INTRODUCTION. 5 



preter, renders an application to that intent generally fruit- 

 less, or at best unsatisfactory. 



As to the poor Greenlanclers, little information can be 

 had from them regarding the history of their nation. They 

 are said to have no " oral, nor written records;" but some 

 traces of tradition are cherished among them to encourage 

 the rising generation to imitate the exploits of some dis- 

 tinguished progenitor, who left a deathless fame by his skill 

 and intrepidity in killing seals. Yet what can such tradition 

 avail in the search for historic information ? With reg-ard 

 to the Greenlander, such inquiry is unavailing ; and their 

 dislike of strangers intruding on their fishing haunts 

 renders it equally useless to seek from them any accurate 

 account of their present masters. On this point, -the 

 European historians remain the only resource. 



The authors above referred to, namely Snorro Sturleggen, 

 who is said to be the writer of the " Speculum Regale," 

 and his commentator Torfa?us, and latterly Egede and his 

 commentator Crantz, appear to be the most distinguished 

 amongst those who have written of Greenland. The ac- 

 counts of those writers fix the discovery of that country in 

 the year 982. But Claudius Christophersen, otherwise 

 Lyscander, a divine, has conjectured the date of that event 

 to be in the year 770. The latter rests on reference to 

 a Bull of Pope Gregory IV. dated in the year 835, 

 wherein the conversion of the Icelanders and Greenlanders 



