Ethnographical collections from East Greenland. 708 



Olcmwaq' {Olauwaarssuaq) dragging a captured seal after him. He was killed 

 by the arrows of the Eskimo before he reached the house and could come to the 

 rescue of the imprisoned inhabitants. Most of them were burnt to death. But 

 Oongortoq jumped out through the large window with his little son in his arms 

 and took to his heels. He fled away from Ameralik without being overtaken 

 by his pursuers and settled down in the south, east of Qaqortoq where he again 

 sided with his countrymen. — The name Olauwaq undoubtedly corresponds to 

 the common Icelandic name Oldfr^) and I think it possible that the Greenland 

 Oongortoq (pronounced Ooijortoq or Ooijartoq) is an eskimoised form of an Ice- 

 landic name {Yngvarr'^). 



As vivid as the description appears (and for the sake of brevity I have 

 left out many interesting features) I am however of opinion that, as regards 

 the tale about Oongortoq, the locahzation of the southern variants of the tale 

 is nearer to the truth. There is of course the possibility that to begin with he 

 has really lived in the Ameralikfjord in Vestribygö and after the attacks of 

 the Eskimo coming from the south may have fled southwards to Qaqortoq (Ey- 

 stribygö) where either his pursuers or the Eskimo there may have repeated 

 their attacks. But the explanation is unnecessary, when we consider how the 

 Eskimo just localize their popular traditions about their heroes and their 

 deeds in the new land to which they have immigrated : "here in our own country 

 lived the heroes". If the ancestors of the Ameralik Eskimo have come from 

 the south, they have brought with them the story about Oongortoq and inter- 

 woven it wdth the historical report of what happened to them up in the north, 

 where probably many years after the discovery of the Eystribygö in the south 

 they again found a colony of QaLLunaait. It is evident that the version of 

 €2 has been made up from several component parts which originally had nothing 

 to do with each other. 



We have to face the theoretical difficulty, that the historic sources give 

 evidence that the northern Icelandic colony in Greenland was destroyed by the 

 Eskimo before the southern one. How could this take place if the Eskimo had 

 come from the south? But as I remarked at the beginning, we must suppose 

 that the two Icelandic colonies have been surrounded by Eskimo both north- 

 wards and southwards and there is nothing to oppose the supposition, that 

 the northern Eskimo had already made their way southwards to Vestribygö 

 in the Godthaab district at the time when the southern Eskimo reached up 

 to the same region from the Julianehaab district. It is uncertain, whether Ve- 

 stribygö was at that time occupied by the Norsemen or has been in the hands 

 of the Skræhngs. In agreement with the traditional view, that the assailing 

 enemies came from the north^), I have hitherto taken it for granted, that the 

 first information in the Icelandic annals about the Skrælings' attack on the 

 Norsemen in 1379 applied to the northern colony'^). But the new supposition that 

 they came from the south will naturally also alter this view, for in the annals 

 we find no indication which of the colonies was meant. The report of the attack 

 in 1379 more likely refers to Eystribygö and the Eskimo coming from the south, 

 this supposition being in better agreement with the only true historic information 

 to hand about Vestribygö and the Skrælings there, namely, that found in îvarr 

 Bar dar son' s description of Greenland. 



About the author of this description we only know that he had for several 

 years administered the affairs of the bishopric in Eystribygö during a period 



') F. Jonsson (1893) p. 559. 



-j Grønl. histor. Mindesmærker, vol. III, pp. 32—33 : "1379, the Skrælings attacked 



the Greenlanders, killed 18 men and made two boys prisoners whom thej" turned 



into thralls". 

 ■'') 1. с vol. Ill, pp. 60, 461 and 466. 



