The Icelandic Colonization of Greenland. 131 
land, indented by deep fiords, they wandered further risking their lives 
as seal capturers and hunters. 
The Eskimoe’s emigration to Greenland’s ice free coasts seems to 
have taken place both down the west coast as well as north round the 
country and down the east coast. On the east coast Eskimoes are now 
only to be found at Angmagssalik but in 1323 the Englishmen SABINE 
and GLAVERING found a little troop since extinguished, right up оп 74 %° 
n. lat., traces of their having been over the whole east coast, have 
also been found by different travellers right up to Independence fiord 
(82° п. lat), where Myrıus ERICHSEN found old summer tent places. 
The west coast is mhabited from the south end of the country to north 
of 72° п. lat., no habitations have been found from there to Cape York 
(76° n. lat.) but at the south end of Smith Sound there is another troop, 
and traces of previous dwellings are still found further north. 
When ErIK THE RED came to Greenland, he hardly met Eskimoes, 
as we know, but only traces of their having been there. Most likely the 
troops had already then begun their wandering down along Greenland’s 
west coast and round Cape Farewell to the east coast, where Thorgils 
Orrabeinfostre seems to have met them. 
First in the beginning of the 13th century one has more definite 
records to rely on. In “Historia Norvegiæ” (Storm’s edition, page 76) 
we find: 
“on the other side of the northern Greenlanders, hunters have 
found some small-folk whom they called Skrællings, and who, when 
wounded by weapons, whilst living, die without loss of blood, but 
whose blood when they are dead, will not stop flowing. They are 
altogether in want of iron, using walrus teeth as arrows and pomted 
stones as knives.” 
This is an interesting communication, as it shows us that the Eski- 
moes, at this juncture, were not in the parts, inhabited by Norsemen 
but well to the north of them. In the middle of the 13th century 
the Skrællings still lived far towards the north, on Greenland’s west 
coast, which is proved in the records brought home in the year 1265 
(1266) by the expedition previously mentioned. 
One can reckon from about the middle of the 14th century that the 
Norsemen in Greenland were almost cut off from all active help from 
the country which ought to have supported them in their unequal fight 
against nature and the Skrællings, who now began to appear in the 
Norsemen’s inhabited parts. Finally, in the course of the last half 
of the 14th century they came in contact with the Norsemen from the 
western settlement. 
The result was that these people completely succumbed. About this 
is related the following according to Ivar BaarpsOn, who in 1341 came 
to Greenland and who about 1370 returned to Norway: 
“Now the Skrællings have the whole western settlement, there are 
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