“at sea in a hide-boat, which now hangs in the cathedral at Trondhjem; there is also a long boat of hides [i.e., a women’s boat] which was also once taken with such Pygmies in it.”
But that these little Pygmies, a cubit high, were regarded as formidable warriors, engaged in exterminating the Norsemen, is difficult to believe,[88] even though Michel Beheim attributes warlike qualities to them (cf. [p. 85]). Walkendorf, who had so carefully collected all traditions about Greenland, describes (circa 1520) the Skrælings as an “unwarlike” and harmless people (see above, [p. 86]). It is impossible to reconcile this with a tradition of a war of extermination.
There are therefore good grounds for supposing that Arne Magnussen was approximately correct when he said in 1691 [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 138]:
“It is probable that owing to the daily increase of the ice and its drifting down from the Pole, it thus befell Greenland, and the Christian inhabitants either died of hunger or were constrained to practise the same Vitæ genus as the savages, and thus degenerated into their nature.”
Last known voyage to the Eastern Settlement
In the year 1406 the Icelanders Thorstein Helmingsson, Snorre Thorvason and Thorgrim Solvason, in one ship, were driven out of their course to Greenland. “They sailed out from Norway, and were making for Iceland. They stayed there [in Greenland] four winters” [cf. Islandske Annaler, ed. Storm, 1888, p. 288]. While they were there, in the following year [1407]
“a man named Kolgrim was burnt in Greenland for that he lay with Thorgrim Solvason’s wife, who was the daughter of a ‘lagmand’ of high standing in Iceland. This man got her consent by black art; he was therefore burnt according to sentence; nor was the woman ever after in her right mind, and died a little later.”
In 1408 one of the Icelanders married in Greenland, which is of interest from the fact that several documents bearing witness to the marriage are extant. In 1410 “Thorstein Helmingsson and Thorgrim Solvason and Snorre Thorvason and the rest of their crew sailed to Norway.” Whether this was in their own ship we do not know; but as they sailed to Norway and not to Iceland it is doubtless most probable that their ship was destroyed and that they had to wait these four years for a passage to Norway. In 1411[89] a small vessel was wrecked on the coast of Iceland; on board her came Snorre Thorvason from Norway. His wife, Gudrun, had during his absence married another man in 1410. She “now rode to meet him. He received her kindly.” “Snorre took his wife to him again, but they only lived a little while together before he died, and she then married Gisle [the other man] again.”
This is the last certain information we have of any voyage to the ancient settlements of Greenland. After that time all notices cease. As Holberg says [Danm. Hist., i. 531], after the time of Queen Margaret the succeeding kings had so much to do that they had no time to think of old Greenland.[90]
Trade with Norway’s tributary countries