was first discovered by Eric, surnamed Rufus, or the Red, in the year 981 or 982[1]. This chieftain was of Norwegian extraction. His father had fled from Norway, and taken refuge in Iceland, in order to avoid the vengeance which menaced him, on account of a murder which he had perpetrated in his native land. Eric appears to have committed in Iceland a crime similar to that for which his father had fled from Norway. In endeavouring to escape the pursuit of justice, Eric accidentally discovered the coast which is the present object of our inquiry. He took his departure from Iceland at the port of Snæfellzness, which is situate in a Western promontory of that island. He arrived in the vicinity of a mountain called Midjokul[2]; or, as it is denominated by others, Miklajokul. Peyrere interprets this, “le grand glaçon,” the great mountain of ice. Subsequent navigators gave it the name of Bloeserken, or Blue Smock, and others of Huidserken, or White Smock, according to the variations in the hue of the ice in different aspects and at different periods of the year.
Eric passed the first winter after his departure from Iceland in an island which he called after his own name, Ericscun, and which Torfæus places in the midst of the cultivated Eastern district. In the following spring he entered one of the bays of Eastern Greenland, to which he gave the name of Ericsfiord; and where he formed his first settlement, which he denominated Brattahlis. In the summer of the same year he explored parts of the more Western district, and gave names to many of the places which he visited[3]. He passed the following winter in the island of Ericscun; and in the succeeding summer he passed over to the main land, and proceeded along the Northern coast till he reached an immense rock, which he called Sneefiell, or the Rock of Snow. At this point he gave the name of Ravensfiord to another bay, on account of the multitudes of that ill-omened bird with which this spot abounds. Other parts of the coast derived their appellations from the names of the different adventurers who accompanied Eric in this expedition, as, Hergulfsness, Ketillsfiord, Solvadal, Einarsfiord, &c[4].
In the following summer Eric, having conciliated the forgiveness, or purchased the forbearance, of his enemies in Iceland, returned to that country to procure an additional supply of inhabitants for his new settlement. In order to render his proposals more attractive, he named the country for which he was endeavouring to provide colonists, Greenland, as if, compared with the rugged sterility of their native Iceland, it was a region of verdure and delight. He described it as abounding in cattle, and as rich in every species of game and fish. And as such delusive representations, when assisted by the vivid eloquence of enthusiasm, or the unhesitating assurance of effrontery, seldom fail of their effect, Eric returned to his recent acquisition with numerous ships, and a large body of settlers, from Iceland.
In less than twenty years after Eric the Red had begun to colonize Greenland, his son Leiff, who had made a voyage into Norway, renounced his Pagan errors, and received the baptismal rite. His conversion was owing to the example and the admonitions of King Olave Tryggwine, or Trugguerus[5], who had himself recently embraced the same doctrine, and had been very successful in causing it to be diffused throughout his dominions.
Leiff, having passed the winter at the court of the King of Norway, returned to Greenland, in company with a priest and some other missionaries, whom the King had commissioned to instruct Eric, and the other settlers, in the faith which Leiff had embraced. On their voyage to Greenland they met some mariners, who were floating upon a wreck in the open sea. These they took on board, and conveyed to the new settlement. Eric, at first, incensed with his son for having laid open to strangers the route to the new-discovered country, turned a deaf ear to his Christian admonitions. But the earnestness of the son, seconded by the instruction of the missionaries, at last prevailed over the insensibility of the father, who submitted to the rite of baptism, when the other Greenlanders followed his example.
The Christian doctrine, which had been thus introduced, was so much approved, and so generally received, that churches were established in twelve different parts of East Greenland, and in four of the Western district. Torfæus makes the year 1000 the era of the conversion of the Greenland colonists to the Christian faith. This historian of ancient Greenland has also preserved a list of its bishops, from the year 1021 to 1406, after which period no mention is made of any subsequent episcopal appointments; and indeed the intercourse between Greenland and the native region of the first settlers appears to have been previously discontinued.
A Danish Chronicle, which M. Peyrere had consulted, refers the discovery of Greenland to a much earlier date than that which has been given upon the authority of Torfæus; and the earlier date of 770 is more likely to be true, if, as M. Peyrere mentions, there is a bull of Pope Gregory IV, in 835, relative to the propagation of the Christian faith in the North of Europe, in which Iceland and Greenland are particularly mentioned.
The Danish Chronicle, to which Peyrere appeals, states, that the Kings of Denmark, having been converted to Christianity during the empire of Louis le Debonaire, Greenland had become an object of general attention at this period.
The Danish Chronicle relates, that the first settlers in Greenland were succeeded by a numerous posterity, who penetrated farther into the country, and discovered, among the rocky heights and icy mountains, some fertile spots, which were more auspicious to pasturage and cultivation. They followed the division of Greenland which Eric had established, and called the two settlements in the East and the West, Osterbygdt and Westerbygdt.
In the Eastern district the Greenlanders erected a town, to which they gave the name of Garde, where, according to Peyrere, who refers to the Chronicle, the Norwegians established a sort of emporium for the deposit and sale of their merchandize. The town of Garde became also the residence of their bishops; and the church of St. Nicholas, the patron of sailors, which was built in the same town, became the cathedral church of the Greenlanders.
As the temporal jurisdiction in Greenland was subject to the kings of Norway, so the spiritual power of the bishops was subordinate to that of the archbishops of Drontheim; and the bishops of Greenland are said frequently to have passed over to Norway, in order to consult their ecclesiastical superior.
The Danish Chronicle, which was one of the early documents upon which Peyrere founded his narrative, relates, that an insurrection broke out in Greenland, in 1256, when the inhabitants refused any longer to submit to the tributary exactions of Magnus, King of Norway. On this occasion, Eric, King of Denmark, at the request of Magnus, who had married his niece, equipped a naval armament in order to quell the rebels, and restore the authority of his nephew. The Greenland insurgents no sooner beheld the flag of the Danish fleet approaching their coast than they were struck with a panic, and sued for peace.
This peace was ratified in the year 1261. Angrim Jonas, who records the above-mentioned transaction, gives the names of the three principal inhabitants of Greenland, who signed the treaty in Norway. “Declarantes,” says Angrim, as quoted by Peyrere, “suis factum auspiciis ut Groenlandi perpetuum tributum Norveguo denuo jurassent.” Under their auspices the Greenlanders had been again brought to swear to pay a perpetual tribute to the Norwegian.
In composing his account of ancient Greenland, Peyrere derived his principal information from an Icelandic and a Danish Chronicle. The first was the production of Snorro Sturleson, who was a native of Iceland, and chief justiciary of that island in 1215. We are also indebted to him for the compilation of the Edda.
In the Icelandic Chronicle above-mentioned, which appears to be a tissue of different narratives, one of the chapters is entitled, a Description of Greenland, which Peyrere has copied into his account as literally as the difference of languages would admit. There is a similar description in Torfæus (p. 42, &c.), with particular but unimportant variations. Both the accounts are founded on the authority of Ivar Bert or Ivar Bevius, who had, for several years, been steward or maitre d’hotel to the Bishop of Garde, and was one of the persons who had been selected by the governor to expel the Skrellings from the Western province of Greenland or Westerbygdt, which they had invaded and depopulated.
Perhaps it will be best to insert this description of Eastern Greenland,
