Greenland

“ The Muscovy Company of England, the East India Company of Holland, both knew the Greenland of the Danes; and sent their ships to fish at Spitzbergen, east of Greenland. But was Greenland an island, or a great continent? Were Spitzbergen and Greenland [5] parts of a vast Polar land? Did the mountains wreathed there in eternal mists conceal the wealth of a second Peru? Below the endless swamps of ice, would men find gold sands? And when one followed up the long coast of the east shore—as long as from Florida to Maine—where the Danish colonies had perished of cold centuries ago—what beyond? ”

“ The wealth of Greenland is too powerful for the virtue of a Greenlander; they forgot the merit and the presents of Anningait, and decreed Ajut to the embraces of Norngsuk. She entreated; she remonstrated; she wept, and raved; but finding riches irresistible, fled away into the uplands, and lived in a cave upon such berries as she could gather, and the birds or hares which she had the fortune to ensnare, taking care, at an hour when she was not likely to be found, to view the sea every day, that her lover might not miss her at his return. ”

“ Love, that power which permeates all creation, is by no means unknown in Greenland; but the Greenland variety of it is a simple impulse of nature, lacking the many tender shoots and intricate blossoms of the hot-house plant which we know by this name. ”

“ The founding of the Greenland colony is the only strange or improbable part of the narrative, but that is corroborated in so many other ways that we know it to be true; as already observed, no fact in mediæval history is better established. When I speak of the settlement of Greenland as strange, I do not mean that there is anything strange in the Northmen's accomplishing the voyage thither from Iceland. That island is nearer to Greenland than to Norway, and we know, moreover, that Norse sailors achieved more difficult things than penetrating the fiords of southern Greenland. ”

“ Greenland, a vast island at the northern point of our continent, is a mighty ice-house, perhaps as extensive as the whole United States. Here the ice and snow are piled up from century to century, imparting to all the regions around something of its own chilly atmosphere. The northerly winds that come even to us have something of old Greenland’s breath in them. ”

“ According to the relation and opinion of those Greenlanders, that inhabit the gulf of Disco, in 69°, Greenland is an island, which they infer from the strong current that runs from the North, and keeps the ice open even into the midst of the sea: they will also tell you, they have spoken with people different from themselves on the other side of the ice, and hailed them. Their language, they say, is the same, but the persons different, so that a small strait only divides Greenland from America. ”

“ I do not remember any thing in all my experience in Greenland that has left a stronger impression upon my mind than the arrival of this ship, nor any thing which made the isolation of the Danes who dwelt there so apparent. In these days of telegraphs, and steamships, and quick transit everywhere, it is rather painful to contemplate civilized, refined, and Christian families being a whole year without once hearing from the world. ”

“ Greenland is considered as a peninsula attached to America, wretchedly barren, for no trees grow there. But God, who made man of the dust, also promised to supply his wants, and most wonderfully is this exemplified with regard to Greenland. To provide the inhabitants with the means of warming and nourishing their bodies, God causes the sea to drive vast quantities of wood from distant shores, and with thankfulness the poor Greenlanders regularly gather these providential supplies from their own coasts. ”

“ In Greenland they appear like a fragment thrown off from a revolving wheel by centrifugal force. And here they seem to have lost the traditional ferocity of their race, though not its adventurous spirit. Sailing westward, they discovered America, which was the crowning glory of their career. ”

“ We are sure that our readers would not wish to live in Greenland; yet the inhabitants of that island think their country the best in the world. If at any time a Greenlander is carried to a warmer clime, he longs for his native snows; and, if he cannot hope to return, he sometimes pines away and dies.
Crossing Davis’ Strait, which is not very wide, we reach that part of the American continent which is called Labrador. This is the country of the Esquimaux.
These people resemble the Greenlanders in several important respects. Like them, they are low in stature, and in complexion are very sallow. ”

“ Nordenskiöld looked upon Greenland and its icefield as a broad-lipped, shallow vessel with chinks in the lip, the glacier being viscous matter within it. As more is poured in, the matter runs over the edges, taking the lines of the chinks, that is, of the fiords and valleys, as that of its outflow. In other words, the ice floats out by force of the superincumbent weight of snow just as does the grain on the floor of a barn when another sackful is shot on to the top of the heap already there. ”

“ And whether its inhabitants may be called happy, or no? All things well pondered, both the affirmative and negative may be true, without the least contradiction. For Greenland can pass for no better than a dismal and pitiful country, in regard to the greatest part of it, viz. all the inland country, which is perpetually covered with ice and snow, that never melts, and therefore of no use to mankind ”

“ I must own, that Greenland, in its{cxiii} present state and condition, compared with other countries, is but very mean and poor, though not yet so despicable and wretched but it may, using care and industry, not only richly maintain its own inhabitants, but also communicate to others out of the remainder of its products. ”

“ The Icelandic Chronicle contradicts itself when it says, that nothing will grow in Greenland owing to the intensity of the cold. Peyrere also remarks, that that part of Greenland, which was peopled by the Norwegians, is in the same latitude as Upland, which is the most fertile province in Sweden, and produces fine crops of grain. And the Icelandic Chronicle itself says, in another place, that the cold in Greenland is not{xxxvii} so great as in Norway; and very good corn is grown in that country. ”

“ Though Greenland be a country of a vast extent, yet it affords but a narrow field for any observation or remarks of consequence; there being no strong or well built towns to meet with; no well ordered polity or civil government ”

“ It has been stated as a fact that Greenland lies on the outermost edge of the earth toward the north; and I do not believe there is any land in the home-circle beyond Greenland, only the great ocean that runs around the earth. ”

“ Yet a greater honor is his than ever fell to a discoverer: the simple natives of Greenland long reckoned the time from his coming among them. To them he was in their ice-bound home what Father Damien was to the stricken lepers in the South seas, and Dr. Grenfell is to the fishermen of Labrador.
Hans Poulsen Egede, the apostle of Greenland, was a Norwegian of Danish descent. He was born in the Northlands, in the parish of Trondenäs, on January 31, 1686. His grandfather and his father before him had been clergymen in Denmark, the former in the town of West Egede, whence the name. ”

“ The population of Greenland at the present time equals about 7000 souls—an average to each of the twelve districts of near 600. In the district of Julianashaab there are about 800 people, distributed, along the line of its extended coast of a hundred and fifty miles, in a number of small settlements, all pitched either upon the shore of the main-land or some outlying island (it must be borne in mind that the interior is nowhere inhabitable) , at some point where there is a convenient harbor. ”

“ Greenland is a high and rocky country, always covered with ice and snow (except on the sea side, and in the bays or inlets) which never thaws nor melts away. You may judge of the height by the prospect they yield at more than twenty Norway miles distance from the shore. The whole coast is surrounded with a vast number of large and small islands. There are a great many inlets and large rivers to be met with, among which the principal is called Baal’s River, in 64°, and has been navigated eighteen or twenty Norway miles up the country; where the first Danish lodge was settled in the year 1721. ”

“ The enthralling story of the discovery of Greenland and America, as the actual beginning of great Arctic enterprises, must be introduced by some account of the authorities on which it rests, for parts of it have been the subjects of much criticism and dispute. ”

“ In such vessels, well stocked with food and weapons, the Northmen were accustomed to spend many weeks together on the sea, now and then touching land. In such vessels they made their way to Algiers and Constantinople, to the White Sea, to Baffin's Bay. It is not, therefore, their voyage to Greenland that seems strange, but it is their success in founding a colony which could last for more than four centuries in that inhospitable climate. The question is sometimes asked whether the climate of Greenland The climate of Greenland. may not have undergone some change within the last thousand years. ”

“ A few hundred of these hardy people live along the Greenland coast from Cape York up to latitude seventy-eight degrees, cut off by the surrounding ice-cap from the rest of the world. They are the most northern known inhabitants.145
Peary found the northern coast of Greenland well stocked with both animal and vegetable life. Bears, wolves, hares, and musk oxen were seen in considerable numbers.
A most important fact discovered by Hall was that the most northerly part of Greenland is comparatively free from ice, the largest known area of bare ground of that continent. ”

“ The knowledge which the Danes have at any period acquired respecting the people or the products of Greenland, never extended beyond a narrow slip of{xc} territory along the coast. They knew nothing of the remote interior of the country from actual observation; and their settlements occupied only a very small comparative portion of the whole. Much is still left to be explored; but the nature of the country itself opposes such an accumulation of obstacles to the research of the traveller, that they are not soon likely to be overcome. ”

“ This apparently quite arbitrary alteration may perhaps be due to a desire to bring the map as far as possible into agreement with the learned dogma of the continent [cf. Björnbo, 1910, pp. 141, ff.] ; but older conceptions of Greenland may also have contributed [Pg 278] towards it [cf. J. Fischer, 1902, pp. 87, ff.] . We have already seen that Adam of Bremen regarded Greenland as an island “farther out in the ocean opposite the mountains of Suedia” (see vol i. p. 194) , and in his additions to the copy of Ptolemy, Cardinal Filastre (before 1427) states that Greenland lay to the north of Norway ”

“ If we compare this mission and the treatment of Greenland as a whole with the conduct of Europeans under similar circumstances in other parts of the world, we cannot but recognise the working of an unusually humane spirit; and as we examine the whole history of the government of Greenland down to our own day, we find ever new and gratifying examples of this spirit.
With all the good will in the world, however, civilised men cannot resist the tendency to look down upon a primitive people as essentially their inferiors. Even in the history of Greenland we find many proofs of this. ”

“ In the expedition to Greenland, which was undertaken in the year 1636, the natives upon the western coast, who had some traffic with the Danes, were asked, whether there were any inhabitants like themselves beyond the mountains which were seen in the distance. The savages replied by signs, that there were more people beyond the mountains than there were hairs on their heads ”

“ This whole story of the Greenland settlement is historical fact which cannot be doubted. Partly by accident and partly by design, the Norsemen had been carried from Norway to the Orkneys and the Hebrides and Iceland, and from there to Greenland. This having happened, it was natural that their ships should go beyond Greenland itself. During the four hundred years in which the Norse ships went from Europe to Greenland, their navigators had neither chart nor compass, and they sailed huge open boats, carrying only a great square sail. ”

“ The said straits are so narrow, that men on both sides can shoot at once one and the same fish. The continent farthest to the North is all covered with ice; the islands only uncovered, where rein deer, and also geese and other wild birds, are found in great numbers.
[22] Historians disagree about the time of the first settlement of Greenland. The Icelanders (as we have mentioned) will have it to be in the year 982-3. But Pontanus, in his Danish History, refers it to the year 770 ”

“ In short, Greenland, as we see, is very convenient for trading, and may be very well worth one’s while to take in hand. But there is little to be done, without an established and formed company of men of substance as well as resolution ”

“ I allude now to mountains generally, for Greenland is not the only ice-factory of the world. That country has by no means a monopoly of the business, for nearly all parts of the earth have their great reservoirs of ice formed in the same manner from snow as the ice of Greenland, only with this difference, that the climate and the temperature necessary to the formation of glaciers from snow is higher above the sea-level in most other places than in Greenland. ”

“ It must have been from the deserted West Bygd that they came to attack the colonists in 1379. The Icelandic annals of the fourteenth century mention no more fighting in Greenland, and in the fifteenth century Greenland is not mentioned. In this manner Old Greenland passed from sight, and it was not until the seventeenth century that the country was reoccupied by Europeans. Some have supposed that the ancient colony was cut off by the plague, but the little remnant may have been exterminated by the Skrællings, as the modern natives averred. ”