﻿NO. 19 NORSE VISITS TO NORTH AMERICA BABCOCK 39 



1400, and wrote a narrative of this voyage, which was recast by the 

 younger Nicolo. It gives our last glimpse of civilized life in Green- 

 land, if accepted as veritable. The monastery by the hot spring and 

 a curious description of kayaks as in use among the people, may be 

 taken hesitatingly as credentials. Lucas hardly makes out a case 

 against them. The warm Greenland 1 spring thus utilized also occurs 

 twice in Hans Egede's citations. 



It would seem that the white and Eskimo races were then inter- 

 changing arts, and perhaps the racial blending had begun. Similarly, 

 there is mention elsewhere 2 of a Norse visitor for two winters, 

 beginning in 1385, who had two Eskimo servants. It was many years 

 since Ivar Bardsen, then or afterward steward of the Bishop, 

 accompanied, probably about 1337, an expedition of relief to the 

 western settlement, threatened by the Eskimo — and found that colony 

 devoid of human life. A few deserted cattle and nothing more 

 remained as relics of the earliest of the Greenland mysteries. 

 The preceding decade affords the curious evidence of an extant 

 official receipt for the Greenland contribution of 1327 (in walrus 

 tusks) to the expenses of a crusade. 3 These facts and the 1347 

 voyage to Markland show that the Eastern settlement at least was 

 alive and in touch with both continents. Through the second half 

 of the fourteenth century we must suppose that the Eskimo were 

 drawing nearer and gaining ground, especially after the return to 

 Norway in or before 1364 of the relief expedition of 1355 under Paul 

 Knutson. 4 About 1379 there seems to have been another Eskimo 

 attack, costing the colony 18 men. But probably peace reigned in 

 1400 and as late as 1409, when a young Icelander visiting Greenland 

 was married at Gardar by the Bishop and even after 1410, when 

 the last authentic voyage ° from Iceland to Greenland occurred. 



About 1418 the storm broke on them, according to a papal letter 

 of 1448, in the form of a fleet of heathen, devastation, captivity, 

 and death. But the destruction was not complete and in 1448 the 

 colony was getting together again. A dubious entry 6 of 1484 

 mentions annual voyages until then from Bergen to Greenland. 

 Another papal letter, 7 about ten years afterward, announces the 



1 H. Egede : A Description of Greenland, pp. 20, 21. 

 2 W. Thalbitzer : The Eskimo Language, p. 29. 

 3 H. J. Rink: Danish Greenland, ed. by R. Brown, p. 28. 

 4 G. Storm : Studies on the Vineland Voyages, 1899. 

 5 H. J. Rink: Danish Greenland, ed. by R. Brown p. 29. 

 6 W. Thalbitzer: The Eskimo Language, p. 29. 



7 J. E.Olson: The Voyages of the Norsemen. Orig. Narr. Early Amer 

 Hist., Vol. 1. 



