430 Thomas Thomsen 



a firmer grip for the hand ; at the butt end a hole has been drilled 

 for the reception of a thong for suspending the knife. The groove 

 for the insertion of the cutting edge is 4 cm. long, 3 mm. deep and 

 1 mm. broad. 



L. 3530 (Fig. 26 a) is broken at the butt end and fragmentary ; 

 present length 12 cm. It is of far ruder workmanship than the pre- 

 ceding; both faces are almost flat, the side edges are cut off 

 straight, not rounded, and the fore end also is almost straight. 

 Towards the butt end the blade increases in thickness from 5 to 8 mm.; 

 the handle, the greater part of which is missing, is quite irregular 

 in form, the extreme thickness is 11 cm.; along the handle, on the 

 side of the cutting edge, the two faces meet at a sharp angle, but 

 along the blade portion this edge is cut off square to afford sufficient 

 width for the groove in which the cutting edge may be inserted; 

 hence the blade is 1 mm. narrower than the handle, which is 16 cm. 

 broad. The groove for the cutting edge is 6 cm. long, its extreme 

 depth is 2 mm. and extreme breadth 1-5 mm.; it is broadest and 

 deepest in the middle. 



Knives of this kind are well-known from the other coast of Green- 

 land ; John Ross saw them for instance among the Polar Greenlanders 

 on his visit in 1818^, here the cutting edge consisted of small iron 

 lamellae which, according to the natives, were taken from one of three 

 large stones which were afterwards found, and proved to be aerolites ^. 



South of Melville Bay also, these knives have been found in rather 

 large numbers, sometimes double-edged, but more frequently single- 

 edged, differing greatly as regards size and length of cutting edge, 

 the latter of which, like that of the Polar-Greenland specimens, may 

 be considerable, so that the implement resembles an European knife, 

 or it may be quite short like that of the Greenland carving knife; 

 the groove is sometimes continuous, sometimes it consists of a row 

 of small incisions for the insertion of small fragments which form 

 a cutting edge; sometimes there is a hole at the tip for nailing on a 

 point. In the National Museum in Copenhagen there are no less than 

 45 specimens, of Avhich only 12 are double-edged. Here also the cut- 

 ting edge was often composed of small pieces of iron, but the latter 

 are usually disintegrated, so that only the bone part of the knife is left. 



Professor Japetus Steenstrup was the first to draw attention 

 to these West-Greenland specimens, and pointed out that the iron, to 

 judge from its chemical nature, could not have been of European 

 manufacture, but was a product of the country itself, of telluric or 



^ Ross, pp. 98 and 104. - Cf. Böggild p. 12; a fourth specimen was found a 



few years ago by Knud Rasmussen. 



