130 DANIEL BRUUN. 
and more frugal; because communication with the surrounding world be- 
came more difficult. 
Coincident with the Greenlanders gomg out on capture and 
fishing m the far parts of the ice-regions, they tried to maintain a com- 
munication with Iceland and Norway, all navigation to the last named 
country taking place after the year 1261. The black death which raged 
in Norway in the year 1349, devastated especially Bergen, and as this 
town was the principal seat of commerce with Greenland, all communi- 
cation with this country declined, which was so much more fatal as 
King MAGNUS SMEK, the year before, had issued a serious prohibi- 
tion against foreigners trading with Greenland. When King Magnus 
resigned the government of Sweden and Norway he had reserved for 
himself the income of Norwegian taxed countries. As he was afraid 
of Christianity being subjected to danger in Greenland he ordered a 
ship to be sent there. This was continued several years following, but 
as the king considered himself to be solely entitled to trading with Green- 
land, the connection became poorer and poorer, and in the year 1384 
King OLur issued another law which restricted further trading inter- 
course with Greenland. It went so far, that the crews of four Icelandie 
men, who were driven to Greenland by storm, and who had lived there 
a year, after returning home to Norway were prosecuted for unlawful 
trading, but they were acquitted. 
The pest in Norway in 1392, the ruin of Bergen 1393 and the removal 
of the Norwegian government to Denmark, all influenced the injury 
to the maintenance of only a moderately regular navigation of Green- 
land. In the time of Eric of Pommern (1425) the prohibition was 
even more enforced against private sailing to Greenland; only the 
“Knarr”, the king’s own ship, was allowed to sail to that country; and 
there were often many years between the arrival of the ships, especially 
when they foundered. 
If the Knarr failed to come, one was badly off in Greenland, as 
corn, iron, and much more, which was indispensible, had to be procured 
from Norway; but most frequently the Greenlanders had to do without 
corn. They were however easily contented and hardy, and although 
they were almost barred from all intercourse with the rest of the world, 
they procured food, and generation after generation lived on, but as 
they got no help or influence, either material or spiritual from the mother- 
country, their power of resistance became diminished and the inhabi- 
tants declined in every way, so that at last the Norwegian culture in 
Greenland succumbed to that of the Skreellings. 
Although Greenland lies in the distant outskirts of the world, this 
country however had already been trod by human feet before either the 
Faroe islands or Iceland. They were as we now know, Eskimoes, who — 
coming from North America across the islands north of this part of the 
world — had reached Greenland, along which narrow, ice free coast- 
