[70-1] In 1893 an American in Rome, Mr. J.C. Heywood, one of the papal
chamberlains, brought out, in a very small edition (twenty-five copies),
a book of photographic facsimiles of documents in the Vatican relating to
Greenland and the discovery of America, _Documenta Selecta e Tabulario
Secreto Vaticano_. The Latin text of those here presented may be found in
Fischer, _Discoveries of the Northmen_, pp. 49-51. A translation of all
was made for the Tennessee Historical Society by Rev. John B. Morris and
printed in Vol. IX. of the society's organ, the _American Historical
Magazine_. Using this translation, we have printed Letters IX. and X. as
the only ones that contain anything of particular interest concerning the
Gardar bishopric in Greenland, excepting, possibly, the following
sentence from Letter II. (December 4, 1276), to the Archbishop of
Drontheim: "Your Fraternity having been explicitly directed by letters
apostolic to visit personally all parts of the kingdom of Norway, for the
purpose of collecting the tithes due the Holy Land, has informed us that
this seems almost impossible, when it is taken into consideration that
the diocese of Gardar in Greenland is so remote from your metropolitan
see and kingdom, that five years or more would be consumed in going
thither and returning." It has been inferred, on account of the length of
this time, that the Vinland colony was included. There is no documentary
evidence of this. The papal letters contain no reference to Vinland.
[71-1] No record of these reports from Greenland has been found.
[71-2] Both Iceland and Greenland came under Norwegian rule in 1261,
during the reign of Haakon Haakonson (1217-1263).
[71-3] In Norway.
[71-4] Only four and a half centuries before this time. Olaf Tryggvason,
who reigned from 995 to 1000, sent Leif Ericson as a missionary to
Greenland in the year 1000.
[71-5] According to Northern chorography, the Eastern Settlement had one
hundred and ninety farmsteads, twelve churches, and two monasteries; the
Western Settlement had ninety farmsteads and three churches.
[71-6] The cathedral (hardly magnificent) was in the Eastern Settlement
(_i.e._, in southern Greenland), no doubt the present Kakortok. The
village of Gardar, which gave its name to the bishopric, was at the
present Kaksiarsuk. The authority which makes this identification
possible, is Ivar Bardsen's description of Greenland written in that
country in the fourteenth century. He was for many years steward to the
Gardar bishopric. An English version of Bardsen's description is printed
in Major's _The Voyages of the Venetian Brothers Zeno_ (London, 1873).
See also Fiske, _The Discovery of America_, pp. 239 and 242.
[71-7] That is, about 1418. The last notice of Greenland based on
Northern tradition is from the year 1409, telling of a marriage ceremony
performed by Endride Andreson, the last bishop. See Laing's _The Sagas of
the Norse Kings_ (London, 1889), p. 177.
[71-8] From Ivar Bardsen's description of Greenland it is known that the
Greenlanders first came in conflict with the Eskimos during the
fourteenth century. He was appointed to lead an expedition from the
Eastern Settlement against the Skrellings (Eskimos), who had taken
possession of the Western Settlement. When he arrived there the
Skrellings had departed, and they found nothing but ruins and some cattle
running wild. See _Antiquitates Americanae_, p. 316.
The letter of Nicholas V. refers to an attack on the Western Settlement,
of which there is no other recorded evidence. It is not likely that it
will ever be possible to determine whether the settlement owed its final
destruction to the irruptions of the Eskimos, "to the ravages of
pestilence, to the enforced neglect of the mother country--itself during
the fifteenth century too often in sore straits--to the iniquitous
restrictions in commerce imposed by the home government, or to a
combination of several of these evils." There was a regular succession of
bishops from 1124 to the end of the fourteenth, or perhaps the beginning
of the fifteenth century.
[73-1] Addressed to the two bishops of Skalholt and Holar, in Iceland.
[73-2] The Archbishop of Drontheim in Norway.
[73-3] Alexander VI. was pope from 1492 to 1503.
[74-1] Evidently this is only an approximate statement.
[74-2] There are no records that this man ever reached either Greenland
or Iceland. The Greenland colony was not entirely forgotten by the home
government (Denmark-Norway). In the beginning of the sixteenth century,
Archbishop Valkendorf of Drontheim had agitated the question of searching
for the Greenland colony. During the reign of Frederick II. of
Denmark-Norway, Mogens Heinesen was in 1579 sent out, but he did not
reach the island. The Englishman John Davis, in 1585, visited the western
coast of Greenland, but found no Europeans.