Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 329 



of course, when all the photographs were taken, but obtained very 

 little time to study the objects taken from the cases, as they had 

 to be brought out and put in again each day by one of the assist- 

 ants. When the work was completed, I felt no inducement to 

 continue my studies at this museum, having the distinct impression, 

 that my visits were unwelcome. I regret, that such a short measure 

 of interest and friendliness obliged me to renounce a fuller utiliza- 

 tion of the rich collections and has thus without doubt reduced the 

 strength of my work. On the other hand, I have had the good 

 fortune of being able to fill up the gap to some extent by my 

 journeys to foreign Museums, which the Carlsberg Fund wûth great 

 liberality has supported. 



Ethnography of Greenland. — The ethnography of East 

 Greenland was known earlier in the main only from G. Holm's and 

 C. Ryder's accounts of the material of their own expeditions. A 

 new contribution appeared in 1909 in my description of the 121 

 objects of the Amdrup collection from the central and northern part 

 of East Greenland. But in addition to these, there are also some 

 smaller contributions to the ethnography of the same coast, partly 

 already in Graah's (1828) and Koldewey's (1870) journals, in part in 

 the works of Stolpe and Solberg, which refer to objects of the 

 Nathorst collection and other discoveries from East Greenland and 

 in C. Kruuse's recent botanical work on the Ammassalik district. 

 Further, Murdoch, Mason and Swenander^) bring forward some 

 comparative considerations in their works with respect to the East 

 Greenland harpoon heads and other implements. With regard 

 to the distribution of the inhabitants and the structure of the 

 houses I may mention the reports of Amdrup and Thostrup. Lastly, 

 in a short paper on the Eskimo of Greenland and Hudson Bay 

 published in 1910^) I have endeavoured to show, from comparison 

 of ethnographic materials from both places, that the major portion 

 of the material culture of the Greenlanders is homogenous and that, 

 in its origin, it is most nearly related to that we know from the 

 north-west corner of the Hudson Bay — a connection already indi- 

 cated by Franz Boas with regard to the Smith Sound Eskimo and 



Solberg's and Swenander's papers have been reviewed by me in "Geografisk 

 Tidsskrift" Vol. XX (1909— 1910) pp. 10 — 17, on a few points adversely, especi- 

 ally in regard to their theories of the newness of the East Greenland culture 

 and its discontinuity with the oldest culture of Greenland. 

 Thalbitzer in "Geografisk Tidsskrift" XX (1910) pp. 213-224; in German in 

 "Baessler Archiv", II (1911) pp. 32—44. 



