After completing my survey of this church estate, I visited other parts of the fiord. The buildings have been very numerous hereabout, but all except the church and bishop’s house are now levelled with the earth, and so overgrown with willow, juniper, and birch that even their outline is scarcely distinguishable.
What a wonderful change! what a sad wreck of humanity! Here people, weary with war, had come to cultivate the arts of peace; here they had built strong and comfortable dwellings; here they had reared herds of cattle and flocks of sheep upon pastures of limitless extent; here they had worshipped God according to the dictates of their consciences; and now where are they? nothing left but this “ruined trace.” A single inscription on a tomb-stone, carved in Runic characters, is all the record that remains besides the crumbled walls. This inscription reads:
“Vigdis, daughter of M***, rests here. May God
rejoice her soul.”
And may God rejoice the souls of all of those worthies of the olden time!
I could not fail to experience a feeling of sadness as I stood beside the tombs of a people now utterly extinct. It seemed as if voices from the past were speaking to me from out the crumbling church, from the almonry where the priest dispensed his alms, from the holy-water stoup, from the tomb-stones bearing the sacred emblems of our Christian faith; from everywhere, indeed, there was a silent whispering that here a Christian people once dwelt in peace, and from temples dedicated to Almighty God arose their anthems of praise above the glittering crests of snow. That they should ever have come here seems, however, more strange than that they should have perished as they did.
Note.—The ruins of Krakortok, shown on page 67, were visited by Captain Graah in 1828, as the cap-stone over the church door-way (west end) will testify for many a day. This cap-stone is 12 feet 7 inches long by 2 feet 2 inches wide, and averages 8 inches thick. It bears this inscription—G. M. G. M. & V. MDCCCXVIII—initial letters, standing for Graah, Mathiesen, Gram, Motzfeldt, and Vahl, the visiting party.—See Graah’s Narrative, p. 38.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE NORTHMEN IN GREENLAND.
These Northmen were certainly a very wonderful people, and they did very wonderful things; but of all their enterprises the most singular would seem to be their coming to Greenland, where they were without the lines of conquest which were so attractive to their brothers and ancestors; for they were kindred of the Northman Rollo, son of Rögnvald, jarl of Maere, and king of the Orkneys, who ravaged the banks of the Seine, and played buffoon with the King of France; the same with those Danes who, in Anglo-Saxon times, conquered the half of England: descendants they were of the same Cimbri who threatened Rome in the days of Marius, and of the Scythian soldiers of conquered Mithridates, who, under Odin, migrated from the borders of the Euxine Sea to the north of Europe, whence their posterity descended within a thousand years by the Mediterranean, and flourished their battle-axes in the streets of Constantinople; fellows they were of all the sea-kings, and vikings, and “barbarians” of the North, whose god of war was their former general, and who, scorning a peaceful death, sought for Odin’s “bath of blood” whenever and wherever they could find it. In Greenland they appear like a fragment thrown off from a revolving wheel by centrifugal force. And here they seem to have lost the traditional ferocity of their race, though not its adventurous spirit. Sailing westward, they discovered America, which was the crowning glory of their career. Sailing eastward, they saw the light of Christianity which was breaking in the North, and its blessings followed them to their distant homes.