In the south, a few goats, sheep, oxen and pigs have been introduced. The whaling industry was formerly prolific off the west coast but decayed when the right whale nearly disappeared. The white whale fishery of the Eskimo, however, continued, and sealing is important; walruses are also caught and sometimes narwhal. There are also important fisheries for cod, caplin, halibut, red fish (Sebastes) and nepisak (Cyclopterus lumpus); a shark (Somniosus microcephalus) is taken for the oil from its liver; and sea-trout are found in the streams and small lakes of the south. On land reindeer were formerly hunted, to their practical extinction in the south, but in the districts of Godthaab, Sukkertoppen and Holstensborg there are still many reindeer. The eider-duck, guillemot and other sea-birds are in some parts valuable for food in winter, and so is the ptarmigan. Eggs of sea-birds are collected and eider-down. Valuable fur is obtained from the white and blue fox, the skin of the eider-duck and the polar bear.
At Tasiusak (73° 22′ N.), the most northern civilized settlement in the world, gardening has been attempted without success, but several plants do well in forcing frames. At Umanak (70° 40′ N.) is the most northern garden in the world. Broccoli and radishes grow well, turnips (but not every year), lettuce and chervil succeed sometimes, but parsley cannot be reared. At Jacobshavn (69° 12′ N.), only some 15 m. from the inland ice, gardening succeeds very well; broccoli and lettuce grow willingly; the spinach produces large leaves; chervil, pepper-grass, leeks, parsley and turnips grow very well; the radishes are sown and gathered twice during the summer (June to August). In the south, in the Julianehaab district, even flowering plants, such as aster, nemophilia and mignonette, are cultivated, and broccoli, spinach, sorrel, chervil, parsley, rhubarb, turnips, lettuce, radishes grow well. Potatoes give fair results when they are taken good care of, carrots grow to a thickness of 1½ in., while cabbage does poorly. Strawberries and cucumbers have been ripened in a forcing frame. In the “Kongespeil” (King’s mirror) of the 13th century it is stated that the old Norsemen tried in vain to raise barley.
The wild vegetation in the height of summer is, in favourable situations, profuse in individual plants, though scanty in species. The plants are of the usual arctic type, and identical with or allied to those found in Lapland or on the summits of the highest British hills. Forest there is none in all the country. In the north, where the lichen-covered or ice-shaven rocks do not protrude, the ground is covered with a carpet of mosses, creeping dwarf willows, crow-berries and similar plants, while the flowers most common are the andromeda, the yellow poppy, pedicularis, pyrola, &c. besides the flowering mosses; but in South Greenland there is something in the shape of bush, the dwarf birches even rising a few feet in very sheltered places, the willows may grow higher than a man, and the vegetation is less arctic and more abundant.
Government and Trade.—The trade of Greenland is a monopoly of the Danish crown, dating from 1774, and is administered in Copenhagen by a government board (Kongelige Grönlandske Handel) and in the country by various government officials. In order to meet the double purposes of government and trade the west coast, up to nearly 74° N., is divided into two inspectorates, the southern extending to 67° 40′ N., the northern comprising the rest of the country; the respective seats of government being at Godthaab and Godhavn. These inspectorates are ruled by two superior officials or governors responsible to the director of the board in Copenhagen. Each of the inspectorates is divided into districts, each district having, in addition to the chief settlement or coloni, several outlying posts and Eskimo hunting stations, each presided over by an udligger, who is responsible to the coloni-bestyrer, or superintendent of the district. These trading settlements, which dot the coast for a distance of 1000 m., are about sixty in number. From the Eskimo hunting and fishing stations blubber is the chief article received, and is forwarded in casks to the coloni, where it is boiled into oil, and prepared for being despatched to Copenhagen by means of the government ships which arrive and leave between May and November. For the rest of the year navigation is stopped, though the winter months form the busy seal-killing season. The principle upon which the government acts is to give the natives low prices for their produce, but to sell them European articles of necessity at prime cost, and other stores, such as bread, at prices which will scarcely pay for the purchase and freight, while no merchandise is charged, on an average, more than 20% over the cost price in Denmark. In addition the Greenlanders are allowed to order goods from private dealers on paying freight for them at the rate of 2½d. per 10 ℔, or 1s. 6d. per cub. ft. The prices to be paid for European and native articles are fixed every year, the prices current in Danish and Eskimo being printed and distributed by the government. Out of the payment five-sixths are given to the sellers, and one-sixth devoted to the Greenlanders’ public fund, spent in “public works,” in charity, and on other unforeseen contingencies. The object of the monopoly is solely for the good of the Greenlanders—to prevent spirits being sold to them, and the vice, disease and misery which usually attend the collision between natives and civilization of the trader’s type being introduced into the primitive arctic community. The inspectors, in addition to being trade superintendents, are magistrates, but serious crime is very rare. Though the officials are all-powerful, local councils or parsissaet were organized in 1857 in every district. To these parish parliaments delegates are sent from every station. These parsissoks, elected at the rate of about one representative to 120 voters, wear a cap with a badge (a bear rampant), and aid the European members of the council in distributing the surplus profit apportioned to each district, and generally in advising as to the welfare of that part of Greenland under their partial control. The municipal council has the disposal of 20% of the annual profits made on produce purchased within the confines of each district. It holds two sessions every year, and the discussions are entirely in the Eskimo language. In addition to their functions as guardians of the poor, the parish members have to investigate crimes and punish misdemeanours, settle litigations and divide inheritances. They can impose fines for small offences not worth sending before the inspector, and, in cases of high misdemeanour, have the power of inflicting corporal punishment.
A Danish coloni in Greenland might seem to many not to be a cheerful place at best; though in the long summer days they would certainly find some of those on the southern fjords comparatively pleasant. The fact is, however, that most people who ever lived some time in Greenland always long to go back. There are generally in a coloni three or four Danish houses, built of wood and pitched over, in addition to storehouses and a blubber-boiling establishment. The Danish residents may include, besides a coloni-bestyrer and his assistant, a missionair or clergyman, at a few places also a doctor, and perhaps a carpenter and a schoolmaster. In addition there are generally from twenty to several hundred Eskimo, who live in huts built of stone and turf, each entered by a short tunnel. Lately their houses in the colonis have also to some extent been built of imported wood. Following the west coast northward, the trading centres are these: in the south inspectorate, Julianehaab, near which are remains of the early Norse settlements of Eric the Red and his companions (the Öster-Bygd); Frederikshaab, in which district are the cryolite mines of Ivigtut; Godthaab, the principal settlement of all, in the neighbourhood of which are also early Norse remains (the Vester-Bygd); Sukkertoppen, a most picturesque locality; and Holstenborg. In the north inspectorate the centres are: Egedesminde, on an islet at the mouth of Disco Bay; Christianshaab, one of the pleasantest settlements in the north, and Jacobshavn, on the inner shores of the same bay; Godhavn (or Lievely) on the south coast of Disco Island, formerly an important seat of the whaling industry; Ritenbenk, Umanak, and, most northerly of all, Upernivik. On the east coast there is but one coloni, Angmagssalik, in 65º 30′ N., only established in 1894. For ecclesiastical purposes Danish Greenland is reckoned in the province of the bishop of Zeeland. The Danish mission in Greenland has a yearly grant of £2000 from the trading revenue of the colony, besides a contribution of £880 from the state. The Moravian mission, which had worked in Greenland for a century and a half, retired from the country in 1900. The trade of Greenland has on the whole much decreased in modern times, and trading and missions cost the Danish state a comparatively large sum (about £11,000 every year), although this is partly covered by the income from the royalty of the cryolite mines at Ivigtut. There is, however, a yearly deficiency of more than £6000. The decline in the value of the trade, which was formerly very profitable, has to a great extent been brought about by the fall in the price of seal-oil. It might be expected that there should be a decrease in the Greenland seal fisheries, caused by the European and American sealers catching larger quantities every year, especially along the coasts of Newfoundland and Labrador, and so actually diminishing the number of the animals in the Greenland seas. The statistics of South Greenland, however, do not seem to demonstrate any such decrease. The average number of seals killed annually is about 33,000.[39] The annual value of imports, consisting of manufactured goods, foodstuffs, &c., may be taken somewhat to exceed £40,000. The chief articles of export (together with those that have lapsed) have been already indicated; but they may be summarized as including seal-oil, seal, fox, bird and bear skins, fish products and eiderdown, with some quantity of worked skins. Walrus tusks and walrus hides, which in the days of the old Norse settlements were the chief articles of export, are now of little importance.
Population.—The area of the entire Danish colony is estimated at 45,000 sq. m., and its population in 1901 was 11,893. The Europeans number about 300. The Eskimo population of Danish Greenland (west coast) seems to have decreased since the middle of the 18th century. Hans Egede estimated the population then at 30,000, but this is probably a large over-estimate. The decrease may chiefly have been due to infectious diseases, especially a very severe epidemic of smallpox. During the last half of the 19th century there was on the whole a slight increase of the native population. The population fluctuates a good deal, owing, to some extent, to an immigration of natives from the east to the west coast. The population of the east coast seems on the whole to be decreasing in number, several hundreds chiefly living at Angmagssalik. In the north part of the east coast, in the region of Scoresby Fjord and Franz Josef Fjord, numerous ruins of Eskimo settlements are found, and in 1823 Clavering met Eskimo there, but now they have either completely died out or have wandered south. A little tribe of Eskimo living in the region of Cape York near Smith Sound—the so-called “Arctic Highlanders” or Smith Sound Eskimo—number about 240.
History.—In the beginning of the 10th century the Norwegian Gunnbjörn, son of Ulf Kráka, is reported to have found some islands to the west of Iceland, and he may have seen, without landing upon it, the southern part of the east coast of Greenland. In 982 the Norwegian Eric the Red sailed from Iceland to find the land which Gunnbjörn had seen, and he spent three years on its south-western coasts exploring the country. On his return to Iceland in 985 he called the land Greenland in order to make people more willing to go there, and reported so favourably on its possibilities that he had no difficulty in obtaining followers. In 986 he started again from Iceland with 25 ships, but only 14 of them reached Greenland, where a colony was founded on the south-west coast, in the present Julianehaab district. Eric built his house at Brattalid, near the inner end oí the fjord Tunugdliarfik, just north of the present Julianehaab. Other settlers followed and in a few years two colonies had been formed, one called Österbygd in the present district of Julianehaab comprising later about 190 farms, and another called Vesterbygd farther north on the west coast in the present district of Godthaab, comprising later about 90 farms. Numerous ruins in the various fjords of these two districts indicate now where these colonies were. Wooden coffins, with skeletons wrapped in coarse hairy cloth, and both pagan and Christian tombstones with runic inscriptions have been found. On a voyage from Norway to Greenland Leif Ericsson (son of Eric the Red) discovered America in the year 1000, and a few years later Torfinn Karlsefne sailed with three ships and about 150 men, from Greenland to Nova Scotia to form a colony, but returned three years later (see [Vinland]).
When the Norsemen came to Greenland they found various remains indicating, as the old sagas say, that there had been people of a similar kind as those they met with in Vinland, in America, whom they called Skraeling (the meaning of the word is uncertain, it means possibly weak people); but the sagas do not report that they actually met the natives then. But somewhat later they have probably met with the Eskimo farther north on the west coast in the neighbourhood of Disco Bay, where the Norsemen went to catch seals, walrus, &c. The Norse colonists penetrated on these fishing expeditions at least to 73º N., where a small runic stone from the 14th century has been found. On a voyage in 1267 they penetrated even still farther north into the Melville Bay.
Christianity was introduced by Leif Ericsson at the instance of Olaf Trygvasson, king of Norway, in 1000 and following years. In the beginning of the 12th century Greenland got its own bishop, who resided at Garolar, near the present Eskimo station Igoliko, on an isthmus between two fjords, Igaliksfjord (the old Einarsfjord) and Tunugdliarfik (the old Eriksfjord), inside the present colony Julianehaab. The Norse colonies had twelve churches, one monastery and one nunnery in the Österbygd, and four churches in the Vesterbygd. Greenland, like Iceland, had a republican organization up to the years 1247 to 1261, when the Greenlanders were induced to swear allegiance to the king of Norway. Greenland belonged to the Norwegian crown till 1814, when, at the dissolution of the union between Denmark and Norway, neither it nor Iceland and the Faeroes were mentioned, and they, therefore, were kept by the Danish king and thus came to Denmark. The settlements were called respectively Öster Bygd (or eastern settlement) and Vester (western) Bygd, both being now known to be on the south and west coast (in the districts of Julianehaab and Godthaab respectively), though for long the view was persistently held that the first was on the east coast, and numerous expeditions have been sent in search of these “lost colonies” and their imaginary survivors. These settlements at the height of their prosperity are estimated to have had 10,000 inhabitants, which, however, is an over-estimate, the number having probably been nearer one-half or one-third of that number. The last bishop appointed to Greenland died in 1540, but long before that date those appointed had never reached their sees; the last bishop who resided in Greenland died there in 1377. After the middle of the 14th century very little is heard of the settlements, and their communication with the motherland, Norway, evidently gradually ceased. This may have been due in great part to the fact that the shipping and trade of Greenland became a monopoly of the king of Norway, who kept only one ship sailing at long intervals (of years) to Greenland; at the same time the shipping and trade of Norway came more and more in the hands of the Hanseatic League, which took no interest in Greenland. The last ship that is known to have visited the Norse colony in Greenland returned to Norway in 1410. With no support from home the settlements seem to have decayed rapidly. It has been supposed that they were destroyed by attacks of the Eskimo, who about this period seem to have become more numerous and to have extended southwards along the coast from the north. This seems a less feasible explanation; it is more probable that the Norse settlers intermarried with the Eskimo and were gradually absorbed. About the end of the 15th or the beginning of the 16th century it would appear that all Norse colonization had practically disappeared. When in 1585 John Davis visited it there was no sign of any people save the Eskimo, among whose traditions are a few directly relating to the old Norsemen, and several traces of Norse influence.[40] For more than two hundred years Greenland seems to have been neglected, almost forgotten. It was visited by whalers, chiefly Dutch, but nothing in the form of permanent European settlements was established until the year 1721, when the first missionary, the Norwegian clergyman Hans Egede, landed, and established a settlement near Godthaab. Amid many hardships and discouragements he persevered; and at the present day the native race is civilized and Christianized. Many of the colonists of the 18th century were convicts and other offenders; and in 1750 the trade became a monopoly in the hands of a private company. In 1733-1734 there was a dreadful epidemic of smallpox, which destroyed a great number of the people. In 1774 the trade ceased to be profitable as a private monopoly, and to prevent it being abandoned the government took it over. Julianehaab was founded in the following year. In 1807-1814, owing to the war, communication was cut off with Norway and Denmark; but subsequently the colony prospered in a languid fashion.