Salmon-fishing in Vazdal by Ketils-fjord in the Eastern Settlement
(see map, vol. i. p. 265), where the “birch forest” is as high as 20 ft.
From a photograph by Dr. T. N. Krabbe (A. S. Jensen, 1910)
Norse traces among the Greenland Eskimo
It would doubtless seem reasonable to expect that the descendants of the ancient Norsemen of Greenland and of the Eskimo with whom they became absorbed should have shown signs in their external appearance of this descent, when discovered in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; but unfortunately we have no descriptions of them from that time which allow of any conclusions being drawn on the subject. It is true that Hans Egede says [1741, p. 66] that the Eskimo of Greenland “have broad faces and thick lips, are flat-nosed and of a brownish complexion; though some of them are quite handsome and white”; but nothing definite can be concluded from this, and in the period after Egede’s arrival the natives on the west coast became so mixed that it is now hopeless to look for any of the original race. It is, however, remarkable that Graah found in 1829-1831 Eskimo on the east coast of Greenland, many of whom struck him as resembling Scandinavians in appearance—a fact which he sought to explain by European sailors having perhaps been wrecked there.
But if it is now difficult to prove in this way the partially Norse descent of the natives on the southern west coast of Greenland, it is to be expected that there should be many vestiges in their myths and fairy-tales which would give evidence of this. And this is precisely what we find. In an earlier work [1891, pp. 207, ff.; Engl. ed., pp. 248, ff.] I think I have pointed out numerous features in their tales that bear a resemblance to the Norse mythical world, and that must have been derived from thence; and many more might be adduced. The similarities are sufficiently numerous to bear witness to a quite intimate intellectual contact, and are in full agreement with what we should expect. But it may seem strange that their religious ideas did not show more Christian influence, especially when we see that even so late as 1407 Christianity was powerful enough in the Eastern Settlement for a man to be burnt for having seduced another’s wife by witchcraft. There are, however, many features in their conceptions of another world, of which Egede speaks, which appear to be necessarily of Christian origin; we must suppose, too, that Christian education was at a very low ebb in Greenland at the close of the fourteenth century, and soon ceased altogether.
Norse words in the Eskimo language
Only a few words in the language of the Greenland Eskimo on the southern west coast have been shown to be of Norse origin. Hans Egede himself pointed out the following: “kona” (== wife, Old Norse kona), “sava” or “savak” (== sheep, O.N. sauðr, gen. sauða), “nisa” or “nisak” (== porpoise, O.N. hnísa), “kuanek” (== angelica, O.N. hvǫnn, plur. hvannir). Some of these words recur in Labrador Eskimo, but may have been introduced by the Moravian missionaries from Greenland. We may also mention the name the Eskimo of southern Greenland apply to themselves, “karālek” or “kalālek,” which may come from the word Skræling (which in Eskimo would become “sakalālek”). This, as the Eskimo told Egede, was the name the ancient Norsemen had called them by; otherwise the Eskimo call themselves “inuit” (== human beings); and curiously enough “kalālek” is not used by the Eskimo of northern Greenland; on the other hand, it is known to the Labrador Eskimo, but may have been brought by the missionaries, although the latter asserted that it was known when they came. It is perhaps of more importance that, according to H. Rink, a similar word (“kallaluik,” “katlalik” or “kallaaluch,” for chief or shaman) occurs in the dialects of Alaska.
Complaints of apostasy in notices of Greenland
Through all the notices of Greenland and its condition, especially those from religious sources, there runs after the fourteenth century a cry of apostasy, which is ominous of this mixture of the Norsemen with the Skrælings: we see it in the doubtful statement from 1342 about their conversion to “the people of America”; a little later, according to Ivar Bárdsson’s account (see [p. 108]), the heathen Skrælings were predominant in the Western Settlement; furthermore, the trading ship was fitted out in 1355 to prevent the “falling away” of Christianity [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 122]; Björn Einarsson’s account (see below, [p. 112]) concludes with the statement that when he was there (1386) “the bishop of Gardar was lately dead, and an old priest ... performed all the episcopal ordinations” [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 438]; after that time no bishop came to Greenland; and finally the papal letter of 1492-93 describes the Greenlanders as a people abandoned by bishop and priest, for which reason most of them had fallen from the Christian faith, although they still preserved a memory of the Christian church service (see later).[77] This may all point in the same direction: that the Norsemen in Greenland became more and more absorbed by the Eskimo.
War of extermination improbable
Of course there may have been occasional hostile encounters between the Eskimo and Norsemen in Greenland, especially as the latter, as pointed out in the last chapter, must frequently have acted with a heavy hand when they had the power. But that the Eskimo should have carried on a regular war of extermination, which resulted in the complete destruction first of the Western and then of the Eastern Settlement, as has been generally assumed until quite recently—this is incredible to any one who knows the Eskimo and considers what their conditions of life were. Where should they have developed this warlike propensity which was afterwards foreign to them, and where should they have had training in the art of war? This idea of the destruction of the settlements by hostilities is the result mainly of three statements about Greenland, of which one is very improbable and on many points impossible, another deals possibly with an actual attack, and the third is demonstrably false. We must here examine these notices a little more closely.