The Land of Desolation: Being a Personal Narrative of Observation and Adventure in Greenland

by I. I. Hayes

In the year 1349 intelligence was brought to Ericsfiord from the West Buygd that a descent had been made upon them by the Skraellings. An expedition was immediately fitted out for their defense and succor, and was placed in charge of Ivar Bere (the same who left a written account of his Greenland experiences), who was secretary to the bishop, and lay superintendent of Gardar. He found, however, on arriving there, not a human being left, but merely a few cattle, which he brought away with him. Nor did he discover any enemies. Having accomplished their murderous and plundering design, the savages had retreated with the fruits of their raid, and for a time were not again heard from. But at length they learned of the still greater wealth of the white men lower down the coast, and there they began to show themselves—at first in small bands, but finally in great numbers, until they overran the habitable parts of the country; and, driving the Northmen from place to place, at length wiped them out as completely here as they had formerly done in the West Buygd. The churches were pillaged and burned, and the monasteries of St. Olaf, St. Michael, and St. Thomas were levelled with the earth.

A peculiar interest attaches to the church at Krakortok from the circumstance that here the Northmen made their last stand, and, under the leadership of a man named Ungitok, for some years maintained an obstinate and successful resistance. At this time great numbers of the savages were collected upon the island of Aukpeitsavik (about midway between Krakortok and Julianashaab), under the lead of their chief, Krassippe.

These savages, or Skraellings, were the Esquimaux of the present time. Originally they appear to have been warlike and aggressive. At present they are an inoffensive, harmless people—a change entirely due to the influence of the Danish missionaries and the Moravian Brethren, who have been among them during the past hundred and fifty years.

Whence they came, we can of course only conjecture, since they had formerly no written language of any kind, and possessed only vague traditions of having come from the West. That they crossed from Asia by Behring’s Straits, and then wandered eastward along the coasts of Arctic America, until, in course of time, they reached Greenland, there can be no reasonable doubt. Of the period of their original migration we can not, of course, have ground for even a rational speculation. This is, however, wholly unimportant to our present purpose, which concerns only their appearance in Greenland—an event which, as we have seen, happened in the fourteenth century. Could it be that these same savages were identical with those of similar character which Lief and his successors, three centuries before, had found on the shores of Massachusetts, and who were there in sufficient numbers to prevent the Northmen from occupying the country? I think it very probable; and their appearance in Greenland is, perhaps, due to the fact that the tribes now known as Indians (who first appeared upon the eastern slope of the Alleghanies about that time) drove them from their southern hunting-grounds, and forced them to seek safety in the inhospitable North, compelling them to reside upon the sea-shore, because the land produced but little game, while the sea everywhere abounded in fish. Hence their name, derived from the Indian word Esquimatlik, applied to them in derision, and signifying “eaters of fish.”

In what manner they crossed Baffin’s Bay is left in doubt. It would not have been impossible for them to do so in their skin boats. Possibly, however, they went higher up, and crossed over on the ice of Smith’s Sound. Some tribes still exist in that neighborhood; and to show their insatiable love of wandering, I may mention that I have found evidences of their presence upon the shores of Grinnell’s Land as far north as latitude 81°. It has been conjectured that they came over in fleets of boats, crossing the narrowest part of Davis’s Strait, which is less than two hundred miles wide, from land to land. It may be that they were not less influenced by a motive of revenge for the wrongs of their ancestors than fleeing from the Indians who possessed their lands, for they had been sadly ill-used in Massachusetts by the Northmen when they first came there. These Northmen had killed and tortured a great many of them in very wantonness, before actual hostilities began. There might seem to be, therefore, in the destruction of the Northmen by these Skraellings something of retributive justice.

This destruction went on, as we have seen, until the remnant of the race was brought to bay and driven to defend themselves at Krakortok. But they could neither be dislodged nor completely destroyed until stratagem was brought to bear; and the device to which these savages resorted in order to accomplish their purpose deserves to rank with the famous wooden horse of Troy.

This did not, however, happen until after a most desperate attempt had been made by Ungitok to get free from the clutches of his brutal adversaries. He managed, with a large party of his followers, to get over to the island, and in the dead of night he surprised them in their huts, and, with the loss of only one man, destroyed the entire party, putting men, women, and children to the sword. It was a fearful massacre, and a dreadful revenge; but it only further imbittered the savages against the whites, and caused them to redouble their efforts. One man escaped the general slaughter, and carried with him the memory of their burning huts and bleeding wives and children. Two there were at first, and, unhappily for the whites, one of those men was the chief, Krassippe; while the second was his brother. These Ungitok pursued upon the ice (the attack was made in winter), with several men following after; but Ungitok outstripped them all, and, overtaking the brother, ran him through the body, and then cutting off the right arm of his fallen enemy he brandished it in the air, shouting at the same time to Krassippe (who by this time had reached the shore), intimating to him, in an obliging manner, that if he ever wanted an arm he would know where to come for it. Krassippe was now beyond pursuit, so Ungitok returned, well pleased with the trophy he had cut from his victim.

After this Krassippe neither rested by night nor day until he had compassed the destruction of Ungitok and his band. In a fair fight every Northman was good for at least half a dozen savages, and, notwithstanding the destruction they had spread elsewhere, the people of Krakortok held them personally in the greatest contempt. But Krassippe was nevertheless, by numbers and strategy, to get the best of them at last. He constructed an immense raft of boats, over which he erected a low and irregular scaffolding. This he covered with tanned and bleached seal-skins, so that when afloat the structure looked like an iceberg. This he filled with armed men, and turned it adrift upon the fiord, allowing it to float down with the tide towards Krakortok among some pieces of ice. When it floated too fast, the people threw overboard stones, with lines attached to them. These, by retarding the progress of the raft, enabled them to keep in company with the icebergs. Ungitok and his people saw the raft; but so much did it appear like the ice alongside of it, that they never once suspected its character, and the armed men drifted around into a bight almost at the rear of the town. Running the raft ashore, they then rushed up and made for the church by an unfrequented route, which was left unguarded, except close to the town. The sentinel was killed, and the church was surrounded before a single person escaped from it. Then it was fired, and all who were not burned or smothered with smoke met death, as they rushed out, on the points of their enemies’ spears. Not a soul escaped except Ungitok and his son, who was but a small boy. With him Ungitok fled to the mountains, and there hid for a time in a cave, where at length he was discovered through the indefatigable exertions of Krassippe. The hiding chieftain was surrounded, and, discovering that his case was hopeless, he threw his son into the lake to prevent his falling into the hands of the savages, who would be sure to torture him, and then prepared to sell his life as dearly as possible. In the end he was overpowered and borne down. While yet sensible, Krassippe completed his revenge by cutting off his right arm, and, flourishing it before the expiring chieftain, he exclaimed, “Thou didst tell me where to come for an arm if I should want one. I have come for it.”

Thus perished the last man of his race; and since that day the Esquimaux, whom their defeated rivals had so contemptuously called Skraellings, have held possession of the country undisturbed. They have, however, very evidently decreased in numbers, and where there were once tens of thousands, there are only thousands now. For a long period of time they remained the sole occupants of the country, and nothing was known of them save vague and exaggerated accounts brought by occasional ships—such as those of Davis, Baffin, and Frobisher, who touched at Greenland on their way to the discovery of a north-west passage. In later times, however, the Danish Government (to which Greenland as well as Iceland had become subject) made numerous efforts to recover the “lost colonies,” with the hope of sustaining the trade and fisheries. Admiral Lindenau reached the coast in 1605, and carried off some of the savages. Afterwards Captain Hall, an Englishman in the employ of Denmark, took away four others, and shot what more he could, as if by way of amusement. Another, who was not versed in ocean currents, did not get near the land at all; but, becoming frightened at being able to make no progress, he declared that there was a huge magnet in the sea holding his ship, which so alarmed him that he returned home. About half a dozen enterprises followed, the last in 1670, without any further result than the killing of a few more of the savages. Then the “lost colonies” were given up altogether, until that excellent missionary, Hans Egede, went there in 1721, and established himself in Baal’s River, near where the West Buygd had flourished. Here he founded the colony of Godthaab. Then came the Moravians; and from that time to the present the re-establishment of colonies, and the civilizing and Christianizing of the natives, has gone steadily on. But nowhere did Egede or his followers find any traces of the race that had dwelt there in ancient times, save those evidences of their decay which I have described. Egede travelled very extensively; and others coming after him have described all we shall probably ever know of this Land of Desolation as it was in the days of Red Eric. Among the most important discoveries were those of Captain Graah, of the Danish navy, who visited both coasts in oomiaks during the years between 1828 and 1832; and after him Dr. Henry Rink.

I will close this historical account of Greenland with a paragraph from the Dublin Review of twenty years ago, which has not less interest at the present time than then. “Few people,” observes the Review, “imagine the extent of these ancient Greenland colonies. At best, it seems to most persons some sort of Arctic fable, and they are hardly prepared to learn that of this Greenland nation contemporary records, histories, papal briefs, and grants of land yet exist. So complete was the destruction of the colonies, and so absolutely were they lost to the rest of the world, that for centuries Europe was in doubt respecting their fate, and, up to a very recent period, was ignorant of their geographical position. To the Catholic they must be doubly interesting when he learns that here, as in his own land, the traces of his faith—of that faith which is everywhere the same—are yet distinctly to be found; that the sacred temples of his worship may still be identified; nay, that in at least one instance the church itself, with its burial-ground, its aumbries, its holy-water stoup, and its tomb-stones, bearing the sacred emblems of the Catholic belief, and the pious petitions for the prayers of the surviving faithful, still remain to attest that here once dwelt a people who were our brethren in the Church of God. It was not, as in our own land, that these churches, these fair establishments of the true faith, were ruined by the lust and avarice of a tyrant. No change of religion marked the history of the Church of Greenland; the colonies had been lost before the fearful religious calamities of the sixteenth century. How or when they were swept away we scarcely know, save from a few scattered notices, and from the traditions of wandering Esquimaux—a heathen people that burst in upon the old colonists of Greenland, and laid desolate their sanctuaries and their homes, ‘till not one man was left alive.’”