IN NORTHERN MISTS 



the fjords in the Eastern Settlement, it says of the Western 

 Settlement and of the journey thither: ^ 



" Item, from the Eastern Settlement to the Western is a dozen sea leagues 

 and all is uninhabited, and there in the Western Settlement stands a great 

 church which is called Stensness Church; this church was for a time a cathe- 

 dral and the see of a bishop.2 Now the Skraelings possess the whole West- 

 ern Settlement; there are indeed horses, goats, cattle, and sheep, all wild, and 

 no people, either Christian or heathen. 



"Item, all this that is said above was told us by Iffuer bort [or Bardsen], 

 a Greenlander, who was steward of the bishop's residence at Gardum in Green- 

 land for many years, that he had seen all this and he was one of those who 

 were chosen by the 'lagmand' to go to the Western Settlement against the 

 Skraelings to expel the Skraelings from the Western Settlement, and when 

 they came there they found no man, either Christian or heathen, but some wild 

 cattle and sheep, and ate of the wild cattle, and took as much as the ships 

 could carry and sailed with it home [i.e., to the Eastern Settlement], and the 

 said Iffuer was among them. 



" Item, there lies in the north, farther than the Western Settlement, a great 

 mountain which is called * Hemelrachs felld ' [or ' HiminraSz f jail,' cf. Vol. I, 

 p. 302], and farther than to this mountain must no man sail, if he would pre- 

 serve his life from the many whirlpools which there lie round the whole sea." 



Strangely enough, no author has expressed a doubt of the 

 credibility of this description, although as usually interpreted 

 it contains an impossibility, which must strike anyone on 

 a closer examination. It is still commonly interpreted as 

 though Ivar Bardsson had found the whole Western Settle- 

 ment destroyed by Eskimo.^ But if this was so, how could 

 he have found there wild cattle, sheep, horses and goats? 

 The whole Western Settlement must then have been destroyed 

 the summer that he was there; for the wild cattle could 

 not possibly have supported themselves through the winter 



1 Cf. Gronl. hist. Mind., iii, p. 258; F. Jonsson, 1899, p. 328. 



2 This seems very doubtful, as it is not known that a bishop ever resided 

 in the Western Settlement. 



3 It is true that this is not stated in the narrative; it is only said that the 

 Skraelings possessed the whole Western Settlement, and that Ivar and his 

 companions found no people there, either Christian or heathen, but only wild 

 cattle; and it may, of course, be doubtful whether the meaning was that the 

 whole settlement had been destroyed by a predatory incursion. 



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