DECLINE OF GREENLAND SETTLEMENTS 



true virtues turned to the people of America [ad Americae populos se con- 

 verterunt] ; some also think that Greenland lies very near to the western lands 

 of the virorld. From this it came about that the Christians began to refrain 

 from the voyage to Greenland." 



It is not known from whence Gisle Oddsson took this 

 statement. As the expression "the people of America" 

 (" Americae populi ") is a curious . one, and as the state- 

 ments in the bishop's annals following that quoted above 

 are entirely myths and inventions taken from Lyschander's 

 " Gronlands Chronica " (but originally derived from Saxo 

 and Adam of Bremen), Storm regarded the whole account 

 as spurious and lacking any mediaeval authority. Inter- 

 preting, curiously enough, " ad Americae populos se con- 

 verterunt " to mean that the Greenlanders had emigrated to 

 America, Storm supposes that this may be a hypothesis 

 " formed to explain the disappearance from Greenland of 

 the old Norwegian-Icelandic colony." But the meaning of the 

 passage can scarcely be interpreted otherwise than as translated 

 above, that the Greenlanders had forsaken Christianity, given 

 up good morals and virtues, and had been converted to the 

 belief and customs of the American people (i.e., the Skraelings), 

 " The people of America " must be a strained expression the 

 bishop has used to denote the heathen Skraelings (who inhabited 

 Greenland and the American lands) in contradistinction 

 to the Christian Europeans. Greenland was frequently re- 

 garded in Iceland in those times as a part of America (cf. 

 the map, p. 7). Hans Egede, for example, thought the natives 

 of Greenland were " Americans." In other words, the state- 

 ment simply means that in 1342 a report came that the 

 Greenlanders were associating amicably with the heathen 

 Skraelings (which was forbidden by the ecclesiastical law of that 

 time), and had begun to adopt their mode of life; which, in fact, 

 is extremely probable. 



The question is, then, from whence Gisle Oddsson may have 

 derived this, which is not known from any other source. Storm 

 thought it out of the question that it was taken from Lyschander 



