IN NORTHERN MISTS 



absent on sealing expeditions somewhere out on the sea- 

 coast and living in tents, while the cattle were turned out at 

 pasture round the homesteads.^ This would explain how 

 they came to be found alive. The men of the Eastern 

 Settlement then, with or against their better conscience, 

 stole and carried off the property of the half-Eskimo men of 

 the Western Settlement during their absence, and when the 

 latter returned they found their homesteads plundered, not 

 by Eskimo but by Greenlanders. But it is perhaps very 

 questionable whether the whole account of this voyage is 

 particularly historical. The statement about the whirlpools, for 

 one thing, is mythical, pointing to an idea that this was near 

 the end of the earth, and in the description immediately 

 following, like and unlike are mixed together in a way that is 

 calculated to arouse doubt. We read thus: 



" Item, in Greenland there are silver mines [which are not found there], 

 white bears having red spots on the head [sic!]. . . . Item, in Greenland 

 great tempests never come. Item, snow falls much in Greenland, it is not so 

 cold there as in Iceland and Norway, there grows on high mountains and 

 down below fruit as large as some apples and good to eat, the best wheat 

 that can be grows there." 2 



As will be seen, one absurdity succeeds another. It may 

 be objected that as it is not stated that this last paragraph is 

 due to Ivar the Greenlander, it may have been added later; 

 but it contains an admixture of statements that must come from 

 Greenland — e.g., about the white bears, whales' tusks (i.e., of 

 walrus or narwhale), walrus hides, soapstone (steatite), of which 

 they make pots, and large vessels; it is also stated that 

 " there are many reindeer," and it seems probable that it is 

 all derived from the same untrustworthy source. 



To what has here been said some will object that, even if 

 this description ascribed to Ivar Bardsson bears evident 



1 This explanation offers, of course, the difficulty that it would not be ap- 

 plicable to dairy-cattle; but in this way of life the settlers may have had to 

 give up milking. 



2 These last ideas may well be supposed to have originated in a confusion 

 with the tales about Wineland. 



IIO 



