712 W. Thalbitzer 



home his information from Ammassalik and the southern part of 

 the coast, the impression was strengthened that at any rate the people 

 of the Ammassalik region belonged to the northern tribe of the same 

 coast, thus must have been of northern origin^). Both these author- 

 ities put forward the suggestion, further, that the southernmost in- 

 habitants of Greenland on both coasts were a mixed race of Eskimo 

 and Norsemen from the Middle Ages'^). Holm's statement on this 

 point was already made before his East Greenland Expedition ; it 

 appeared in 1881 after his archæological investigation of the Norse 

 ruins in the Julianehaab district, but was not expressly repeated by 

 him on his return from Ammassalik, nor did Søren Hansen's an- 

 thropological investigation of the skulls and the measurements from 

 East Greenland contain any indication of this possibility^). 



In recent years C. W. Schultz-Lorentzen has brought forward a 

 new theory'^). Not that he denies the migration of the East Green- 

 landers north round the land or the migration of the southernmost 

 round Cape Farvel to the west coast (G. Holm had already said, 

 that the Southlanders on the west coast were descended from the 

 Eastlanders). He rather maintains with emphasis, that these migra- 

 tions are only moments in a still more extensive migratory move- 

 ment, in which we can see a general tendency, or an inherited in- 

 stinct (a conscious tradition) innate in all Greenlanders, by which 

 from the earliest times the East Greenlanders have been impelled to 

 move from north to south, the West Greenlanders from south to 

 north; the result would thus seem to be a sort of perpetual "bird 

 migration" round the large island. This view of the matter, of course, 

 would contain an exaggeration and cannot be taken literally. Never- 



the whole of this coast, a confirmation of the theor3' that along this route one 

 immigration (or several?) of Eskimo has taken place. The decisive reasons for 

 the immigration of the Ammassalikers from the north have been brought toge- 

 ther by Amdrup (1909) pp. 310-327. 



1) Cranz and Graah had already remarked upon certain differences in the dialect 

 and appearance of the southern East Greenlanders compared with the more 

 northern (including the Ammassalikers] ; see my citations here pp. 331 — 332 and 

 336—339. In Graah (1832j pp. 74, 77, 119. Graah's expressions regarding the 

 appearance of the southern Eastlanders lead us to suspect already', that he be- 

 lieved himself to have detected an alien (Norse) element in them. 



2) Holm (1881) pp. 158-159, 2nd edition (1894); cf. here in this work p. 342. Rink 

 (1886) p. 145. 



') Regarding the skulls brought home by the 2nd German North Pole E.xpedition 

 from the northern part of East Greenland Pansch statL-d in his section on the 

 anthropology, that the extinct inhabitants of that coast had been true Eskimo 

 without any alien mixture. See Koldewey Vol. II (1874) p. 153. 



") Schultz-Lorentzen (1904) pp. 289—330. As to the question of the immigration 

 of the northern West Greenlanders this author also takes it for granted that 

 they have come originally from the north (1. с pag 329). 



