The day of the summer solstice is implied as the time of this observation. Proceeding upon this assumption Professor Rafn[21] calculated that, in the 13th century, on the 25th of July, the sun’s declination was 17° 54′ N., and the inclination of the ecliptic 23° 32′. Gardar was in 60° 55′ N. At the summer solstice, the height of the sun there, when in the N.W., was 3° 40′, equivalent to the midnight altitude of the sun on St James’s day (July 25th) in latitude 75° 46′, which is the latitude of Cape York.
The Norse explorers, starting from Kroksfjord (Wolstenholme Sound) sailed into the north water of Baffin’s Bay. They then went northwards from about 76° for three doeg, 108 miles each doeg. This brought them some distance up Smith Sound, beyond 80°. They saw many islands and glaciers and then returned southward for three doeg, coming to some islands, possibly the Cary Islands. Thence a long day’s pull brought them to Kroksfjord. Seven hundred years afterwards, a lofty cairn, built by unknown hands, was found on Washington Irving Island in Smith Sound.
It is not to be supposed that this was the only voyage of the kind that was undertaken by the Norsemen because it is the only one of which any record has reached us. These enterprises must surely have constantly succeeded one another, with a view to discovering fresh fishing grounds. They must have been more or less continuous for two centuries at least.
At its most flourishing time the Norse colony in Greenland numbered about 2000 souls in 280 homesteads. There were 12 churches in the East Bygd (the ruins of five have been found), and four in the West Bygd, and one monastery. But at the end of the 13th century the prosperity of the colony began to wane. Its existence depended upon annual intercourse with Norway, and communication began to be more and more irregular. There is a list of Bishops, but latterly few appear to have visited their See. In 1341 a bailiff of the bishopric named Ivar Bardsen was sent to Greenland to report upon the state of affairs. He found the West Bygd deserted. Ivar Bardsen made a valuable report, describing the topography of the East Bygd settlements in detail, and giving 54 place names[22]. In 1347 a Greenland ship arrived in Iceland with 18 men on board. She had been to Markland to cut wood, and had been driven out of her course by a storm[23]. In the same year King Magnus of Norway and Queen Blanche left 100 marks to Gardar Cathedral. But two years later the Black Death decimated the Norwegians, and soon afterwards all intercourse with Greenland ceased. Norway was a province of Denmark for more than four centuries.
The fate of the Greenland colony has been variously explained; by a change in the climate, by the Black Death, or by the attacks of an army of Eskimos. But the climate is exactly the same now as it was then, the Black Death broke out in Norway after intercourse ceased, and the Eskimos had always been living with the Norsemen, having been in Greenland many centuries before the Norsemen came. Moreover, the Eskimos could not assemble and attack in large numbers[24].
The disappearance of the colony after a lapse of two centuries is fully accounted for by the neglect of the Norwegians to send ships. The colony could not exist without that help. Those settlers who remained gradually died off, the survivors merging in the Eskimo population.
The vestiges confirm the narratives of the Sagas. There are the stone church at Kakortak, the foundations of churches and homesteads, the bones of oxen and goats in the refuse heaps. Two grave-stones have also been found. One marked the place where the body of Hroaldr Kolgrimsson rested. It was found in 1831, two miles north of Frederiksthal. The other is a stone with a runic inscription, found nine miles from Julianshaab in 1830:—
“Vigdis, daughter of Magnus, rests here.
May God gladden her soul[25].”
The history of the first period of Arctic discovery was thus closed in mystery. Vigdis, daughter of Greenland, seems to speak to us across the centuries. Her people achieved a great work:—the coast of Finmarken to the White Sea discovered; then Iceland, and finally the whole west coast of Greenland from Cape Farewell to Smith Sound, Baffin Land, Labrador, and Newfoundland. We see in the qualities of these Norsemen all that is required for the completion of the great work—energy, indomitable perseverance, and dauntless courage combined with practical enthusiasm. Such qualities were needed and were not wanting to achieve the glorious work done by the Norsemen. Such qualities were needed and have not been wanting in the English race—which received a large strain of Norman blood, and produced the chief Arctic explorers of modern times—to complete what was so well begun in those far-off days of old.