Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 665 



Iceland^), undoubtedly agrees to a surprising degree with the old 

 ball-game of the Eskimo, described by me from North Greenland 

 and as Giesecke witnessed it in Umanak in the winter of 1811. The 

 points of resemblance are numerous, only the importance of rela- 

 tionship in the ensemble is not mentioned in the old Icelandic- 

 English game. As already known E. Hertzberg has put forward the 

 hypothesis that the Indians might have learnt this ball-game from 

 the Icelanders in the middle-ages, while this people from the 10th 

 to the 12th century visited the north-eastern coasts of America and 

 traded with the natives there ^). In this case we must use the same 

 explanation for the occurrence of this ball-game among the Eskimo. 

 But in both places, America as well as Europe, this kind of ball- 

 game seems so deeply rooted in the tradition, that I feel more 

 inclined to believe, that the very conspicuous similarities are due 

 to chance and that no conclusion can be drawn from them as to 

 the kind or results of the old intercourse between the natives of 

 Europe and America. 



WOODEN MAPS AND SUNDRY THINGS. 



Wooden maps (p. 107, cf. 108, 344). — In fig. 390 are seen the 

 already mentioned, carved maps from Holm's expedition. A and В 

 are closely connected as A represents the continental coast, В a row 

 of islands lying off this coast. To understand the map the short 

 block must once be turned round and В gradually pushed forward 

 in order to get the islands in their true position in relation to the 

 continental coast ^). On comparing the chart at the end of this book 

 and beginning up in the north, В 1 corresponds to the island Storö 

 (66° 12' lat.) and A с is the peninsula Sarkarmiut (Sarqarmeen) with an 

 old settlement, which separates the fjords Kangerdlugsuatsiak (d) and 

 Nigertusok. e is a small fjord called Erserisek (West Fjord), then 

 comes /"which is the northern branch of Depot Fjord, g the southern 



^) F. Knudsen (1906) pp. 72—90. His conclusion is: knattleikr is not by origin a 

 Scandinavian game, but has been introduced into Iceland from the British 

 Islands, where an allied game was known from the time before the colonization 

 of Iceland, possibly of Irish origin (p. 89), since the main form of this as of 

 many of the English games is found in the ball-games described in the Irish 

 epic about the cattle-robbery in Kualnge from the 7th or 8th century. 



2) E. Hertzberg (1904) p. 220. 



^) The native names of the places and further explanations are found in the 

 Danish original edition in connection with PI. XXXXI, Holm (1888). Cf. Amdrup 

 (1902) p. 264. 



