POLAR GEOGRAPHY BROWIT 373 



scattered in about 280 farms, where they kept cattle, goats, sheep, 

 and horses, perhaps raised a few poor crops of little account, and 

 hunted bears, reindeer, and seals. There is no need to recall the 

 history of these settlements, how trade with Europe gradually 

 ceased, and how the Norsemen had entirely disappeared when late 

 in the sixteenth century communications with Greenland were 

 reopened. 



Recent Danish researches at Herjolfsnes, near Cape Farewell, 

 have discredited the old belief that the colonies disappeared either 

 by Eskimo extermination or by fusion with the Eskimo races." It 

 now geems clear, at least as regards Oesterbygd, that the Norse 

 race maintained its racial purity and did not " go native." The 

 general reluctance of the Nordic races to mix with widely divergent 

 stock was as noticeable then as it has been in later centuries. Ex- 

 amination of skeletons in the churchyard of Herjolfsnes reveals 

 the interesting facts that while clothes and ornaments, in graves of 

 the fifteenth century, show little trace of Eskimo influence, the 

 skeletons all show signs of rickets or other malformations and 

 stunted growth, but no sign of racial mixture with the Eskimo. 

 There is also a very high proportion of remains of infants and 

 young people. Evidently, therefore, the Norse colonies, at least 

 Oesterbygd, perished by exhaustion. Even if the climate were 

 changing for the worse during the existence of these colonies — and 

 such a change is by no means proved — there is no reason to sup- 

 pose that the habitual meat diet failed. The cessation of communi- 

 cations with Europe can not have affected the diet of the colonists 

 to any great extent. The King's Mirror, describing conditions 

 when the colonies were prosperous, notes that most of the settlers 

 did not know what bread was. And what else could they get from 

 Europe to vary their meat diet? 



The conclusion i,s, therefore, that the Norse colonists in Green- 

 land died out for want of new blood, or, in other words, that they 

 were not acclimatized to their Arctic home. From this it might be 

 argued that even the Nordics can never colonize the Arctic. Cer- 

 tainly no other race from temperate climates is likely to try, sinco 

 the Nordics alone show that distaste for gregariousness and that 

 capacity for enduring solitude which are essential qualities for the 

 task. We may even grant them a greater measure of physical 

 enterprise and love of wandering than other people. 



The Greenland experiment is not, however, a sure criterion of 

 Nordic unsuitability for the Arctic. The pastoral settlement, which 

 is suggested, will be a slow colonization in which natural selection 



" See papers by P. Ncirlund, F. C. C. Hansen, and F. J6nsson in Meddelelser om 

 GrOnland, LXVII (1924), and by D. Brunn,. ditto, LVII (1918). 



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