Like the Lapps, he wore a long pelisse of untanned reindeer skin, having a hood like a friar's cowl attached thereto, and buttons of walrus teeth. His hose, boots, and breeches, which were all in one, were of the same material, but decorated at the sides by bunches of thongs and tufts of white bearskin. Thus, but for his fair complexion, he might have passed very well for an Esquimau of the Labrador coast.
I gladly committed myself to his guidance.
We soon reached his house, a dwelling of singular aspect, built on the slope of a snow-covered hill which overlooked the Fin Whale Strait, on the waters of which the rays of the northern Aurora were still playing with wondrous beauty; and from thence he dispatched some of his men to bring home the remains of his friend, the dead bears, and the head of the musk-ox.
We were received at the door by an old servant, a woman of fearful aspect, also dressed in skins; but these were adorned by stripes of red and blue leather to indicate her sex. She was aged, and being of "the old school"—for there is one there, even in Greenland—she was tattooed as completely as if she had been a denizen of Nootka Sound. Aloft in her hand, which resembled a crow's talons, she held a lamp to light us into an inner apartment, where Wolmar Fynböe introduced me to his daughters, two girls dressed in skins; but these were neatly adorned with variously-coloured leather, especially about the moccassins which encased their trim legs. Their dresses were cut low at the neck, either to reveal its whiteness (for females have vanity even in that region of ice), or to display their under garments, which were formed of the skins of little birds, ingeniously preserved, sewn together, and worn with the soft feathers next the skin.
Wolmar Fynböe was the tallest man in Greenland, yet he measured only five feet; and though deemed handsome, he had all the peculiarities of his race—to wit, a paunchy figure, a broad flat visage, of a brown brick-dust colour; small eyes, thick lips, and coal-black locks, that waved upon his shoulders like those of a gnome. Nevertheless, his daughters Grethe and Alfa had rather regular features, clear complexions, and long brown hair, their mother having been a woman of Iceland.
They were preparing a supper of grod (Danish), a species of food made of oats or barley, and eaten with butter and milk, when their father's entrance with a stranger—a being more seldom seen than mermaids and gnomes, by common report—startled them so much, that some time elapsed before they could resume their occupation, and swing upon the fire the great pot-stone kettle containing the aforesaid grod with my assistance—in proffering which I won the hearts of all, politeness to females being rather a rarity on the shore of the Fin Whale Strait.
The large fire burned brightly and cheerily, being composed of drift-wood; for upon that barren coast, in addition to the stranded wrecks of Scottish and Russian whalers, are found at times the spoil of the Great Gulf Stream, the palmettoes of South America, and, covered with weeds and barnacles, the vast logs that whilome cast the shadows of their foliage on the lovely Bay of Honduras. By this strange current the spoils of Virginia and Carolina are also cast on the shores of Iceland, and by it the main-mast of H.M.S. Tilbury, which was burned in Jamaica, was thrown upon the western coast of Scotland.
After having fed so long upon the spoils of the ice—the odds and ends of seals and blubber—I made a veritable banquet with the worthy merchant and his two daughters. Then we had the luxury of hot brandy-and-water thereafter—the Ganymede who served us being, ugh! the old tattooed woman.
I have mentioned that the mansion of Weimar Fynböe presented a curious aspect, but this arose from the circumstance of its being (as he informed me) built from the remains of an old whale-ship of large dimensions, which had been cast away in the Fin Whale Strait about one hundred and fifty years ago. Her ribs and timbers formed the roof and uprights of the walls; on these the outer and inner sheathing were bolted or pegged anew, and filled-in between with moss and turf. The lockers in which her cabin stores had been placed were our seats, the beds were her berths; the room of the fur-clad Grethe and Alfa was merely separated from ours by an old bulkhead, in the centre of which a cabin door was hinged. The four stern-windows were framed into the wall, a luxury, a piece of splendour, in Greenland, where the casements are usually formed of the entrails of seals and dolphins dried, and neatly stitched together. Some faded charts were nailed on the wall as pictures. An old musket or two, and a pinchbeck watch, were nearly all that now remained of the spoil found in the ship, which had been deserted by her crew; but from none of these relics could her name or country be discerned, though I supposed her to have been English from the circumstance of a Bible and little book in that language having been found in her by the grandfather of Wolmar Fynböe, who built his house from her materials.
The "little book" Wolmar showed me. It was a curious black-letter pamphlet, printed at London in the time of Charles II., and in Dutch types. I took a particular fancy for it, as it contained the relation of a perilous voyage performed by a ship which belonged to the Seven United Provinces.