Tímarit lögfræðinga - 01.01.1956, Page 39

Þessi félagsskipun féll auðvitað niður, er norrænu bygð-
irnar dóu út.
Grænland var óbyggt, er Skandinavarnir fundu það á
tíundu öld, þótt þeir fyndu þar minjar eftir Eskimóa."1)
Engir Eskimóar voru til á 10. öld, svo ekki geta Islend-
ingar hafa fundið minjar eftir þá. Islendingar fundu að-
eins minjar frá Skrælingjum, en þeir voru allt annað fólk,
kolsvartir jarðholudvergar. Fyrir 1500 voru Esldmóar ekki
til nema sem þeir Islendingar, er fallið höfðu frá kristinni
trú.
Þessi skýrsla æðsta stjórnarherra Grænlands er stór-
3) Greenland’s associations with Scandinavia go back a thou-
sand years before our time. Eric the Red was an Icelander, and
the people who went with him to Greenland at the end of the tenth
century and there established the settlement which flourished
for 500 years before it finally languished and died out were
always regarded as blelonging to a unified Scandinavian commu-
nity. The Dano-Norwegian kings who also reigned over the Faroe
Islands and Iceland never forgot that they were the rulers of
Greenland as well, and after the cessalion of regular connec-
tions with Denmark in the Middle Ages Frederik II and Christi-
an IV sent out expeditions to re-establish them.
In 1814, when Denmark and Norway were separated as a re-
sult of the Napoleonic Wars, Greenland remained with Denmark.
Danish sovereigty over the whole of Greenland is a fact now
universally recognized ...
The Scandinavians who accompanied Eric the Red to Green-
iand took with them their radilional social arrangements without
modification. They settled in two large peasant communities:
0sterbygden, corresponding to the present district of Juliane-
hSb; and Vesterbygden, in the great fjord region where Godt-
háb, Greenland’s modern capital, now stands. The peasants met
in local assembles (the ting), where they sat in judgement and
legislated exactly as in Iceland and throughout Scandinavia.
This social order of course vanished as the Scandinavian seltle-
ments became extinct.
The Scandinavians íound Greenland an unpopulated country
when they arrived there in the tenth century, though they aiso
found remains of Eskimo settlements (Greenland, bls. 29—31).