CHAPTER XI 



THE DECLINE OF THE NORSE SETTLEMENTS 

 IN GREENLAND 



THE Eastern and Western Settlements in Greenland seem, 

 as we have said, to have grown rapidly immediately 

 after the discovery of the country and the first settlement 

 there. Their flourishing period was in the eleventh, twelfth, 

 and part of the thirteenth centuries; but in the fourteenth 

 they seem to have declined rapidly; notices of them become 

 briefer and briefer, until they cease altogether after 1410, 

 and in the course of the following hundred years the Norse 

 population seems to have disappeared entirely. The causes 

 of this decline were many.^ It has been thought that it 

 was chiefly due to an immigration to Greenland on a large 

 scale of Eskimo, who gradually overpowered and exterminated 

 the Norsemen; but, as will be shown later, there is no ground 

 for believing this; even if hostile encounters took place 

 between them, these cannot have been of great im- 

 portance. 



1 That it was due to changes in the climate, as some have thought, is not 

 the case. The ancient descriptions of the voyage thither and of the drift-ice 

 (cf. for instance, the " King's Mirror," Vol. I, p. 279) show exactly the same 

 conditions as now. 



95 



