CH. VI] 
The Norsemen in Greenland 
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cairn, built by unknown hands, was found on Washington 
Irving Island in Smith Sound, 
It is not to be supposed that this was the only voyage 
of the kind that was undertaken by the Norsemen 
because it is the only one of which any record has reached 
us. These enterprises must surely have constantly suc- 
ceeded one another, with a view to discovering fresh 
fishing grounds. They must have been more or less con- 
tinuous for two centuries at least. 
At its most flourishing time the Norse colony in 
Greenland numbered about 2000 souls in 280 homesteads. 
There were 12 churches in the East Bygd (the ruins of 
five have been found), and four in the West Bygd, and 
one monastery. But at the end of the 13th century the 
prosperity of the colony began to wane. Its existence 
depended upon annual intercourse with Norway, and 
communication began to be more and more irregular. 
There is a list of Bishops, but latterly few appear to have 
visited their See. In 1341 a bailiff of the bishopric 
named Ivar Bardsen was sent to Greenland to report 
upon the state of affairs. He found the West Bygd 
deserted. Ivar Bardsen made a valuable report, de- 
scribing the topography of the East Bygd settlements 
in detail, and giving 54 place names 1 . In 1347 a Green- 
land ship arrived in Iceland with 18 men on board. 
She had been to Markland to cut wood, and had been 
driven out of her course by a storm 2 . In the same year 
King Magnus of Norway and Queen Blanche left 100 
marks to Gardar Cathedral. But two years later the 
Black Death decimated the Norwegians, and soon after- 
wards all intercourse with Greenland ceased. Norway- 
was a province of Denmark for more than four centuries. 
The fate of the Greenland colony has been variously 
explained; by a change in the climate, by the Black Death, 
or by the attacks of an army of Eskimos. But the climate 
is exactly the same now as it was then, the Black Death 
1 The sailing directions of Ivar Bardsen were published in English 
by Purchas, from a copy which had belonged to Henry Hudson. Rafn, 
in the Antiquitates Americanae, gave the text of an early copy found in 
the Faroes, with a Latin translation. Mr Major, in his Voyages of the Zeni, 
gives an English translation of the Latin version. 
2 We learn this from a parchment MS., known as the Skalholt Annals, 
believed to have been written in 1347. 
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