DECLINE OF GREENLAND SETTLEMENTS 



in Greenland; evidently the author, who was unacquainted 

 with the conditions in Greenland, did not think of this. 

 Besides, can anyone who knows the Eskimo imagine that 

 they slaughtered the men, but not the cattle? This repre- 

 sented food to them, and that is what they would first have 

 turned their attention to. It is not stated which fjord of the 

 Western Settlement it was that Ivar visited; but in any 

 case it is hardly to be supposed that it was all the fjords, 

 which thus would all have been destroyed at the same time. 

 The conclusion that Ivar found the whole Western Settlement 

 laid waste is, therefore, in any case unfounded ; it can at the 

 most have been one fjord, or perhaps only one homestead (?). 



[From an Icelandic MS. of the fourteenth century] 



If there should really be some historical foundation for the 

 description of Ivar Bardsson's voyage, then it may perhaps 

 be interpreted in an altogether different way. The people of 

 the Western Settlement, where the conditions for keeping 

 cattle were far less favorable than farther south in the 

 Eastern Settlement, undoubtedly became earlier absorbed 

 among the Eskimo and went over to their mode of living. 

 This may also be what is alluded to in the perhaps approxi- 

 mately contemporary statement of 1342, already quoted 

 (p. loi), which says that the Greenlanders "turned to the 

 people of America." It is possible that it was just this same 

 state of things that was the cause of Ivar's being sent to 

 expel the Skraslings from the Western Settlement. When he 

 arrived in the summer at the fjord which he possibly visited, 

 the people may therefore, in Eskimo fashion, have been 



109 



