188 DESCRIPTION OF GREENLAND, 



shown to strangers the road to the country which he had 

 wished to keep secret from all the world. But the generous 

 son softened the fierce spirit of his father. He told him of 

 those duties of humanity which constitute a man, and then 

 spoke to him of that charity which constitutes a Christian, and 

 begged him to listen to the priest whom the king of Norway 

 had given him. The result was so successful, that he pre- 

 vailed upon his father and his followers to be baptized. 

 This is all that I have been able to learn of Eric the Red 

 and his son Leiffe, and the first Norwegians who inhabited 

 Greenland. 



The Icelandic Chronicle places the departure of Torwold 

 and of Eric his son from the Port of Jedren, in Norway, at 

 the time of Earl Hakon, called the Rich, which is the com- 

 mencement of this chronicle, and in the reign of Olaus 

 Truggerus, king of Norway, about the year 982. The 

 Danish Chronicle goes further back and places it in 770. I 

 have shown you in my history of Iceland that this latter 

 supposition is more probable than the former, by a bull of 

 Pope Gregory IV, about the year 835, addressed to Bishop 

 Ansgarius for the propagation of faith in all the northern 

 countries, and especially in Iceland and Greenland. I shall 

 not dwell on this dispute, but shall only make two remarks 

 on the subject. The first is, that the same Danish Chronicle 

 states, that the kings of Denmark becoming Christians in the 

 reign of Louis le Debonnaire, from that time a great stir was 

 made about Greenland. Secondly, that M. Gunter, secre- 

 tary to the king of Denmark, a learned man of excellent 

 understanding and an intimate friend of mine, told me he 

 had seen in the archives of the archbishop of Bremen an old 

 manuscript chronicle, in which was a copy of the bull which 

 constituted the archbishop of Bremen metropolitan of all 

 the North, especially of Norway and its dependent islands, 

 Iceland and Greenland. He did not exactly remember the 

 date of the bull, but was certain it Avas before the year of 

 grace 900. 



