90 THE OCEAN RIVER 



the waters and also a gradual advance of an Eskimo popula- 

 tion to compete with the little colony on the tip of Green- 

 land. Fresh recruits from the homelands no longer came to 

 strengthen the frontiersmen in the west. So, between a trou- 

 bled Europe and a definite fluctuation in the needed warmth 

 brought from the equator by the Ocean River, times grew 

 hard. The hay crop dwindled, and the fishing became more 

 difficult. There were bold and desperate efforts by the har- 

 assed Greenland colony to settle further to the west. In 1121 

 Bishop Eric of Greenland set out on a missionary exploration 

 to relocate the early Vinland colony of Leif Ericson. Nothing 

 was ever heard again of this bold churchman, and in 1124 a 

 new Greenland bishop was appointed. 



In 1135 certain men were said to have settled on the shores 

 of Baffin's Bay; and there are vague records of attempted set- 

 tlements on the North American continent again in 1266 and 

 1285. But in 1347 — according to Icelandic annals — a Green- 

 land ship with eighteen men aboard came in to Straumsfiord 

 in Iceland from a voyage to Markland or Newfoundland. This 

 should help us keep in mind that as late as the fourteenth 

 century the crossing of the North Atlantic by way of Green- 

 land to the American continent was notable but of no special 

 wonder. By 1364, when Ivar Bardsen came back to Norway 

 from the Bishop's seat at Gardar, he had nothing to report of 

 the Greenland colony but bad news. Some life and some little 

 contact with European sources seems to have lingered on, 

 however, for as late as 1448 a papal letter referred to the suf- 

 ferings of the church in this far corner of the Northwest. But 

 there is one more bit of testimony to the drive of the Norse 

 discoverers in pre-Columbian days. Within recent years a 

 most remarkable discovery has been made in Minnesota. At a 

 little settlement called Kensington a carefully inscribed rune 

 stone was found telling the story of a small party that came 

 overland from the sea and how half the party going hunting 



