A mysterious Region.—Ancient Scandinavian Colonists.—Their Decline and Fall.—Hans Egede.—His Trials and Success.—Foundation of Godthaab.—Herrenhuth Missionaries.—Lindenow.—The Scoresbys.—Clavering.—The Danish Settlements in Greenland.—The Greenland Esquimaux.—Seal-catching.—The White Dolphin.—The Narwhal.—Shark-fishery.—Fiskernasset.—Birds.—Reindeer-hunting.—Indigenous Plants.—Drift-wood.—Mineral Kingdom.—Mode of Life of the Greenland Esquimaux.—The Danes in Greenland.—Beautiful Scenery.—Ice Caves.
In many respects Greenland is one of the most remarkable countries of the Arctic zone. The whole of the northern coast of continental America from Cape Lisburne to Belle Isle Straits is known; the borders of Siberia fronting the icy ocean have been thoroughly explored by water and by land; the distance of Spitzbergen and Nova Zembla from the pole has long since been determined; but how far Greenland may reach to the north we know not—though nearly a thousand years have passed since the Icelander Günnbjorn (970 A.D.) first saw its high mountain coast, and in spite of all the attempts made since that time to circumnavigate it. The interior of the island—or continent as it may perhaps more justly be called, for it has a surface of at least 750,000 square miles, and is probably larger than Australia—is also unknown; for of this vast extent of territory only the narrow shores of the coast-line seemed to be inhabitable, or even accessible to man. On penetrating into the deeper fjords, all the valleys are found blocked with glaciers, which, on climbing the heights, are seen to pass into a monotonous plateau of ice, or névé, which seems to cover and conceal the whole interior. Thus, from its physical configuration, Greenland may well be called a mysterious region; and, strange to say, the history of the decline and fall of its first colonists is as little known as its geography.
We have seen in a previous chapter that Iceland, so peaceful in the present day, was peopled in the ninth century with a highly turbulent race of jarls and vikings. One of these worthies, called Erik Rauda, or the Red, having twice dyed his hands with blood, was banished by the Althing (982) for a term of years, and resolved to pass the time of his compulsory absence in exploring the land discovered by Günnbjorn. After spending three years on its western coasts, he returned to Iceland, and made so favorable a report of the new country, which—knowing the advantages of a good name—he called Greenland, that in 986 he induced a large body of colonists to sail with him and settle there. Other emigrants followed, and in a few years all the habitable places of Southern Greenland were occupied.
The colony, which soon after its foundation adopted the Christian religion, was divided into two districts, or “bygds” (from the Icelandic “byggia,” to383 inhabit), by an intervening tract of land named Ubygd, the “uninhabitable” or “uninhabited.” The West Bygd reached from lat. 66° down to 62°, and contained, in its best days, ninety farms and four churches. South of it lay the desert, “Ubygd,” of seventy geographical miles, terminated by the East Bygd, consisting of 190 farms, and having two towns, Gardar and Alba, one cathedral, and eleven churches. The whole population may probably have amounted to 6000 souls. The country was governed by Icelandic laws, and the first of its eighteen bishops, Arnold, was elected in 1121, the last being Endride Andreason, who was consecrated in 1406. In spite of its poverty and distance, Greenland was obliged to contribute its mite to the revenues of the Papal chair, for we read in the ancient annalists that in 1326 its tribute, consisting of walrus-teeth, was sold by the Pope’s agent, Bertram of Ortolis, to a merchant of Flanders for the sum of twelve livres and fourteen sous.
The time, however, was now fast approaching when the Greenland colony was not only to cease paying tithes and Peter’s pence, but to be swept away. During the course of the fourteenth century it was visited by one misfortune after another. The black death, which carried off twenty-five millions of Europeans, did not spare its distant fjords (1348–9); the Esquimaux harassed the survivors with repeated attacks, killing some, and carrying away others captive. A hostile fleet, suspected to be English, laid waste the country in 1418; and, finally, the revolutions and wars which broke out in Scandinavia after the death of Queen Margaret of Waldemar caused Greenland to be entirely neglected and forgotten. The last colonists either retreated to Iceland, or were destroyed by the Esquimaux, and many years elapsed before Greenland was again thought of as a place where Scandinavians had once been living. At length King Frederick II. of Denmark sent out Mogens Heineson, a famous “sea-cock,” as the chroniclers style him, to the south-eastern coast of Greenland (1581), to see if men of a Norse origin still dwelt along those ice-bound fjords. Heineson reached the coast, but the great transparency of the air, which in the Polar regions frequently causes strange optical delusions, led him into a singular error. After having sailed for many hours in the same direction, and still seeing the mountains which seemed quite near recede as he advanced, he fancied himself fettered by an invisible power, and thus the famous “sea-cock” returned home with the report that, detained by a magnetic rock, he had not been able to reach the land.
In 1605 King Christian IV. of Denmark sent out a new Greenland expedition, consisting of three ships, under the command of Godske Lindenow, and the guidance of James Hall, an English pilot. This time no magnetic rocks intervened; but the ships having separated, Hall landed on the west coast, which had already been rediscovered and visited by Davis, Hudson, Baffin, and other Arctic navigators; while Lindenow, anchoring off Cape Farewell, kidnapped two Esquimaux, who afterwards died of nostalgia in Denmark. But neither Lindenow, who the year after again made his appearance on the western coast of Greenland, nor two later expeditions under Carsten Richardson and Dannell, were able to effect a landing on any part of the eastern coast. It was in sight, but the drift-ice made it inaccessible. They were equally unsuccessful in finding any traces of the lost colony, which came at length to be regarded as a mere384 Scandinavian myth. But while no one else cared about its existence, the ardent Hans Egede (born in Norway, January 31, 1686), pastor of Vaage, in the Lofoten Islands, still continued to cherish its memory. He had read in the ancient chronicles about the old Christian communities in Greenland, and could not believe in their total extinction. He felt the deepest concern in the fate of their descendants, and the thought that after so long a separation from the mother-country they must needs be plunged in barbarism and heathen darkness, left him no rest by night or day. At length he resolved to devote his life to their spiritual welfare, and to become the apostle of rediscovered or regenerated Greenland. His zeal and perseverance overcame a thousand difficulties. Neither the public ridicule, nor the coldness of the authorities to whom he vainly applied for assistance, nor the exhortations of his friends, could damp his ardor. At length, after years of fruitless endeavors, after having given up his living and sacrificed his little fortune in the prosecution of his plans, he succeeded in forming a Greenland Company, with a capital of 9000 dollars, and in obtaining an annual stipend from the Danish Missionary Fund of 300 dollars, to which King Frederic IV. added a gift of 200 dollars. With three ships, the largest of which “The Hope,” had forty colonists on board, Egede, accompanied by his wife and four children, set sail from the port of Bergen on May 12, 1721, and reached Greenland on July 3, after a long and tedious passage. The winds had driven him to the western coast, in latitude 64°, and here he resolved at once to begin his evangelical labors with the Esquimaux. A wooden chapel was speedily erected, which formed the first nucleus of the still existing settlement of Godthaab.
But if the life of worthy Egede had for many a year been full of trouble before he went to Greenland, trials still more severe awaited him during his apostolical career. He had not merely the suspicions of the Esquimaux, the enmity of their medicine-men, the severity of the climate, and not seldom even famine to contend with. His own countrymen, disappointed in their hopes of carrying on a lucrative trade with the Greenlanders, resolved to abandon it altogether, and, after ten laborious years, the Government not only withdrew all further assistance from the mission, but even ordered the colony to be broken up. All his companions, with the exception of a few volunteers who engaged to share his fortunes, now returned to Denmark; but Egede, though his health had been so shattered by almost superhuman exertions that he had long since been obliged to leave all active duties to his son, resolved, like a faithful soldier, to die at his post. In 1733 his perseverance was at length rewarded by the grateful news that the king, at the entreaty of Count Zinzendorf, the founder of Herrenhuth, had consented to bestow an annual grant of 2000 dollars on the Greenland mission, and that three Moravian brothers had arrived to assist him in his work. Thus he could at length (1735) return with a quiet heart to his native country, where he died, universally regretted, in 1758, at the age of seventy-two.
It may easily be supposed that, during his long stay in Greenland, he anxiously sought the traces of his lost countrymen, for the desire to help them had first led him to that Arctic country. Nothing in the physiognomy of the Esquimaux or in their language pointed in any way to a European origin, and385 even their traditions said not a word of the old Norse settlers who had once inhabited the land. The ruins of some churches, and other buildings scattered here and there along the west coast, alone attested their existence, and formed a link between the past and the present. Thus if Greenland still had inhabitants of Scandinavian origin, they must necessarily be confined to the eastern coast beyond Cape Farewell. But Egede was as little able as his predecessors to penetrate through the ice-belt which, both by land and sea, completely separated it from the rest of the world.
For many years after his death it remained unknown and inaccessible; and Löwenorn, who was sent out in 1786–87 to renew the attempts of Heineson and Lindenow, had no better success. No doubt many a whaler may have admired its distant mountain peaks glowing in the evening sun, or may have been driven by the storm against its shores, but the Scoresbys were the first to determine accurately the position of part of its well-fenced coast. In the year 1817, Captain Scoresby the elder, deviating from the usual course of the whalers, steered through the western ice, and reached the east coast of Greenland beyond 70°. He could easily have landed; the coast which had so frequently baffled the attempts of previous navigators lay invitingly before him, but he could not sacrifice his duty as the commander of a whaler to curiosity or renown. And thus, without having set his foot on shore, he sailed back into the open sea. On a later visit, however, he landed in the sound which bears his name. In the year 1822 Scoresby the younger succeeded in more closely examining the land. Leaving the usual track of the whalers, he had steered to the west, and threaded his way through the drift-ice until, between 70° 33´ and 71° 12´ N. lat., the coast of Greenland lay before him. No coast that he had ever seen before had so majestic a character. The mountains, on which he bestowed the name of Roscoe, consisted of numberless jagged stones or pyramids, rising in individual peaks to a height of 3000 feet, and a chaos of sharp needles covered their rough declivities.
On July 24 he landed on a rocky promontory, which he named Cape Lister (70° 30´), and, climbing its summit, continued his excursion along its back, which was between three and four hundred feet high. Here and there between the stones, which were either naked or thinly clothed with lichens, bloomed Andromeda tetragona, a Saxifraga oppositifolia, a Papaver nudicanle, or a Ranunculus nivalis. At Cape Swainson he again descended to the shore, which here formed a flat strand about 600 feet broad. Some deserted Esquimaux huts soon arrested his attention. Charred drift-wood and a quantity of ashes lay scattered about the hearths, and proved that these dwellings had not been long forsaken. Scarcely a bird was to be seen on land, but countless auks and divers animated the waters. A great number of winged insects—butterflies, bees, mosquitoes—flew or buzzed about, particularly on the hillocks between the stones. On July 25 he once more landed on Cape Hope, where he again found traces of inhabitants. Bones of hares and fragments of reindeer horns lay scattered about on the ground. The skull of a dog was planted on a small mound of earth, for it is a belief of the Greenland Esquimaux that the dog, who finds his way everywhere, must necessarily be the best guide of the innocent children to the386 land of souls. The heat, which soon put an end to this excursion, was so great that many of the plants had shed their seeds, and some were already completely dried up and shrivelled.
The part of the coast of East Greenland discovered by Scoresby, and that which was visited the year after by Clavering, lay, however, too far to the north to afford any clue about the extinct Scandinavian settlements, even supposing them, as............