402 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1936 



These Norse relics at Inugsiik are very important. Not only are 

 they important for the elucidation of the connection between Norse- 

 men and Eskimos, but they give us a means of dating approximately 

 the Inugsuk culture ; it must belong to the thirteenth and fourteenth 

 centuries. The Thule culture then must be some centuries earlier. 



We now move into the southernmost part of west Greenland, the 

 Julianehaab district. Here we worked during the summer of 1934, 

 spending about 5 weeks at the village site of Tugtutoq, situated at the 

 north point of a large island. The name means "caribou place"; the 

 caribou has, however, been extinct for 100 years. 



It was an extensive village, with ruins of 24 houses. The oldest of 

 them are now only to be distinguished as shallow depressions in the 

 gravel terrace, covered by heather and lichen; others have willow 

 bush and the latest are grass-grown. 



The climate here is quite different from that which we experienced 

 at Inugsuk. It is not so cold, but the weather is more unsettled, both 

 in summer and winter; frost and thaw alternate even in the winter, 

 and in summer there is much stormy and rainy weather — and any 

 number of mosquitoes. The excavation was easy — except for floods 

 of melting water in the spring — but the objects were very poorly pre- 

 served; most of the houses only contained stone objects, mostly 

 whetting and hammerstones and soapstone pot fragments. The 

 houses, however, were well preserved: the oldest were small, round, 

 and half underground, with a deep sunken doorway, stone walls, 

 poorly built, stone paved floor, and often a kitchen, forming a bulge 

 in the front wall, where there had been cooking with bone and blubber. 

 This house type is no doubt derived from the whalebone house of the 

 Thule culture but stones and driftwood have replaced whalebone. 



The specimens found in the 20 excavated houses of this type were 

 not very numerous but they were suflScient to tell us that the Eskimo 

 inhabitants belong to the Inugsuk culture. Very prominent amongst 

 the finds were fragments of soapstone lamps with wick-ledge and 

 objects derived from the Norsemen — pieces of bell metal and of iron, 

 soapstone, spindle whorls (one with a runic inscription), a piece of 

 woven cloth, fragments of soapstone vessels, and net sinkers. 



The Julianehaab district in the medieval period was the center of 

 the Norse colonies in Greenland, the "East Settlement." Here the 

 Icelanders settled as sheep and cattle breeders, after Eric the Ked had 

 discovered Greenland in 985, and here for 5 centuries there lived a 

 numerous population with 190 farms, several churches, and mon- 

 asteries. At first the Norse Greenlanders were quite prosperous but 

 from the fourteenth century onward communication with Iceland and 

 Norway became less regular until it ceased entirely at the beginning 

 of the fifteenth century; and when white people again went to 



