G.W. Dasent’s introduction to his Story of Burnt Njal (Edinburgh, 1861)[589] and his Norsemen in Iceland (Oxford Essays, 1858) give what Max Müller (Chips from a German Workshop, ii. 191) calls “a vigorous and lively sketch of primitive northern life;” and are well supplemented by Sabine Baring-Gould’s Iceland, its scenes and sagas (London, 1863 and later), and Richard F. Burton’s Ultima Thule, with an historical introduction (London, 1875).[590]
[D.] Greenland and its Ruins.—The sagas still serve us for the colonization of Greenland, and of particular use is that of Eric the Red.[591] The earliest to use these sources in the historic spirit was Torfæus in his Historia Gronlandiæ Antiquæ (1715).[592] The natural successor of Torfæus and the book upon which later writers mostly depend is David Crantz’s Historie von Grönland, enthaltend die Beschreibung des Landes und der Einwohner, insbesonders die Geschichten der dortigen Mission. Nebst Fortsetzung (Barby, 1765-70, 3 vols.). An English translation appeared in London in 1767, and again, though in an abridged form with some changes, in 1820.[593]
RUINS OF THE CHURCH AT KATORTOK.
After a cut in Nordenskjöld’s Den Andra Dicksonska Expeditionen till Grönland, p. 369, following one in Efter Meddelelser om Grönland.
Crantz says of his own historic aims, referring to Torfæus and to the accounts given by the Eskimos of the east coast, that he has tried to investigate “where the savage inhabitants came from, and how the ancient Norwegian inhabitants came to be so totally extirpated,” while at the same time he looks upon the history of the Moravian missions as his chiefest theme.
The principal source for the identification of the ruins of Greenland is the work compiled by Rafn and Finn Magnusen, Grönlands Historiske Mindesmærker,[594] with original texts and Danish versions. Useful summaries and observations will be found in the paper by K. Steenstrup on “Old Scandinavian ruins in South Greenland” in the Compte Rendu, Congrès des Américanistes (Copenhagen, 1883, p. 108), and in one on “Les Voyages des Danois au Greenland” in the same (p. 196). Steenstrup’s paper is accompanied by photographs and cuts, and a map marking the site of the ruins. The latest account of them is by Lieut. Holm in the Meddelelser om Grönland (Copenhagen, 1883), vol. vi. Other views and plans showing the arrangement of their dwellings and the curious circular ruins,[595] which seems to have usually been near their churches, are shown in the Baron Nordenskjöld’s Den andra dicksonska expeditionen till Grönland, dess inre isöken och dess ostkust, utförd år 1883 (Stockholm, 1885), the result of the ripest study and closest contact.
We need also to scan the narratives of Hans Egede and Graah. Parry found in 1824, on an island on the Baltic coast, a runic stone, commemorating the occupancy of the spot in 1135 (Antiquitates Americanæ; Mallet’s Northern Antiquities, 248); and in 1830 and 1831 other runes were found on old gravestones (Rink’s Danish Greenland, app. v.; Laing’s Heimskringla, i. 151). These last are in the Museum at Copenhagen. Most of these imperishable relics have been found in the district of Julianeshaab.[596]
[E.] The Vinland Voyages.—What Leif and Karlsefne knew they experienced, and what the sagas tell us they underwent, must have just the difference between a crisp narrative of personal adventure and the oft-repeated and embellished story of a fireside narrator, since the traditions of the Norse voyages were not put in the shape of records till about two centuries had elapsed, and we have no earlier manuscript of such a record than one made nearly two hundred years later still. It is indeed claimed that the transmission by tradition in those days was a different matter in respect to constancy and exactness from what it has been known to be in later times; but the assumption lacks proof and militates against well-known and inevitable processes of the human mind.
