DECLINE OF GREENLAND SETTLEMENTS 



the account of Bjorn Jorsalafarer), and their mode of life 

 was better suited to the conditions of Greenland; it is there- 

 fore incredible that their culture should not gain the upper 

 hand in an encounter, under conditions otherwise equal, 

 with that of Europeans, even though there were certain 

 things that they might learn of the Europeans, especially 

 the use of iron.^ Furthermore, the Greenlanders' stock of 

 cattle, goats, and sheep had, as we have seen (p. 97), greatly 

 declined owing to the long severance from Europe, and for 

 this reason also they were obliged to adopt more of the 

 Eskimo way of life. 

 But then their places 

 of residence within 

 the fjords, far from 

 the sealing-grounds, 

 were no longer ad- 

 vantageous, and by 

 degrees they entirely 

 adopted the Eski- 

 mo's more migratory 

 life along the outer 

 coast. Then, again, 

 the Eskimo women 



were probably no less attractive to the Northerners of that 

 time than they are to those of the present day, and thus 

 much mixture of blood gradually resulted. The children 

 came to speak the Eskimo language, and took at once to a 

 wholly Eskimo way of life, just as at the present day the 

 children of Danes and Eskimo in Greenland do. As the 

 Norsemen at that time must also have been very inferior to 

 the Eskimo in numbers, they must by degrees have become 

 Eskimo both physically and mentally; and when the country 

 was rediscovered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries 

 there were only Eskimo there, while all traces of the Nor- 

 wegian-Greenland culture seemed to have disappeared. 



1 It is shown by Solberg's [1907] researches that they did so. 



103 



Ruins of Church at Kakortok in the Eastern 

 Settlement [after Th. Groth] 



