17 



be considered as certain. If Ari's information is reliable — and 

 there is no reason to question it — there were already before 

 the year 1000 A. D. Eskimo wanderers in the southern part of 

 Greenland, but they did not settle down there. They must have 

 preferred regions farther north, if they have not limited them- 

 selves to a visit in Greenland. There is at all events reason 

 to suppose that the Eskimo people in Greenland at that time 

 consisted merely of some small hordes, which only shortly be- 

 fore had come to the land, and who led a roaming life along 

 the northernmost coasts. 



During the next few centuries after the year 1000, the 

 Icelanders settled the southern part of the west coast, where 

 numerous ruins around the fjords at the colonies Julianehaab 

 (Østerbygd) and Godthaab (Vesterbygd) still bear evidence of 

 the old Norse colonization*). From here proceeded the dis- 

 covery of America. The first place where the Norsemen saw 

 the Skrælings themselves was not on the coasts of Greenland, 

 but on the coasts of the New World. 



Already in the year 999, Leif, the son of Erik the Red, 

 had reached America, about 600 years before Columbus. The 

 discovery was quite accidental, since Leif was on his way from 

 Norway to Greenland, when a storm drove him over to unknown 

 lands in the west, where he found ,, self-sown wheat-fields and 

 grape-vines growing". The returning discoverers' accounts of 

 these new regions, whose fame soon spread throughout the 

 North, occasioned the big expedition which in 1003 started out 

 from Vesterbygden in Greenland under the leadership of Thor- 

 finn Karise fn i for the purpose of colonizing "Vineland", as 

 the Norsemen called the southernmost part of the newly dis- 

 covered land**). 



*) F. Jonsson : "Grönlands gamle topografi efter kilderne. Østerbygden og 

 Vesterbygden". Meddelelser, Vol. 20 (1809). — K. J. V. Steenstrup: "Om 

 Østerbygden". Meddelelser, Vol. 9 (1889). 



'*) Our chief source of information with respect to the Vineland expedition 

 is Eireks saga rauôa, Krik the Red's saga, which we have in two 



