark and Norway, might be assisted and comforted both as to body and
soul. And although these most laudable endeavours of those glorious
monarchs, of pious and blessed memory, have not had all the success one
could desire, yet they have opened the way for fresh attempts of the
same nature, which (God be thanked) have not been lost, inasmuch as the
Western coast of Greenland (by the Danes called Westerbygd) not only has
been fully discovered, but also several new lodges have been there
erected, and the holy word of God has been preached, with God’s
blessing, to these ignorant Heathens, that dwell in those places where
Christianity has been quite extinct and forgot. All this ought to
encourage us to continue our endeavours to discover the Eastern shore,
where it is confessed the chief colony has been seated; and perhaps the
offspring of the old Norwegians and Icelanders may be recovered; which I
do not think impossible, provided we go on in the right way, as I hope
to show in the following treatise.
How praiseworthy and glorious an enterprize would it be, to undertake so
great and wholesome a work, chiefly in regard to these unhappy people,
who, by a just judgment of God, now for upwards of three hundred years,
have been debarred all communication with Christians; which to remedy
not only our civil but Christian duty obliges us. It becomes us
therefore heartily to pray God Almighty, that he will be pleased to
appease his wrath kindled against these poor wretches, and to disclose
to our most gracious sovereign, and to other well intentioned
Christians, the best way and means to this country’s discovery and
happy restitution. And though we should fail of success, in still
meeting with the aforesaid offspring of the old Norwegian and Iceland
Christians, who, for aught we know, may be all extinct and destroyed, as
we found it on the West coast; yet, for all that, I should not think all
our labour lost, nor our costs made to no purpose, as long as it may be
for the good and advantage of those ignorant Heathens, that live there;
to whom we have reason to hope our most gracious sovereign will also
extend his fatherly clemency, and Christian zeal, to provide for their
eternal happiness, as he so graciously has done for those on the Western
shore; seeing that by these means the old ruined places might anew be
provided with colonies and inhabitants, which would prove no small
advantage to the king and his dominions. This my well meant project,
that God in his mercy will advance and promote, to the honour of his
most Holy Name, and the enlightening and saving of these poor souls, is
the sincere desire of
HANS EGEDE.
THE
NATURAL HISTORY
OF
Greenland.
CHAPTER I.
[Illustration]
_Of the Situation and Extent of Greenland._
Greenland lies but forty miles to the West of Iceland, beginning from
59° 50´ North Latitude. The Eastern coast extends itself in the North as
far as Spitzbergen, between 78° and 80°; which is thought to be an
island, separated from the continent of Greenland. The Western shore is
discovered as far as seventy odd degrees. Whether it be a large island,
or borders upon countries to the North, is not yet found out; there
seems great reason to believe it is contiguous to America on the North
West side; because there we meet with the bay or inlet, which in the sea
charts is called Davis’s Straits, from an Englishman, who in the year
1585 was the first discoverer of it; and is yearly frequented by ships
of different nations, on account of the Whale Fishery: but nobody as yet
has been able to find out the bottom of it. And according to the notice
we have endeavoured to gather from those Greenlanders who live farthest
to the North, there is either but a very narrow passage between America
and Greenland, or, as is most likely, they are quite contiguous[21]:
and I am the more inclined to believe this, because the farther you go
Northward in the said Strait, the lower is the land; contrary to what we
observe where it borders on the seas or main ocean, it never wants lofty
promontories. It has been the commonly received opinion, of a long
standing, that Greenland borders upon the Asiatic Tartary and Muscovia
on the North East: what confirms them in this notion is an old story
they give credit to, that a certain Harrald goat did travel by land,
over mountains and rocks, from Greenland to Norway, bringing along with
him a she goat, of whose milk he lived on the journey; by which he got
the surname of Harrald goat. Furthermore, the ancient Greenland
Christians, in their Chronicles, relate, that there were come to them
from the Northern parts, foreign rein deer and sheep, marked upon the
ears, and with some marks tied to their horns; from which they
concluded, that the Northern parts of Greenland were also
inhabited.--Vid. Theodore Torlaccius. But the contrary is proved by
later experiments made by the navigation of Dutchmen and others to the
North.--See Zordrager’s Greenland Fishery, Part ii, ch. 10.
Greenland is a high and rocky country, always covered with ice and snow
(except on the sea side, and in the bays or inlets) which never thaws
nor melts away. You may judge of the height by the prospect they yield
at more than twenty Norway miles distance from the shore. The whole
coast is surrounded with a vast number of large and small islands. There
are a great many inlets and large rivers to be met with, among which the
principal is called Baal’s River, in 64°, and has been navigated
eighteen or twenty Norway miles up the country; where the first Danish
lodge was settled in the year 1721. In all sea charts you will find
laid down Frobisher’s Strait and Baer Sound which they pretend, form two
large islands, adjacent to the main land; which I think are not to be
found, at least not upon the coast of Greenland; for I could not meet
with any thing like it in the voyage I undertook in the year 1723
Southward, going upon discoveries; though I went as far as to 60° that
way: but at present the newer charts lay them down, the Northern strait
in 63°, and the Southern in 62°. Some of the ancients, whom Thormoder
follows in his Greenland History, place them between 61° and 60°. So
that the charts differ mightily in this particular. Besides this, there
is not a word or a syllable mentioned in our ancient records of
Greenland of the aforesaid two straits and large islands: they only
inform us, that after the old Norwegians and Icelanders had began to
settle colonies on the East side of Greenland, over against Iceland,
they continued to spread themselves all along the shore and in the bays,
as far as Baal’s River, where they stopped, and where we find many ruins
of the old Norwegian edifices. And whereas I myself have lately met
with so many stone buildings, so far to the South, I think my conclusion
is good, that the land upon which these houses stand is no particular
island, but contiguous to the main. It is therefore very reasonable to
believe, that whereas the ancients took notice of, and so accurately
described, all those bays and islands that were inhabited, they would
not have passed by in silence these two large islands upon which such
stately buildings were erected. And for this reason I have hereto joined
a new map or delineation of Greenland, to show the contiguity of the
East and West Greenland, agreeably to other new charts of Thormoder and
others, which I follow, as far as I find them not contradictory to the
description of the ancients and to my own experience.
CHAP. II.
_First Settlement of Greenland, with some Thoughts on the
Extinction of the Norwegian Colonies; and whether on the East Side
no Remainders may be found of the old Norwegians: also, whether the
same Tract of Land cannot be recovered._
It is undoubted that the ancients, not so much driven by any necessity
or compulsion as led by a natural and inbred curiosity, embarked upon
many strange ventures; as for instance, to discover and settle colonies
in so many formerly quite unknown and uninhabited countries, to whose
discovery what particular accidents have most contributed we learn by
the several histories and descriptions thereof. For the Almighty and
good God, who has not in vain created the vast globe of the Earth, has
also not intended, that any part or province of it should lie buried in
eternal oblivion, useless to mankind. And that Greenland by such means
has been discovered and inhabited by our old Norwegians and Icelanders,
we are fully informed by the annals of Iceland; where we read, that the
brave and valiant Erick Raude (or red) who was the first discoverer of
this country, after he, in company with several other Icelanders, in the
year of our Lord 982, by mere casualty fell in with the land, and had
taken a survey of its present state, he returned to Iceland the next
year, 983, spoke much in commendation of the land, calling it the
Greenland, by which he persuaded many of his countrymen to follow him
thither, in order to find out places fit for dwelling, and to settle
there[22]. They no sooner were arrived and settled here, but they found
God was come along with them; I mean the saving knowledge of his most
holy Word. For the said Erick Raude’s son, called Leif, after he had
been instructed in the Gospel truths by King Olaf (who was the first
Christian king of Norway), brought along with him from Norway to
Greenland a priest, who taught and christened all the inhabitants of the
country. Thus this country has first been settled by Norway and Iceland
colonies, which, in after-times, have increased and been provided with
many churches and convents, bishops and teachers; which lasted as long
as the correspondence and navigation continued between them and Norway,
until the year 1406, when the last bishop was sent over to Greenland.
Yet the Norwegians were not the original natives of the land; for, not
long after their arrival, they met with the old inhabitants, a savage
people dwelling on the Western shore, originally descended from the
Americans, as may with great probability be gathered from the agreement
of their persons, customs, and habits with those who dwell to the North
of Hudson’s Bay; as likewise while those, that inhabited the Northern
parts (now known by the name of Davis’s Straits), advanced nearer and
nearer to the South, and often made war upon the Norwegians. Concerning
the cause of the ruin and total destruction of that so well established
Norwegian colony there is nothing found upon record; the reason of which
I think to be, that after all correspondence and navigation ceased
between Greenland and Norway, partly by the change and translation of
the government in Queen Margaret’s reign, and partly by the next
following continual wars between the Danes and Swedes, which caused the
navigation to those parts to be laid aside, and chiefly by the great
difficulty and innumerable dangers of such navigation; which several
causes cut off all intelligence, that might be had of that country’s
state, as may be seen in Pontanus and Claudius Lyscander.
The ancient historians divide Greenland into two parts or districts,
called West Bygd, and East Bygd. As to the West district, which is said
to have contained four parishes, and one hundred villages, all we find
in the ancient histories amounts to this, viz. that in the fourteenth
century it was sorely infested by a wild nation called Schrellings, and
laid so waste, that when the inhabitants of the Eastern district came to
the assistance of the Christians, and to expel the barbarous nation of
the Schrellings, who were fallen upon the Christians, they found to
their great astonishment the province quite emptied of its inhabitants,
and nothing remaining but some cattle and flocks of sheep, straying wild
and unguarded round about the fields and meadows; whereof they killed a
good number, which they brought home with them in their ships. By which
it appears, that the Norway Christians in the Western district were
destroyed, and Christianity rooted out by the savage Heathens. The
modern inhabitants of West Greenland, being, no doubt, the offspring of
the before mentioned wild and barbarous Schrellings, have no certain
account to give us of this matter; though they will tell you, that the
old decayed dwelling places and villages, whose ruins are yet seen, were
inhabited formerly by a nation quite different from theirs; and they
also affirm, what the ancient histories tell us, that their ancestors
made war with them, and destroyed them[23].
Now, as to the Eastern district, its present state is entirely unknown
to us, as there is no approaching it with any shipping, upon account of
the vast quantity of ice, driven from Spitzbergen and other Northern
coasts upon this shore, which, adhering to the shore, barricades the
land, and renders it wholly inaccessible. We may nevertheless gather
from the above-mentioned expedition of the East Greenlanders against the
Schrellingers, that after the destruction and total overthrow of the
Western district and its colonies, the Eastern were yet standing and
flourishing. But in what year this happened no notice is taken by the
old historians. Nevertheless, from many tokens and remainders of
probable evidence it may be inferred, that the old colony of the Eastern
district is not yet quite extinct. To the confirmation of which,
Thormoder, in his History of Greenland, alledges the following
passage:--
Bishop Amand, of Shalholt in Iceland (who, anno 1522, had been
consecrated, but, anno 1540, again resigned), once returning from Norway
to Iceland, was by a storm driven Westward upon the coast of Greenland,
which he coasted for some time Northwards, and made land towards the
evening, finding themselves off Herjolsness. They came so near to the
shore, that they could descry the inhabitants driving their flocks in
the pasture grounds: but as the wind soon after proved fair they made
all the sail they could, steering for Iceland, which they reached the
day following, and entered the Bay of St. Patrick, which lies on the
West coast of the island, in the morning early, when they were milking
their cows.
Birn of Skarsaa (as we learn by the aforesaid Thormoder Torfager) gives
the following relation:--
“In our time,” says he, “one named John Greenlander, who for a
considerable time had been employed in the service of the Hamburgh
merchants, in a voyage from thence to Iceland, met with contrary winds
and stormy weather, in which he narrowly escaped being cast away, and
lost with ship and crew upon the dreadful rocks of Greenland, by getting
in at last to a fine bay, which contained many islands, where he happily
came to an anchor under a desert island; and it was not long before he
spied several other islands not far off, that were inhabited; which, for
fear of the inhabitants, he for a while did not dare to approach; till
at last he took courage, and sending his boat on shore, went to the next
house, which seemed but very small and mean. Here he found all the
accoutrements necessary to fit out a fishing boat; he saw also a fishing
booth, or small hut, made up of stones, to dry fish in, as is customary
in Iceland. There lay a dead body of a man extended upon the ground with
his face downwards; a cap sewed together on his head; the rest of his
clothing was made partly of coarse cloth, and partly of seal skin; an
old rusty knife was found at his side, which the captain took, in order
to show it to his friends at his return home to Iceland, to serve for a
token of what he had seen. It is farther said, that this commander was
three times by stress of weather driven upon the coasts of Greenland, by
which he obtained the surname of Greenlander.”
This relation can be of no more than a hundred years standing, as
Theodore Torlack affirms: because the above mentioned annals, in which
we read it, were composed by Biorno of Skarsaa within these thirty
years.
The same author furthermore informs us, that in Iceland there has often
been found, scattered here and there on the sea shore, old broken pieces
of deal boards, parts of the ribs of boats, which on the side were
tacked together, and pasted with a sort of pitch or glue made of the
blubber of seals. Now it is admitted, that this kind of glue is nowhere
made use of but in Greenland; and a boat of this make was in the year
1625 found thrown up, upon a point of land near Reiche Strand, the
structure of which was very artificial, joined together with wooden
nails, not unlike that in which Asmund Kastenrazius, in the year 1189,
in company with twelve men, crossed over from Greenland to Iceland;
which boat was likewise tacked together with wooden nails, and the
sinews of animals. The same historian, in his book De Novitiis
Groenlandorum Indiciis, tell us, that some years ago, they found an oar
upon the Eastern shore of Iceland, whereon these words were carved in
Runick characters: _Oft var ek dascedar ek dro dik_, which signifies,
“Often was I tired, when I carried thee.” Besides this, I find a
relation in a German writer, whose name is Dithmarus Blefkenius,
concerning a certain monk, born in Greenland, who, as companion to the
bishop of the place, in the year 1546 made a voyage into Norway, where
he lived until the year 1564, and where, the author says, he got
acquainted and personally conversed with him. This monk told him many
strange and surprising things of a Dominican convent in Greenland,
called St. Thomas’s Convent; to which his parents sent him in his youth
to become a monk of that order. But the truth of this relation is very
much questioned, being, together with several others of Blefkenius’s
relations, refuted and gainsaid by Arngrim, in his Treatise, entitled
Anatome Blefkeniana. Blefkenius’s relation is nevertheless confirmed by
several other authors. Erasmus Franciscus, in his book called East and
West India State Garden, in a place where he treats of Greenland tells
us, that a captain of a Danish ship, by name Jacob Hall, being ordered
by the King his master to undertake a voyage to Greenland, he touched
first at Iceland, where he from the King’s lieutenant got intelligence
of Greenland, which before was unknown to him. And that he might the
more fully be informed of every thing relating to this matter, a certain
monk was sent for to instruct him herein, who was said to be a native of
Greenland; of whom the said Jacob Hall, in his short description, gives
the following account, according to our above-mentioned author, Erasmus
Fransciscus.
“There has formerly been a convent in Iceland, called Helgafield,
or Holy Mountain, in which, though it was decayed, lived a certain
friar, native of Greenland, with a broad and tawny face. This friar
was sent for by the King’s lieutenant, in the presence of Jacob
Hall, who wanted to be informed of the state of Greenland. The
friar accordingly told him, that being very young, he was entered
into this convent by his parents; and that he afterwards was
commanded by the same bishop, of whom he had received the holy
orders, to go along with him from thence to Norway, where he
submitted himself to the bishop of Drontheim, to whose authority
and jurisdiction all the priests of Iceland were subject; and being
returned to his native home, he again retired and shut himself up
in his former convent. This is said to have happened in the year
1546. He said moreover, that in the convent of St. Thomas, where he
also had passed some time, there was a well of burning hot water,
which, through pipes, was conveyed into all the rooms and cells of
the convent to warm them.”
But I think there is as much reason to question the authenticity of this
relation as of the former, inasmuch as there is no such thing to be
found in our Danish archives or annals. Notwithstanding which, what
concerns St. Thomas’s convent in particular is confessed, and confirmed
by the old histories of Greenland. Nicolas Zenetur, a Venetian by birth,
who served the King of Denmark in the quality of a sea captain, is said
by chance to have been driven upon the coast of Greenland in the year
1380; and to have seen that same Dominican convent. His relation is
alledged by Kircherus in the following words:--
“Here is also a Dominican convent to be seen, dedicated to St.
Thomas, in whose neighbourhood there is a volcano of a mountain
that vomits fire, and at the foot thereof a well of burning hot
water. This hot water is not only conveyed by pipes into the
convent, and through all the cells of the friars to keep them warm,
as with us the rooms are heated by stoves of wood fire or other
fuel; but here they also boil and bake their meat and bread with
the same. This volcano, or fiery mountain, throws out such a
quantity of pumice stone, that it hath furnished materials for the
construction of the whole convent. There are also fine gardens,
which reap great benefit from this hot water, adorned with all
sorts of flowers, and full of fruit. And after the river has
watered these gardens, it empties itself into the adjoining bay,
which causes it never to freeze, and great numbers of fish and sea
fowl flock thither, which yields plentiful provision for the
nourishment of the inhabitants.”
Of all the attested relations, that of Biorno of Skarsaa, concerning
Bishop Amund of Skalholt, who was driven upon the coast of Greenland,
deserves most to be credited; by which we learn, that the colony of the
Eastern district flourished about one hundred and fifty years after the
commerce and navigation ceased between Norway and Greenland; and, for
aught we know, is not yet wholly destitute of its old Norwegian
inhabitants. We have not been able to get any account of this matter
from the modern Greenlanders, as they entertain no correspondence with
those parts: either being hindered by the ice, which renders them
altogether inaccessible; or else for fear the inhabitants of that
country might kill and devour them; for they represent them as a cruel,
barbarous, and inhuman nation, that destroy and eat all foreigners that
fall into their hands. Yet notwithstanding this, if we may believe the
relation of those adventurers, who have coasted a great part of the
Eastern shore, there is no other sort of inhabitants found on this than
on the Western side. But how it comes to pass, that the Eastern
district, which was so well settled with Norway and Iceland colonies,
that it contained twelve large parishes, and one hundred and ninety
villages, besides one bishop’s see and two convents, and flourished till
the year 1540, at last has been destroyed and laid waste, is what I
cannot conceive. The opinion of some, that the black plague, so called,
which ravaged the Northern countries in the year 1348, also reached
Greenland, and made its havock among its Eastern colonies, is without
any ground or reason; because the commerce was carried into Greenland
until the year 1406; and in 1540 that colony was still subsisting. If
therefore this district be destitute or bereft of its old inhabitants,
it is not unlikely they have undergone the same fatality as the Western
ones, being destroyed by the barbarity of the savage Schrellingers.