Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. ß73 



wards causing certain alterations in the implements of the natives^). By the 

 Danish colonization on the west coast the foreign influence already felt here 

 Avas thus continued. How this influence could be traced in the altered shapes 

 of the implements will not be dealt with in detail here. But the change of ma- 

 terial (iron, steel, tin) must naturally have caused the creation of new forms 

 both in regard to the men's weapons and knives and the women's needles, scra- 

 pers and ulos. What a valuable invention is a spring-knife, even but an iron- 

 nail and a pin for a people whose knives have previously only been of stone, 

 the needles of bone and the nails of wood! The possibility is thus opened up 

 for the introduction of iron fishing-hooks, and iron drills and saws. By the 

 import of steel-needles the old-fashioned tubular needle-cases of the women 

 became superfluous and were laid aside, and when tobacco was introduced into 

 the country their trinket-boxes were used as snuff-boxes. Coloured glass-beads 

 (Dutch beads) were in early times highly appreciated and far surpassed the 

 primitive beads of ivory and dorsal vertebræ. The Ammassalik women's ear- 

 rings and frontal head-kerchiefs probably originate from the foreign modes of 

 the Dutchmen and the first colonists, and the complex wooden boxes and chests 

 may have come in by the same way. The influence of the arrival of the white 

 men gradually reached southwards from market-place to market-place round 

 to the other coast. At Ammassalik we find the belated and best preserved in- 

 fluences thereof corresponding to those that had been found some centuries 

 previously on the west coast ^). 



But the importance to the Eskimo culture of the Icelander's presence in 

 South Greenland in the middle ages is more doubtful. Undoubtedly it has been 

 next to nothing during the first centuries after the Icelanders settled down in 

 Greenland; to begin with the two people have known nothing about their coex- 

 istence in the country and even after the mutual discovery there has for a long 

 time been no intercourse. We shall later return to this question. We do not 

 know for certain how the intercourse between the Norsemen and the Eskimo 

 ended; but it is probable that the first after having lost connection with the 

 native countries in Europe and the moral and material support resulting there- 

 from have become eskimoized. It would be strange however, if the Eskimo 

 had taken no inheritance at all from them, for in Greenland they have later 

 appeared very susceptible to all influence of European culture. 



I may here only recall, that the supposition has been set forth that some 

 of the white glass-beads circulating among the South Greenlanders and which 

 are considered as old Dutch beads originate in reality from the old Norsemen''). 

 Glass-beads have been found in the ruins of the Norsemen in the former Ey- 

 stribygd. In the old saga the spaewife (völva) on Herjulfsnæs, who by sorcery 

 tried to avert the failure of the fishing, is described as being adorned with glass- 

 beads and stone trinkets ^). 



') A forerunner of this barter-period is the period mentioned from the end of the 

 15th century, under the government of Pining and Pothorst from the Northern 

 Iceland. See Bjørnbo (1912) pp. 269—270. 



") With regard to the introduction of guns, gun-powder and balls H. P. Steensby 

 has recently given some information obtained from some Greenlanders especially 

 with regard to the use of the gun-bag on the deck of the kaiak. In this con- 

 nection I may point out that the gun and the apparatus belonging thereto was 

 generally kept in a bag resembling the old-time quiver (an oblong skin-bag) and 

 called by the same name, i. e. poorqattaq (cf. Kleinschmidt Grønl. Ordbog). 



^) G. Holm (1889) p. 74 on the occasion of a discovery of such beads near Sang- 

 misok. 



*) Grønlands histor. Mindesm. I, p. 375. 



XXXIX. 43 



