Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 685 



* 



The Eoyal Private-museum, which was for some time lodged at the 

 Crottorp Castle, has been described by Jacobæus in his "Theatrum regium" (1696). 

 In this description there is a list of the following Greenland objects^): a kaiak, 

 10 paddles (with bone-mounting), several harpoons, two gut-skinskirts, boots 

 ("calcei" i. e. kamiks) and a "frontale Groenlandicum ligneum et incurvum, ut 

 fronti aptari possit, limbo osseo cinctum", by which is undoubtedly meant an 

 eye-shade of wood, concave-shaped so that it fits to the brow, and surrounded 

 by a bone rim. — Just before the chapter on the Greenlanders is seen a Lap- 

 land drum held by a shaman. The picture is surrounded by hunting-weapons 

 resembling those of the Eskimo. The shaman holds the drum in his right hand 

 and in his left has a drumstick of bone with a forked head; in the text the shape 

 thereof is compared with a т but a y would have been just as near. The same 

 instrument is also found in PfafE's collection from West Greenland in Stock- 

 holm Riksmuseum but in the inventory is explained as an apparatus used by 

 the female angakoq (qilaleq) for lifting the head of a sick person. The Lapland 

 collection of the same museum contains several specimens of this kind of shaman 

 "drumsticks." It is very interesting to meet with the same implement among the 

 Greenland Eskimo, but this is only in agreement with the connection in cul- 

 ture which may evidently be traced along several other lines between the Eskimo 

 and the Finnish-Samoyed peoples in Siberia. 



The Eskimo on the other side of the Davis Straits were in reaHty 

 discovered earlier than the Greenland Eskimo, but Johannes de Laet (1643) 

 was the first to prove that the natives of the two opposite regions belonged 

 to the same race^). 



The first Europeans landing on this coast were, as already known, the 

 Norwegian settlers of Iceland and Greenland, first Leifr hinn heppni ('the lucky'), 

 son of Greenland's discoverer Eirekr hinn raudi ('the red'), later Thorfinn 

 Karlsefni who from 1003 to 1005 made a great expedition to the newly discov- 

 ered lands in the west and hke many later explorers brought some of the na- 

 tives back with him to his native country as prisoners. These prisoners — two 

 boys of the Skræling-people — in all probabihty came from the north-east 

 coast of Newfoundland and spoke Eskimo, to judge from the 4 words of their 

 language preserved by the Icelandic tradition and noted down in the Eireks- 

 saga'^). As far as we are able to see from the historic sources these two children 

 were in reality the first Eskimo seen in Greenland, and it is very curious that 

 they should just come to the same land where the first Icelandic settlers had only 

 found the objects (boats, implements etc.) left along the coast by the Skrælings, 

 but had not seen the people itself. After the transference to Greenland the cap- 

 tured children are said to have stayed for some time on Eirekr's farm in the 

 Eystribygö where they are said to have learnt to talk a little Icelandic. 



From Thorfinn's expedition we hear for the first time of the house and 

 skin-boats of the Eskimo Skrælings. That their winter-houses, to the eyes of 

 the Icelanders, looked like underground dweUings is not to be wondered at. 



^) Jacobæus (1696) p. 54, (written in Latin). 



'^) De Laet (1643). — Charlevoix was not the first who set forth this hypothesis 

 (1744) p. 179: "Pour moi je suis persuadé qu'ils sont originaire du Groenland" 

 (with regard to the Eskimo of the Saint Lawrence River). 



^) The opinions as to the nationality of the Skrælings have differed but the above- 

 mentioned samples of their language prove that they were Eskimo, as pointed 

 out by me (1905, cf. 1912). 



