XIII 



the last part of the introduction I have added a short sketch 

 of the Greenlanders' literature and of the present state of their 

 intellectual culture. 



Finally, on the basis of those accounts of arctic exploration 

 that I had the time to look into, I have prepared the accom- 

 panying map showing the present and the earlier extension of 

 the Eskimo race. It has been executed at the Royal Hydro- 

 graphic Office, to whose director, Commodore G. Holm, I am 

 much indebted for the care and interest with which he has 

 taken charge of the work. 



The collection of folk-tales and songs which I obtained in 

 Greenland is considerable. (Yet the collections made by H. Rink 

 in the middle of the last century far surpassed mine not only in 

 bulk but also in value, my collection of folk-tales being rather 

 an after-crop.) With respect to the songs that I took down, 

 they consist partly of drum-songs, nursery rhymes etc. of 

 older origin, perhaps from heathen times, which are easily 

 recognized by their Eskimo melodies, partly of popular songs 

 of modern origin set to sailor-melodies, often to the latest 

 popular melodies from Copenhagen. Here I have only published 

 the former of these two groups, and as far as the melodies are 

 concerned, only a selection. — There is no doubt that all these 

 tales and songs give us some good samples of the Eskimo's 

 everyday language and of his way of thinking. On the whole, 

 with the exception of some few loan-words, there is no European 

 influence to be noticed in the spoken language of the Green- 

 landers, but this is only natural, since not many of them know 

 anything about any other language but their own. Furthermore 

 both the tales and the songs that I have written down ha\e even 

 been transmitted from older generations in tolerably unchanged 

 form and, with a few exceptions, uninfluenced by European ideas. 

 If the language in which I have given them should contain faults 

 and inaccuracies here and there, they are incorrect re[)roductions 

 of single words which may have been indistinctly pronounced, 



