Transcriber's Notes: Italic text is marked _thus_; bold text is shown
=thus=. *+* represents inverted asterism. Apparent typographical
errors have been corrected and hyphenation standardised except where
the meaning would be affected e.g. 're-cover'. s. and d. (currency)
italicised for consistency. Original accentuation has been retained.
Original spelling has been retained with these exceptions; secresy to
secrecy, song-writting to song-writers, Rosetti to Rossetti, translater
to translator.
In Footnote 125, thjódsogur in the original was thjóds[=o]g[)u]r, where:
th represents the 'THORN' character
d represents the 'eth' character
[=o] represents lower case 'o' with macron
[)u] represents lower case 'u' with breve.
ESKIMO LIFE
BY THE SAME AUTHOR
THE FIRST CROSSING OF GREENLAND
_With numerous Illustrations and a Map_
Cheap Edition. Crown 8vo. 7_s._ 6_d._
London: LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. and NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET
[Illustration: A HUNTER, HIS WIFE, AND A YOUNG GIRL (WEST COAST OF
GREENLAND)]
ESKIMO LIFE
BY
FRIDTJOF NANSEN
AUTHOR OF 'THE FIRST CROSSING OF GREENLAND'
TRANSLATED BY WILLIAM ARCHER
_WITH ILLUSTRATIONS_
LONDON LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST 16th STREET 1893
TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE.
Before placing his 'Eskimoliv' in my hands for translation, Dr.
Nansen very carefully revised the text, and made numerous excisions
and additions. Thus the following pages will be found to differ in
several particulars from the Norwegian original. I also requested and
received Dr. Nansen's permission to suppress one or two especially
nauseous details of Eskimo manners, which seemed to have no particular
ethnological significance. The excisions made on this score, however,
probably do not amount to half a page in all.
Dr. Nansen suggested that I should follow the example of Dr. Rink in
his 'Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo,' and treat the word 'Eskimo'
as indeclinable. I have ventured, however, to overrule his suggestion.
There is precedent for both 'Eskimo' and 'Eskimos' as the plural form;
and where there is any choice at all, it seems only rational to prefer
the regular declension.
In Chapters XIII. and XIV. Dr. Nansen naturally makes numerous
references to that great storehouse of Greenland folk-lore, Dr. Rink's
'Eskimo Sagn og Eventyr,' which has been translated and condensed by the
author himself, under the above-mentioned title. Where it was possible,
I have given the reference to the English edition; but in cases where
the text has been very freely condensed or expurgated, I have referred
to the Danish original as well. Even where I have not done so, students
of folk-lore may be advised to go back to the original text, which is
often fuller and more characteristic than the English version.
W. A.
AUTHOR'S PREFACE.
For one whole winter we were cut off from the world and immured among
the Greenlanders. I dwelt in their huts, took part in their hunting, and
tried, as well as I could, to live their life and learn their language.
But one winter, unfortunately, is far too short a time in which to
attain a thorough knowledge of so peculiar a people, its civilisation,
and its ways of thought--that would require years of patient study.
Nevertheless, I have tried in this book to record the impressions
made upon me by the Eskimo and his polity, and have sought, as far as
possible, to support them by quotations from former authors. There may
even be things which a newcomer sees more clearly than an observer of
many years' standing, who lives in their midst.
On many points, perhaps, the reader may not think as I do. I cannot, it
is true, find that whatever is is very good; I am weak enough to feel
compassion for a declining race, which is perhaps beyond all help, since
it is already stung with the venom of our civilisation. But I comfort
myself with the thought that at least no words of mine can make the lot
of this people worse than it is, and I hope that the reader will accept
my observations in the spirit in which they are written. _Amicus Plato,
amicus Socrates, magis amica veritas_--the truth before everything.
And if in some points I should appear unreasonable, I must plead as my
excuse that it is scarcely possible to live for any time among these
people without conceiving an affection for them--for that, one winter is
more than enough.
During the long, dark evenings, as I sat in the low earth-huts and
gazed at the flame of the train-oil lamps, I had ample time for
reflection. It often seemed to me that I could see these hardy children
of Nature pressing westward, stage by stage, in their dog-sledges and
in their wonderful skin-canoes, along the barren ice-coasts; I saw how
they fought their way onward, and, little by little, perfected their
ingenious implements and attained their masterly skill in the chase.
Hundreds, nay thousands, of years passed, tribe after tribe succumbed,
while other and stronger stocks survived--and I was filled with
admiration for a people which had emerged victorious from the struggle
with such inhospitable natural surroundings.
But in melancholy contrast to this inspiriting picture of the past, the
present and the future rose before my eyes--a sad, a hopeless mist.
In Greenland the Eskimos fell in with Europeans. First it was our
Norwegian forefathers of the olden times; them they gradually overcame.
But we returned to the charge, this time bringing with us Christianity
and the products of civilisation; then they succumbed, and are sinking
ever lower and lower. The world passes on with a pitying shrug of the
shoulders.
'What more can one say? Who's a penny the worse
Though a beggar be dead?'
But this people, too, has its feelings, like others; it, too, rejoices
in life and Nature, and bleeds under our iron heel. If anyone doubts
this, let him observe their sympathy with one another, and their love
for their children; or let him read their legends.
Whenever I saw instances of the suffering and misery which we have
brought upon them, that remnant of a sense of justice which is still to
be found in most of us stirred me to indignation, and I was filled with
a burning desire to send the truth reverberating over the whole world.
Were it once brought home to them, I thought, people could not but
awaken from their indifference, and at once make good the wrong they had
done.
Poor dreamer! You have nothing to say which has not been better said
before. The hapless lot of the Greenlanders, as well as of other
'native' races, has been set forth on many hands, and always without
avail.
But, none the less, I felt I must unburden my conscience; it seemed
to me a sacred duty to add my protest to the rest. My pen, unhappily,
is all too feeble: what I feel most deeply I have failed to express:
never have I longed more intensely for a poet's gifts. I know very well
that my voice, too, will be as a cry sent forth over a flat expanse
of desert, without even mountains to echo it back. My only hope is to
awaken here and there a feeling of sympathy with the Eskimos and of
sorrow for their destiny.
FRIDTJOF NANSEN.
GODTHAAB, LYSAKER: _November 1891_.
CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. GREENLAND AND THE ESKIMO 1
II. APPEARANCE AND DRESS 18
III. THE 'KAIAK' AND ITS APPURTENANCES 30
IV. THE ESKIMO AT SEA 56
V. WINTER-HOUSES, TENTS, WOMAN-BOATS, AND EXCURSIONS 78
VI. COOKERY AND DAINTIES 89
VII. CHARACTER AND SOCIAL CONDITIONS 100
VIII. THE POSITION AND WORK OF WOMEN 121
IX. LOVE AND MARRIAGE 138
X. MORALS 157
XI. JUDICIAL PROCEEDINGS--DRUM-DANCES AND ENTERTAINMENTS 186
XII. MENTAL GIFTS--ART--MUSIC--POETRY--ESKIMO NARRATIVES 193
XIII. RELIGIOUS IDEAS 209
XIV. THE INTRODUCTION OF CHRISTIANITY 301
XV. EUROPEANS AND NATIVES 313
XVI. WHAT HAVE WE ACHIEVED? 327
XVII. CONCLUSION 341
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
_PLATES._
A HUNTER, HIS WIFE, AND A YOUNG GIRL (WEST
COAST OF GREENLAND) _Frontispiece_
'THE BOUNDLESS SNOW-FIELDS STRETCHING CALM
AND WHITE FROM SEA TO SEA' _to face page_ 2
COVERING A KAIAK " " 32
'THE HEAD TURNED HALF BACKWARDS TO WATCH
THE SEAS' " " 58
SEAWARD IN SEARCH OF SEALS " " 60
SEAL-HUNTING " " 62
BEFORE THE WIND " " 66
A KAIAK-MAN RESCUING A COMRADE " " 68
A KAIAK-MAN ATTACKED BY A WALRUS " " 74
HALIBUT-FISHING " " 76
AN ESKIMO CAMP " " 84
A SUMMER JOURNEY " " 86
FISHING " " 114
A GREENLAND DANCE " " 190
A FIORD LANDSCAPE ON THE EAST COAST (AT TINGMIARMIUT) " " 328
NORTHERN LIGHTS--'THE DEAD AT PLAY' " " 348
_WOODCUTS IN THE TEXT._
PAGE
GREENLAND INDOOR DRESS (EAST COAST)--(1) Male Costume;
(2) Female Costume 26
BLADDER-DART 34
HARPOON 36
THE HEAD OF THE HARPOON 37
LANCE 39
THROWING-STICK WITH BIRD-DART 40
THE BIRD-DART THROWN 42
THROWING-STICK WITH HARPOON 43
KAIAK, SEEN FROM ABOVE 44
KAIAK-FRAME 44
SECTION OF THE KAIAK 47
PADDLE 49
HALF-JACKET 50
WHOLE-JACKET 50
ESKIMO VENUS AND APOLLO 199
ESKIMO LIFE
CHAPTER I
GREENLAND AND THE ESKIMO
Greenland is in a peculiar manner associated with Norway and with the
Norwegians. Our forefathers were the first Europeans who found their way
to its shores. In their open vessels the old Vikings made their daring
voyages, through tempests and drift-ice, to this distant land of snows,
settled there throughout several centuries, and added it to the domain
of the Norwegian crown.
After the memory of its existence had practically passed away, it was
again one of our countrymen[1] who, on behalf of a Norwegian company,
founded the second European settlement of the country.
It is poor, this land of the Eskimo, which we have taken from him; it
has neither timber nor gold to offer us--it is naked, lonely, like no
other land inhabited of man. But in all its naked poverty, how beautiful
it is! If Norway is glorious, Greenland is in truth no less so. When one
has once seen it, how dear to him is its recollection! I do not know if
others feel as I do, but for me it is touched with all the dream-like
beauty of the fairyland of my childish imagination. It seems as though
I there found our own Norwegian scenery repeated in still nobler, purer
forms.
It is strong and wild, this Nature, like a saga of antiquity carven in
ice and stone, yet with moods of lyric delicacy and refinement. It is
like cold steel with the shimmering colours of a sunlit cloud playing
through it.
When I see glaciers and ice-mountains, my thoughts fly to Greenland
where the glaciers are vaster than anywhere else, where the
ice-mountains jut into a sea covered with icebergs and drift-ice. When
I hear loud encomiums on the progress of our society, its great men
and their great deeds, my thoughts revert to the boundless snow-fields
stretching white and serene in an unbroken sweep from sea to sea, high
over what have once been fruitful valleys and mountains. Some day,
perhaps, a similar snow-field will cover us all.
[Illustration: 'THE BOUNDLESS SNOW-FIELDS STRETCHING CALM AND WHITE FROM
SEA TO SEA']
Everything in Greenland is simple and great--white snow, blue ice,
naked, black rocks and peaks, and dark stormy sea. When I see the sun
sink glowing into the waves, it recalls to me the Greenland sunsets,
with the islets and rocks floating, as it were, on the burnished
surface of the smooth, softly-heaving sea, while inland the peaks rise
row on row, flushing in the evening light. And sometimes when I see
the sæter-life[2] at home and watch the sæter-girls and the grazing
cows, I think of the tent-life and the reindeer-herds on the Greenland
fiords and uplands; I think of the screaming ptarmigan, the moors and
willow-copses, the lakes and valleys in among the mountains where the
Eskimo lives through his brief summer.
But like nothing else is the Greenland winter-night with its flaming
northern lights; it is Nature's own mystic spirit-dance.
Strange is the power which this land exercises over the mind; but the
race that inhabits it is not less remarkable than the land itself.
The Eskimo, more than anyone else, belongs to the coast and the sea. He
dwells by the sea, upon it he seeks his subsistence, it gives him all
the necessaries of his life, over it he makes all his journeys, whether
in his skin-canoes in summer, or in his dog-sledges when it is ice-bound
in winter. The sea is thus the strongest influence in the life of the
Eskimo; what wonder, then, if his soul reflects its moods? His mind
changes with the sea--grave in the storm; in sunshine and calm full of
unfettered glee. He is a child of the sea, thoughtlessly gay like the
playful wavelet, but sometimes dark as the foaming tempest. One feeling
chases another from his childlike mind as rapidly as, when the storm
has died down, the billows sink to rest, and the very memory of it has
passed away.
The good things of life are very unequally divided in this world. To
some existence is so easy that they need only plant a bread-fruit tree
in their youth, and their whole life is provided for. Others, again,
seem to be denied everything except the strength to battle for life;
they must laboriously wring from hostile Nature every mouthful of their
sustenance. They are sent forth to the outposts, these people; they form
the wings of the great army of humanity in its constant struggle for the
subjugation of nature.
Such a people are the Eskimos, and among the most remarkable in
existence. They are a living proof of the rare faculty of the human
being for adapting himself to circumstances and spreading over the face
of the earth.
The Eskimo forms the extreme outpost towards the infinite stillness of
the regions of ice, and as far, almost, as we have forced our way to the
northward, we find traces left behind them by this hardy race.
The tracts which all others despise he has made his own. By dint of
constant struggle and slow development, he learnt some things that none
have learnt better. Where for others the conditions which make life
possible came to an end, there life began for him. He has come to love
these regions; they are to him a world in which he himself embodies the
whole of the human race.[3] Outside their limits he could not exist.
It is to this people that the following pages are devoted.
The mutual resemblance of the different tribes of Eskimos is no less
striking than their difference from all other races in features, figure,
implements and weapons, and general manner of life.
A pure-bred Eskimo from Bering Straits is so like a Greenlander that
one cannot for a moment doubt that they belong to the same race. Their
language, too, is so far alike that an Alaska Eskimo and a Greenlander
would probably, after some little time, be able to converse without
much difficulty. Captain Adrian Jacobsen, who has travelled both in
Greenland and in Alaska, told me that in Alaska he could manage to get
along with the few words of Eskimo he had learnt in Greenland. These two
peoples are divided by a distance of about 3,000 miles--something like
the distance between London and Afghanistan. Such unity of speech among
races so widely separated is probably unique in the history of mankind.
The likeness between all the different tribes of Eskimos, as well
as their secluded position with respect to other peoples, and the
perfection of their implements, might be taken to indicate that they
are of a very old race, in which everything has stiffened into definite
forms, which can now be but slowly altered. Other indications, however,
seem to conflict with such a hypothesis, and render it more probable
that the race was originally a small one, which did not until a
comparatively late period develop to the point at which we now find it,
and spread over the countries which it at present inhabits.
If it should seem difficult to understand, at first sight, how they
could have spread in a comparatively short time over these wide tracts
of country without moving in great masses, as in the case of larger
migrations, we need only reflect that their present inhospitable
abiding-places can scarcely have been inhabited, at any rate
permanently, before they took possession of them, and that therefore
they had nothing to contend with except nature itself.
The region now inhabited by the Eskimos stretches from the west coast of
Bering Straits over Alaska, the north coast of North America, the North
American groups of Arctic Islands, the west coast, and, finally, the
east coast, of Greenland.
By reason of his absolutely secluded position, the Eskimo has given the
anthropologists much trouble, and the most contradictory opinions have
been advanced with reference to his origin.
Dr. H. Rink, who has made Greenland and its people the study of his
life, and is beyond comparison the greatest authority on the subject,
holds that the Eskimo implements and weapons--at any rate, for the
greater part--may be traced to America. He regards it as probable that
the Eskimos were once a race dwelling in the interior of Alaska, where
there are still a considerable number of inland Eskimos, and that they
have migrated thence to the coasts of the ice-sea. He further maintains
that their speech is most closely connected with the primitive dialects
of America, and that their legends and customs recall those of the
Indians.
One point among others, however, in which the Eskimos differ from the
Indians is the use of dog-sledges. With the exception of the Incas of
Peru, who used the llama as a beast of burden, no American aborigines
employed animals either for drawing or for carrying. In this, then, the
Eskimos more resemble the races of the Asiatic polar regions.
But it would lead us too far afield if we were to follow up this
difficult scientific question, on which the evidence is as yet by
no means thoroughly sifted. So much alone can we declare with any
assurance, that the Eskimos dwelt in comparatively recent times on the
coasts around Bering Straits and Bering Sea--probably on the American
side--and have thence, stage by stage, spread eastward over Arctic
America to Greenland.
It is in my judgment impossible to determine at what time they reached
Greenland and permanently settled there. From what has already been said
it appears probable that the period was comparatively late, but it does
not seem to me established, as has been asserted in several quarters,
that we can conclude from the Icelandic sagas that they first made their
appearance on the west coast of Greenland in the fourteenth century.
It certainly appears as though the Norwegian colonies of Österbygd and
Vesterbygd (_i.e._ Easter- and Wester-district or settlement) were
not until that period exposed to serious attacks on the part of the
'Skrellings' or Eskimos, coming in bands from the north; but this does
not preclude the supposition that they had occupied certain tracts of
the west coast of Greenland long before that time and long before the
Norwegians discovered the country. They do not seem to have been settled
upon the southern part of the coast during the first four hundred
years of the Norwegian occupation, since they are not mentioned in the
sagas; but it is expressly stated that the first Norwegians (Erik the
Red and others) who came to the country, found both in the Easter-and
the Wester-districts ruins of human habitations, fragments of boats,
and stone implements, which in their opinion must have belonged to a
feeble folk, whom they therefore called 'Skrellings' (or 'weaklings').
We must accordingly conclude that the 'Skrellings' had been there
previously; and as such remains were found in both districts, it seems
that they could scarcely have paid mere passing visits to them. It is
not impossible that the Eskimos might simply have taken to their heels
when the Norwegian viking-ships appeared in the offing; we, too, found
them do so upon the east coast; but it does not seem at all probable
that they could vanish so rapidly as to let the Norwegians catch no
glimpse of them. The probability is, on the whole, that at that time the
permanent settlements of the Eskimos were further north on the coast,
above the 68th degree of north latitude, where seals and whales abound,
and where they would first arrive on their course from the northward[4]
(see p. 13). From these permanent settlements they probably, in Eskimo
fashion, made frequent excursions of more or less duration to the more
southerly part of the west coast, and there left behind them the traces
which were first found. When the Norwegian settlers began to range
northwards they at last came in contact with the Eskimos. Professor
G. Storm[5] is of opinion that this must first have happened in the
twelfth century.[6] We read in the 'Historia Norvegiæ' that the hunters
in the unsettled districts of north Greenland came upon an undersized
people whom they called 'Skrellings,' and who used stone knives and
arrow-points of whalebone. As their more northern settlements became
over-populated, the Eskimos no doubt began to migrate southwards in
earnest; and as the Norwegians often dealt hardly with them when they
met, they may eventually have taken revenge in the fourteenth century by
first (after 1341) attacking and devastating (?) the Wester-district,
and later (1379) making an expedition against the Easter-district, which
seems in the following century to have been entirely destroyed.[7] It
was about this time, accordingly, that the Eskimos probably effected
their first permanent settlements in the southern parts of the country.
There is evidence in the Eskimo legends as well of the battles between
them and the old Norsemen. But from the same legends we also learn
that there was sometimes friendly intercourse between them; indeed the
Norsemen are several times mentioned with esteem. This appears to show
that there was no rooted hatred between the two races; and the theory
that the Eskimos carried on an actual war of extermination against the
settlers seems, moreover, in total conflict with their character as we
now know it. Thus it can scarcely have been such a war alone that caused
the downfall of the colony. We may, perhaps, attribute it partly to
natural decline due to seclusion from the world, partly to absorption
of the race, brought about by the crossing of the two stocks; for the
Europeans of that age were probably no more inaccessible than those of
to-day to the seductions of Eskimo loveliness.
As to the route by which the Eskimos made their way to the west coast
of Greenland there has been a good deal of difference of opinion. Dr.
Rink maintains that after passing Smith's Sound the Eskimos did not
proceed southwards along the west coast, which would seem their most
natural course, but turned northwards, rounded the northernmost point
of the country, and came down along the east coast. In this way they
must ultimately have approached the west coast from the southward, after
making their way round the southern extremity of Greenland. This opinion
is mainly founded upon the belief that Thorgils Orrabeinsfostre fell
in with Eskimos upon the east coast, and that this was the Norsemen's
first encounter with them. I have already, in a note on the preceding
page, remarked on the untrustworthiness of this evidence; and such a
theory as to the route of the Eskimo immigration stands, as we know,
in direct conflict with the accounts given in the sagas, from which
it appears (as above) that the Eskimos came from the north and not
from the south, the Wester-district having been destroyed before the
Easter-district. It appears, moreover, that we can draw the same
conclusion from an Eskimo tradition in which their first encounter
with the old Norsemen is described. In former days, we are told, when
the coast was still very thinly populated, a boatful of explorers came
into Godthaab-fiord and saw there a large house whose inhabitants were
strange to them, not being Kaladlit--that is, Eskimo. They had suddenly
come upon the old Norsemen. These, on their side, saw the Kaladlit for
the first time, and treated them in the most friendly fashion. This
happened, it will be observed, in Godthaab-fiord, which was in the
ancient Wester-district--that is to say, the more northern colony. There
is another circumstance which, to my thinking, renders improbable the
route conjectured by Dr. Rink, and that is that if they made their way
around the northern extremity of the country, they must, while in these
high latitudes, have lived as the so-called Arctic Highlanders--that is,
the Eskimos of Cape York and northwards--now do; in other words, they
must have subsisted chiefly by hunting upon the ice, must have travelled
in dog-sledges, and, while in the far north, must have used neither
kaiaks nor woman-boats, since the sea, being usually ice-bound, offers
little or no opportunity for kaiak-hunting or boating of any sort. It
may not be in itself impossible that, when they came further south and
reached more ice-free waters again, they may have recovered the art of
building woman-boats and kaiaks, of which some tradition would in any
case survive; but it seems improbable, not to say impossible, that after
having lost the habit of kaiak-hunting they should be able to master it
afresh, and to develop it, and all the appliances belonging to it, to a
higher point of perfection than had elsewhere been attained.
The most natural account of the matter, in my opinion, is that the
Eskimos, after crossing Smith's Sound (so far there can be no doubt
about their route), made their way southwards along the coast, and
subsequently passed from the west coast, around the southern extremity
of the country, up the east coast. It is impossible to determine whether
they had reached the east coast and settled there before the Norsemen
came to Greenland. On their southward journey from Smith's Sound they
must, indeed, have met with a great obstacle in the Melville glacier
(at about 77° north latitude), which stands right out into the sea
at a point at which the coast is for a long distance unprotected by
islands. But, in the first place, they may have been able to make their
way onward in the lee of the drift-ice; and, in the second place, this
difficulty is at worst not so great as those they must have encountered
in passing round the northern extremity of Greenland. Moreover, the
passage in an open boat from Smith's Sound southward along the west
coast of Greenland to the Danish colonies has been several times
accomplished in recent years without any particular difficulty. In
opposition to this theory it may, no doubt, be alleged that the East
Greenlanders possess dog-sledges, which are not used on the southern
part of the west coast, where there is not enough ice for them. But if
we remember with what rapidity, comparatively speaking, the Eskimos
travel in their women-boats, and how fond they were in former times of
roaming up and down along the coast--and when we take into account the
fact that from time immemorial dogs have been kept along the whole of
the west coast--this objection seems to lose its weight.
The Eskimos are at present spread over the whole west coast of
Greenland, right from Smith's Sound to Cape Farewell. On the Danish
part of the west coast they number very nearly 10,000. On the east
coast, as we learn from the account of the Danish woman-boat expedition
of 1884-85, under Captain Holm, there are Eskimos as far north as the
Angmagsalik district (66° north latitude), their numbers in the autumn
of 1884 being in all 548. Further north, as the Eskimos told Captain
Holm, there were no permanent settlements so far as they knew. They
often, however, made excursions to the northward, possibly as far as
to the 68th or 69th degree of latitude; and a year or two before two
woman-boats had sailed in that direction, and had never been heard of
again. It is uncertain whether there may not be Eskimos upon the east
coast further north than the 70th degree of latitude. Clavering is
known to have found one or two families of them in 1823 at about 74°
north latitude; but since that time none have been seen; and the German
expedition which explored that coast in 1869-70, and wintered there,
found houses and other remains, but no people, and therefore assumed
that they must have died out. The Danish expedition of 1890 to Scoresby
Sound, under Lieutenant Ryder, reports the same experience. It therefore
seems probable that they have either died out or have abandoned this
part of Greenland. This does not seem to me absolutely certain, however.
There may be small and confined Eskimo colonies in these northern
districts, or there may be a few nomadic families whom no one has as
yet come across. This portion of the east coast must, in my opinion,
be quite specially adapted for Eskimo habitation, as it is very rich
in game. It therefore seems to me strange that when once the Eskimos
had arrived there they should have gone away again; nor does it seem
probable that they would die out in so excellent a hunting-ground. If
there are Eskimos upon this north-east coast, their secluded position,
debarring them from all intercourse, direct or indirect, with the outer
world, must render them, from an ethnological point of view, among the
most interesting people in existence.
Footnotes.
[1: Hans Egede. _Trans._]
[2: Sæter==mountain châlet. _Trans._]
[3: The Eskimos call themselves _inuit_--that is to say, 'human beings';
all other men they conceive as belonging to a different genus of
animals.]
[4: North of the 68th degree they could kill seals and whales in plenty
from the ice all the winter through; and this is a method of hunting
which they must have learnt further north, where it would be the most
important of all for them.]
[5: Gustav Storm: _Studies on the Vineland Voyages_, Extracts from
_Mémoires de la Société Royale des Antiquaires du Nord_, 1888, p. 53.]
[6: The Eskimos themselves have several legends as to their encounters
with the old Norsemen. See Rink: _Tales and Traditions of the Eskimo_,
pp. 308-321.]
[7: Some writers have concluded from the mention of 'troll-women' in the
'Flóamannasaga' that so early as the year 1000, or thereabouts, Thorgils
Orrabeinsfostre must have encountered Eskimos on the south-east coast
of Greenland. But, as Professor Storm has pointed out, the romantic
character of this saga forbids us to base any such inference upon it.
It must also be remembered that the extant manuscript dates from no
earlier than about 1400, long after the time when the Norsemen had come
in contact with the Eskimos on the west coast. Even if the Eskimos are
meant in the passage about the troll-women, which is extremely doubtful,
it may very well be a late interpolation.]