IN NORTHERN MISTS 



with its rich fisheries was much more important. We 

 know that this was carried on from Bristol in particular, 

 where, as has been said, many Norwegians were estab- 

 lished. 



The statements about Greenland contained in the papal 

 letter of 1448 were, as we have seen, false. Perhaps not 

 very much more weight is to be attached to the story, in 

 Peyrere's "Relation du Groenland " (Paris, 1647), of Oluf 

 Worm of Copenhagen having found in an old Danish MS. 

 a statement that about 1484 there were more than forty 

 experienced men living at Bergen, who were in the habit of 

 sailing to Greenland every year and bringing home valuable 

 goods; but as they would not sell their wares to the Hanse 

 merchants, the latter revenged themselves by inviting them 

 to a supper and killing them all at night. This, then, was 

 said to be the end of the Greenland voyage, which had to 

 cease thenceforward, because no one knew the course any 

 more [cf. Gronl. hist. Mind., iii. pp. 471 f.]. The story as 

 given here is in many respects improbable; but even if the 

 forty or more men and the annual voyage are exaggerations, 

 there are other indications that about that time there may 

 have been some sort of communication with Greenland or 

 the countries to the west of it, as will be mentioned later. 

 The royal monopoly of the Iceland trade was no longer in 

 force, and the same may have applied to Greenland. It is 

 then conceivable that merchants may have gone there; and 

 if their trading prospered they had every reason to keep it as 

 secret as possible, lest others should interfere with their 

 livelihood. This would explain why such voyages are not 

 mentioned by historical authorities. Just then, too, was an 

 uneasy time, with a sort of war of privateers between 

 England and Denmark-Norway, which was not concluded 

 until the provisional peace of 1490; there were thus many 

 pirates and privateers in Northern waters, who may well 

 have extended their activity upon occasion to the remote 

 and unprotected Greenland, where they could plunder with 

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