142 DANIEL BRUUN. 
Dr. phil. Louis Bogé has recently found a document in the state- 
archives in Copenhagen (confer “Danish Magazine” fifth row VI) which 
decidedly points out, that shortly before the death of Christian I (1481) 
there had been sent an expedition to Greenland which had brought news 
home from there. In the letter written to King Christian III it is men- 
tioned that his grandfather had sent DipriK PINING out, who was 
Admiral and governor in Iceland, together with Ротновзт and several 
ships, on the Portugese king’s appeal so as to find new islands and 
countries. It adds, that Pining had from, a station he had raised on 
the mountain Hvitsærk in Greenland, fought the Greenland sea-robbers 
who made the sea dangerous with their small boats without а keel 
(skin-boats). 
Biörnbo says, that if one confronts this with the circumstance that 
an old record had been found on the Faroe islands, through which Pur- 
CHAS announces that Pining and Pothorst, who lived for some years 
in Iceland, every now and then sailed over there and carried on trade 
in Greenland, so there is reason to believe that a Damish-Iceland state 
expedition has been in Greenland and carried on barter with the in- 
habitants, which at times has been broken off by contentions. 
It is not impossible, that Pining’s expedition is the same as the 
one referred to by some people in the year 1476, and where mate JOHAN 
SCOLVUS is then mentioned as leader. This would in any case fit in with 
Christian I year of death (1481) also that Didrik Pining was mentioned as 
governor in Iceland in the year 1478. In one single information it is 
said that they, on the expedition lead by Scolvus came to Labrador; 
but the conceptions of Greenland and Labrador for a long time were 
mixed up, so it hardly signifies that the last named country really was 
reached. 
There is no proof of Columbus having known anything about the 
geographical discoveries the Norsemen had made in Vineland, or of the 
later voyages of discovery in the ice regions, up to the one in 1476, 
which was undertaken at the instigation of the King of Portugal. 
The same concerns JoHn Слвот who undertook his great voyage 
of discovery to north America in 1497. One does not know how far 
the trial, to reunite the connection with the colonies in Greenland was 
made, in response to the papal letter already mentioned. It is not 
unlikely that an expedition went out to Greenland, exactly in the same 
year as Columbus went out on his great expedition of discovery. 
In Denmark and Norway the Norse-colonies in Greenland were 
not quite forgotten, and the wish to re-establish the connection was 
not wanting, but there it ended; as all navigation there was hardly 
known any longer. It is said, that the German merchants in Bergen 
in the year 1484 suddenly killed about forty seamen, the only ones, 
who at that time, knew the navigation of Greenland. 
Whether this communication is true or not, is a question, but in 
