Seals on the floating ice. (D. B. 1903) 
Chapter II. 
Greenland’s first colonization. 
De the discovery of Greenland and the inhabitation of the 
country, the best possible transmissions exist from the olden times, 
which exclued all doubt as to how everything took place. Ari Thorgils- 
son the Learned (Frodi) writes about it in his book of Iceland (Chap. 6) 
the oldest Icelandic account. His informant was his father’s brother, 
Thorkel Gellisson, whose informant again was a man who had accom- 
panied Eric the Red over there. So it is the original communication 
we have before us. 
It is written in Ari Frodi’s book of Iceland: “That country called 
Greenland was discovered and populated from Iceland. Eric the Red, a 
man so named from the parts around Beidafiord, sailed forth from 
here, and took possession of the land there — whereafter it is named 
Ericsfiord. He named the country and called it Greenland, as he declared, 
it would entice people over if the country had a comely name. They 
found traces of human dwellings, to the east and west of the land besides 
fragments of small boats, and such implements of stone that one could 
gather that the same sort of people had lived there, as those who had 
populated Vineland, such as Greenlanders (1. e.: the Norsemen of Green- 
land) called Skrællings (Eskimoes). This event of Eric’s beginning to 
populate the country happened 14 or 15 years before Christianity 
reached Iceland according to what was told Thorkel Gellisson by the 
man, who himself had accompanied Eric the Red to Greenland” (985 
or 986). 
