IN NORTHERN MISTS 



Eskimo, it has been regarded as a historical fact that the 

 latter about 141 8 made a devastating attack on the Eastern 

 Settlement, and this document has thus lent weighty support 

 to the general opinion that the Greenland settlements perished 

 as the result of an Eskimo war of extermination. But the 

 letter itself shows such obvious ignorance of conditions in 

 Greenland, especially with regard to the Eskimo, that there 

 must be some doubt about the complaint on which it 

 is based. To begin with, it is in itself unlikely that the 

 peaceful and unwarlike Eskimo, who can have had no 

 practice in warfare, since they had previously had no one to 

 fight with, except walruses and bears, should have come 

 with a " fleet " and made an organized attack in large 

 masses, and destroyed people and houses and churches in the 

 Eastern Settlement. Even if they might have been provoked 

 to resistance or even revenge by ill-usage on the part of 

 the Greenlanders, or perhaps have coveted their iron imple- 

 ments, it is an impossibility that they should have organized 

 themselves for a campaign. But it is added that they carried 

 off the inhabitants of both sexes to use them as slaves; for 

 what work?— in sealing they were themselves superior, in 

 preparing skins and food their women were superior, and 

 other work they had none. To a Greenland Eskimo it would 

 be an utterly absurd idea to feed unnecessary slaves, and it 

 betrays itself as of wholly European origin. The statement 

 that after the incursion only nine parish churches were left, 

 also betrays ignorance; as pointed out by Storm, there were 

 never more than twelve, even in the flourishing period of the 

 Settlement, and by about 14 18 there were certainly not nine 

 in all. Furthermore, the letter is not addressed to the two 

 bishops really officiating in Iceland, but to the two impostors, 

 the German Marcellus and his confederate Mathaeus, who by 

 means of false representations had induced Pope Nicholas V. 

 to consecrate them bishops of Iceland [cf. G. Storm, 1892, 

 p. 399]. The probability is that the two impostors them- 

 selves composed the complaint from Greenland which was 

 114 



