292 HISTORICAL FOOTPRINTS IN AMERICA. 



all reasonable doubts as to the accuracy of details, there is strong pro- 

 bability in favour of the authenticity of the American Vinland of the 

 Northmen. 



The Colonisation of Greenland, however, rests on no probabilities 

 of oral or written tradition, but is an indisputable historical fact. In 

 A.D., 999, Leif Ericson, the son of its discoverer, made a voyage to 

 Norway, at the time when Olaf Trygvesson, the Saint Olave of Norse 

 hagiology, was introducing Christianity into Scandinavia. Under the 

 influence of the royal missionaryr Leif Ericson abandoned paganism j 

 and carrying back with him to Greenland teachers of the new faith, 

 it found a ready acceptance among the Arctic Colonists. Greenland 

 remained in connection with the mother country till the middle of the 

 twelfth century, when it attempted to throw off its allegiance to 

 Magnus, King of Norway, but was reduced to submission by a,n expeir- 

 coition despatched for that purpose by Eric, King of Denmark, whoi^e 

 niece was wedded to the Norwegian King. 



There were two Norse colonies, those of east and west Greenlaud. 

 The colonists of the western coast appear to have been exterxniuated 

 by the Esquimaux ; but the fate of those of the eastern settlement; 

 was long a mystery on which the modern Dane and Norwegian specv^- 

 lated as one of the obscure marvels of their race's history. It is obvious 

 from the early details of the colony that the shores of Greenland must 

 have been accessible in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, to an ex- 

 tent wholly unknown in the experience of modern Arctic voyagers. In 

 all probability the decay of the colonies is due to a considerable extent to 

 climatic changes which had already, in the fourteenth century, begun 

 to hem in the Greenland coasts with the icy barriers which for four 

 centuries precluded all access to their inhospitable shores. But a 

 great mortality among the voyagers trading between Norway and 

 Greenland was occasioned in A.D., 1348, by a frightful plague known 

 by the name of the Black Heath ; and it was long maintained that 

 thp whole Greenland colony had been exterminated by the same deadly 

 scourge. Later accounts, however, still refer to the colonists ; and 

 the records of the reign of Queen Margaret — under whom the crowns 

 of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway were united in 1397, — include refer- 

 ences to the efforts then made to keep up the communication with 

 Greenland. But political troubles at home speedily rendered the 

 Queen indifferent to such remote dependencies. To all appearance, 

 ialso, the Greenland coasts were being gradually hemmed in by 



