Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 14

Klavs Randsborg
ment at Gardar in Greenland for many
years [1341-64], that he had seen all this,
and he was one of those who had been
appointed by the lawman to go to the
Westem Settlement against the Skrælings,
in order to drive the Skrælings out of the
Westem Settlement, and when they arrived
there, they found nobody, either Christian
or Heathens, only some wild cattle and
sheep, and they slaughtered the wild cattle
and sheep for food, as much as the ships
would carry, and then sailed home there-
with themselves, and the aforementioned
Ivar was along."
Taking this text at face value and consid-
ering the period, a plague - like the Black
Death which hit Norway in 1349 - might
have been the reason for the disappear-
ance of the people but not the livestock,
although there is no firm evidence, and
no ship is recorded to have sailed to
Greenland, let alone the Western
Settlement, in the years of the Black
Death. An attack on the Westem settle-
ment by the English/British (or other
Europeans) seems less likely before the
fifteenth century, but is not totally impos-
sible.
That the Inuit/Eskimos could have
wiped out the entire Westem settlement
seems as improbable as the suggestion
that the complete disappearance of the
settlers was a matter of tax-evasion in the
face of Bárðarson’s arrival (cf. Seaver
1996). At any rate the report is an indica-
tor of unrest in the most northem and
most exposed part of the Norse settle-
ment in Greenland in the mid-fourteenth
century; in addition, in the late fourteenth
century also the climate took a tum for
the worse. And, contact with Scandinavia
seemingly diminished.
The last bishop in residence in Greenland
(at the Gardar/Igaliku episcopal seat) was
Alf (1368-1377/78), who arrived after
the see had been vacant for nineteen
years. The last vessels recorded to have
sailed from Greenland to Norway arrived
in 1383 and 1410 respectively (inciden-
tally, Norway was united with the Danish
kingdom after 1380). The last recorded
ship from Norway to Greenland arrived
in 1406. In the first decades of the fif-
teenth century the English, in particular
Bristol men, were very active around
Iceland where they fished for cod, traded,
and - after 1419 - pillaged even royal
farms (Seaver 1996, 159ff., also for the
below). Englishmen were nominated for
Iceland’s sees from 1426 onwards. The
English may also, as indicated above,
have been the only Europeans - apart
from the Icelanders - visiting Greenland
in the fifteenth century (possibly they
even went as far as the rich American
fisheries before the close of the century).
As already indicated, the English seem to
have determined the fate of the Eastem
Settlement in Greenland, where archaeo-
logical finds cease after the second quar-
ter of the fifteenth century. Plundering
the isolated and vulnerable settlement
might have dealt it a fatal setback, in par-
ticular if the fighting was hard.
Abducting or luring the younger men
away on fishing or to England for work
would have had the same eventual effect
within a few decades. Whalers later are
certainly known to have captured people
for work.
Thus, the actions by the
English/British on Iceland in the early
fifteenth century may readily serve as a
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