DECLINE OF GREENLAND SETTLEMENTS 



these small men, a cubit high, who fly in a body at the sight 

 of strangers, gives a surer and truer picture of the Skraelings 

 than when they are represented as warlike and dangerous 

 barbarians. The statements about the Pygmies in Claudius 

 Clavus also enable us to see how the Norsemen sometimes 

 treated the Eskimo, when they caught them 



"at sea in a hide-boat, which now hangs in the cathedral at Trondhjem; there 

 is also a long-boat of hides [i.e., a women's boat] which was also once taken 

 with such Pygmies in it." 



But that these little Pygmies, a cubit high, were regarded 

 as formidable warriors, engaged in exterminating the Norse- 

 men, is difficult to believe,^ even though Michel Beheim 

 attributes warlike qualities to them (cf. p. 85). Walkendorf, 

 who had so carefully collected all traditions about Greenland, 

 describes (circa 1520) the Skrselings as an "unwarlike'* 

 and harmless people (see above, p. 86). It is impossible 

 to reconcile this with a tradition of a war of extermination. 



There are therefore good grounds for supposing that 

 Arne Magnussen was approximately correct when he said 

 in 1691 [Gronl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 138]: 



"It is probable that owing to the daily increase of the ice and its drifting 

 down from the Pole, it thus befell Greenland, and the Christian inhabitants 

 either died of hunger or were constrained to practice the same ' vitae genus ' 

 as the savages, and thus degenerated into their nature." 



In the year 1406 the Icelanders, Thorstein Helmingsson, 

 Snorre Thorvason, and Thorgrim Solvason, in one ship, were 

 driven out of their course to Greenland. " They sailed out 

 from Norway, and were making for Iceland. They stayed 

 there [in Greenland] four winters " [cf. Islandske Annaler, 

 ed. Storm, 1888, p. 288]. While they were there, in the 

 following year (1407) 



" a man named Kolgrim was burnt in Greenland for that he lay with Thorgrim 

 Solvason's wife, who was the daughter of a ' lagmand ' of high standing in 

 Iceland. This man got her consent by black art; he was therefore burnt ac- 



1 It is true that Clavus mentions the warrior hosts of the infidel Karelians 

 in Greenland; but this is evidently myth or invention (cf. chapter xiii.). 



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