342 



brethren along the north coast than their present form of 

 culture might lead one to suppose. 



The discovery of the above mentioned bone ornaments for 

 attachment high up towards the north on the coast and the 

 other criteria which argue for the continuity, might in them- 

 selves be explained by an immigration from the south, i. e. from 

 AmmassaHk. I have heard — as G. Holm too did when he was 

 there — old folks tell of families in the previous generation, 

 parties of umiaks, who moved northwards 'long ago', never 

 to return. Amdrup lighted at Nualik, two degrees of latitude 

 north of Ammassalik, on a very ancient ruin, where over thirty 

 persons had met their death by starvation or poisoning; the 

 implements he picked up in the house were recognised as 

 coming from Ammassahk. Other parties may previously have 

 been more fortunate and slipped past the awkward places up 

 to the great fjords in the north. Here they must have met 

 their unknown kinsmen, and an isolated feature such as the 

 ornaments for attachment may have reached up to these regions 

 in this way. For the present I prefer this explanation, the said 

 find being quite isolated, rather than to assume that this idea 

 of ornamentation should have arisen up there in the high north 

 without striking root, and by chance have been transplanted 

 southwards to Ammassalik. 



The Amdrup collection from the regions north of Ammas- 

 salik belongs on the whole to a homogeneous culture; the 

 objects found convey the impression that the people who in- 

 habited this part of the coast must have belonged to the same 

 tribe as the West Greenlanders, if some few of the pieces 

 seem to point in a contrary direction, this fact may be ex- 

 plained in the light of a natural conservatism within this isolated 

 group which has made them preserve some implements of high 

 antiquity. For the present, let it remain an open question 

 whether they arrived ail at once or in several detachments, 

 and whether the varying use of stone, bone and iron for the 



