Archaeologia Islandica - 01.01.2004, Page 18

Klavs Randsborg
Figure 2. Small stone with a runic inscription mentioning a
Norse expedition found at Kingittorsuaq near Upernavik (after
Magnusen & Rafn 1838-45). 1:1.
of expeditions attempting comprehensive
descriptions of the Norse ruins (cf., e.g.,
Thorhallesen 1776; andthe detailed work
by Aa. Arctander in the 1770s). In fact,
more energy was put into this question
than into most antiquarian matters in
Denmark during the late eighteenth cen-
tury.
At the beginning of the nineteenth
century the Royal Commission of
Antiquities in Copenhagen, in particular
the Royal Society for Northem
Antiquities, took a very strong interest in
the Norse settlement sites, its mins and
other monuments as well as artefacts
from Greenland. Very many archaeologi-
cal finds (as well as ethnographica, cf.
below) from Greenland thus entered the
collections in Copenhagen (Magnusen &
Rafn 1838-45; cf. Arneborg 1989),
including a tiny Norse stone with a mnic
inscription from Kingittorsuaq at
Upemavik found in 1824 and mentioning
Norse expeditions to Northem Greenland
(for hunting and trading) (Danish
National Museum, now Ethnographic
collection, MCCXII) (Fig. 2). This "mne-
stone" reveals, as do the recorded trips to
America/Canada (possibly also for tim-
ber), Norse hunting and trading activities
far from the home settlement in the
South, expeditions which with certainty
brought the Greenlanders in close contact
with the Inuit/Eskimo.
EARLY INUIT/ESKIMO ETHNO-
GRAPHY
Few "ethnographica" from Greenland
reached the collections in Copenhagen
before the early nineteenth century,
although some did, no doubt through
whalers and others operating in the North
Atlantic, as is evident in the lists and
illustrations pertaining to the museum of
Ole Worm (1588-1654), which held a
kayak (cf. Randsborg 2001). Other
Inuit/Eskimo items of European interest
were accessories.
Some renewed contact between the
two countries Greenland and Denmark
must, as indicated, have existed at least
from about 1600 on, if not earlier.
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