The question is, then, from whence Gisle Oddsson may have derived this, which is not known from any other source. Storm thought it out of the question that it was taken from Lyschander (from whom the same annals have borrowed so much else); but we cannot be so sure of this. After having related the volcanic eruption and disasters in Iceland in 1340 (also recorded by Gisle Oddsson), Lyschander continues:
“Norway and Sweden and Greenland also
They were hereafter well able to perceive
That such things boded ill to them.
These kingdoms they came into the hands of the Dane,
And Greenland went astray on the strand,
Not long after these times.”
Whatever may be meant by this strained, obscure expression about Greenland (is “strand” a misprint for “stand”—“went astray in its condition” ?), it might at any rate be interpreted to mean that its inhabitants had been converted (gone astray) to a heathen religion (the people of America); “not long after these times” (i.e., after 1340) may thus have been made into 1342. But the mention of a definite date—which, it may be remarked, would suit very well for the time when the Greenlanders passed into Eskimo in larger numbers, at any rate in the Western Settlement (cf. Ivar Bárdsson’s description, see below, [p. 108])—may possibly indicate that some ancient authority or other is really the foundation for the statement, and perhaps also for the lines quoted from Lyschander. Finn Magnussen [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 459] thinks that Gisle Oddsson may have derived much information from the archives and library of Skálholdt cathedral, which was burnt in 1630.
Conversion of the Greenlanders into Eskimo
Whether genuine or not, this statement may correctly describe the fate of the Greenland settlements. Deserted by the mother country, and left to their own resources, the Greenlanders were forced to adopt the Eskimo mode of life, and became absorbed in them. This took place first in the more northerly and more thinly populated Western Settlement, and later in the Eastern Settlement as well. The Eskimo with their kayaks and their sealing appliances were the superiors of the Greenlanders in sealing (as appears from the account of Björn Jorsalafarer), and their mode of life was better suited to the conditions of Greenland; it is therefore incredible that their culture should not gain the upper hand in an encounter, under conditions otherwise equal, with that of Europeans, even though there were certain things that they might learn of the Europeans, especially the use of iron.[76] Furthermore, the Greenlanders’ stock of cattle, goats and sheep had, as we have seen ([p. 97]), greatly declined owing to the long severance from Europe, and for this reason also they were obliged to adopt more of the Eskimo way of life. But then their places of residence within the fjords, far from the sealing-grounds, were no longer advantageous, and by degrees they entirely adopted the Eskimo’s more migratory life along the outer coast. Then, again, the Eskimo women were probably no less attractive to the Northerners of that time than they are to those of the present day, and thus much mixture of blood gradually resulted. The children came to speak the Eskimo language, and took at once to a wholly Eskimo way of life, just as at the present day the children of Danes and Eskimo in Greenland do. As the Norsemen at that time must also have been very inferior to the Eskimo in numbers, they must by degrees have become Eskimo both physically and mentally; and when the country was rediscovered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there were only Eskimo there, while all traces of the Norwegian-Greenland culture seemed to have disappeared.
Ruins of church at Kakortok in the Eastern Settlement (after Th. Groth)
Let us suppose that we could repeat the experiment and plant a number of European sealers in Baffin Land, for instance, with their women, together with a greater number of Eskimo, and then cut off all communication with the civilised world. Can we have any doubt as to the kind of culture we should find there if we could come back after two hundred years? All the inhabitants would be Eskimo, and we should find few traces of European culture.
