Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 15

Approaches to the Greenlanders
well-documented model for Greenland
and the demise of the Eastem Settlement,
in fact of all Norse Greenland.
Remaining people may even have
been adopted by the Inuit/Eskimos as a
last resort.
THE DEMISE
Greenland provided, during the four hun-
dred year-long period of Scandinavian
shipping, luxury products for the
European markets under the control of
local elites, including the bishop at
Gardar. However, with the arrival in
Europe of ivory tusk in numbers, among
other things, Greenland was marginal-
ized and transatlantic shipping declined.
Certainly, it did not help that Norway
suffered a decline in the fourteenth cen-
tury.
Nevertheless, it is quite likely that
Greenland in the fífteenth century, with
its four hundred year old Norse popula-
tion was exposed by the English/British
to European mercantile capitalism.
Among other things, the latter is manifest
in the form of exceptionally strong, even
transformative forces in the general mar-
ket of foodstuffs, mass-produced goods,
and man-power of an increasingly urban-
ized and demanding Europe of which the
rural castle is a strong symbol. In fact,
without this internal expansion of
Europe, the expansion after 1500, when
Europe de facto conquered the world by
its naval expansion, is unthinkable.
Ultimately, Late Medieval capitalism
may thus have been the main factor
behind the "mysterious" demise of the
Norse settlement in Greenland. Stated
joumalistically, the Greenlanders ended
as workers in Bristol or Hull, where their
genes may now live on. The other genet-
ic survival may be among the
Inuit/Eskimos.
In fact, a letter of September 20, 1448
from Pope Nicholas V to the Icelandic
bishops mentions attacks on Greenland
"thirty years" earlier (or, in ca. 1418,
actually corresponding in time with the
English attacks on Iceland, and perhaps
even inspired or influenced by these).
The attacks were "by ... barbaric pagans
[who] came by the sea from the neigh-
bouring coasts and invaded the country".
However, the letter is weak on credible
details; it has of course been seen in sup-
port of the idea of Inuit/Eskimo attacks.
A missive of 1492 from Pope Alexander
VI to a new "bishop of Gardar" (never to
see his see) mentions that no ship had
called into Greenland for "eighty years"
(i.e., since 1412), most likely based on a
Scandinavian piece of information.
An Inuit/Eskimo tale, recorded in the
mid-eighteenth century and said to have
been passed down from "the forefathers",
of (English) pirates repeatedly attacking
the Norse Greenlanders, is seemingly in
confirmation of Pope Nicholas’s letter.
Nevertheless, it may also have been an
involuntary "plant" by the missionary
Egede family, although doubt lingers, at
least with the present author (Krogh
1967, 122f.; Ameborg 1996).
Incidentally, the last ship recorded to
have sailed directly from Iceland to
Norway in the fifteenth century departed
in 1427. After that time Copenhagen, the
rising capital of the Danish kingdom,
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