[75] Cf. Islandske Annaler, ed. by Storm, 1888, p. 228.
[76] It is shown by Solberg’s [1907] researches that they did so.
[77] As stated on [p. 86], Jacob Ziegler (circa 1532) also says that the people of Greenland “have almost lapsed to heathendom,” etc. Although mythical, this shows a similar tradition.
[78] Cf. Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 258; F. Jónsson, 1899, p. 328.
[79] This seems very doubtful, as it is not known that a bishop ever resided in the Western Settlement.
[80] It is true that this is not stated in the narrative; it is only said that the Skrælings possessed the whole Western Settlement, and that Ivar and his companions found no people there, either Christian or heathen, but only wild cattle; and it may, of course, be doubtful whether the meaning was that the whole settlement had been destroyed by a predatory incursion.
[81] This explanation offers, of course, the difficulty that it would not be applicable to dairy cattle; but in this way of life the settlers may have had to give up milking.
[82] These last ideas may well be supposed to have originated in a confusion with the tales about Wineland.
[83] We find conceptions of the Skrælings as dangerous opponents or assailants in Michel Beheim in 1450 [Vangensten, 1908, p. 18], Paulus Jovius in 1534, Jacob Ziegler in 1532, Olaus Magnus in 1555, and others. But it is evident that these conceptions are to a great extent due to myth and superstition.
[84] Cf. Islandske Annaler, ed. by Storm [1888], pp. 365, f., 414, f. Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. pp. 135, ff., 436, ff.