Half -Light over Cold Seas 89 



we learn, somewhat to our chagrin, that these stalwarts went at 

 each other with strips of rotten whale blubber — "most unseemly," 

 as the ancient poet pointedly observes. 



There appears to have been a considerable whaling tradition in Ice- 

 land, and it is to this outpost of the Norsemen that we must now 

 turn to continue our tale. There came to Iceland in 960 a.d., from 

 Jaeder in Norway, a noble family. There was among them a son 

 named Eric, called the Red, who was then only ten years old. This 

 lad grew up to be even more rowdy and obstreperous than the nor- 

 mal Norseman and, while still in his late teens, got himself into such 

 a maze of brawls and feuds over women, his inheritance, and prac- 

 tically everything else that he had to find a ship and leave the coun- 

 try. He gathered a few rather unwilhng followers and went off to 

 the west, as the story tells, "in pursuit of whales and other sea crea- 

 tures." By these activities he lived for three years. He then returned 

 to Iceland and started propagandizing the country he had been ex- 

 ploring, calling it Greenland simply to make it appear more attrac- 

 tive, for he had resolved to settle there. He set about trying to collect 

 volunteers to join him in his colonizing, and in this he seems to have 

 been very successful, for in 985 or 986 a.d. he set out with twenty- 

 five ships carrying seven hundred people and large numbers of cat- 

 tle, horses, and other supplies. Only fourteen of the ships reached 

 the promised land, but, led by Eric, they settled at a point some dis- 

 tance up the Davis Strait on the west, or inner, side of southern 

 Greenland and set to work to lay out a colony by the old traditional 

 methods of the Norse. 



From the first, Eric was the leader and chieftain, and in time he 

 became a sort of monarch by right of tradition. The colony pros- 

 pered and more people came, until in its heyday some hundred years 

 later it probably numbered about four thousand souls divided up 

 into two main and several subsidiary settlements. It proclaimed it- 

 self a free state and had a checkered history which lasted for five 

 hundred years, the last Greenlander being found dead in 1 540, lying 

 outside a miserable hut, clothed in the typical Norse cape and hood, 

 and clutching an old iron dagger in his hand. He was found by a 

 Dutch whaling captain very appropriately named Jon Greenlander. 



The Greenland colonies traded many things with Europe, includ- 

 ing the furs of polar bear, fox, and seal, the skins of walrus, and the 



