Note Back to Main Text — Chapter II · PRE-COLUMBIAN VOYAGES.

As for the colony in Greenland, while its population seems never to have exceeded 5,000 or 6,000 souls, it maintained its existence Further fortunes of the Greenland colony. and its intercourse with Europe uninterruptedly from its settlement in 986, by Eric the Red, for more than four hundred years. Early in the fourteenth century the West Bygd, or western settlement, near Godthaab, seems to have contained ninety farmsteads and four churches; while the East Bygd, or eastern settlement, near Julianeshaab, contained one hundred and ninety farmsteads, with one cathedral and eleven smaller churches, two villages, and three or four monasteries.[268] Between Tunnudliorbik and Igaliko fiords, and about thirty miles from the ruined stone houses of Brattahlid, there now stands, imposing in its decay, the simple but massive structure of Kakortok church, once the "cathedral" church of the Gardar bishopric, where the Credo was intoned and censers swung, while not less than ten generations lived and died. About the beginning of the twelfth century there was a movement at Rome for establishing new dioceses in "the islands of the ocean;" in 1106 a bishop's see was erected in the north of Iceland, and one at about the same time in the Færoes. In 1112, Eric Gnupsson,[269] having been appointed by Pope Paschal II. "bishop of Greenland and Vinland in partibus infidelium," went from Iceland to organize his new diocese in Greenland. It is mentioned in at least six different vellums that in 1121 Bishop Eric's voyage in search of Vinland, 1121. Bishop Eric "went in search of Vinland."[270] It is nowhere mentioned that he found it, and Dr. Storm thinks it probable that he perished in the enterprise, for, within the next year or next but one, the Greenlanders asked for a new bishop, and Eric's successor, Bishop Arnold, was consecrated in 1124.[271] After Eric there was a regular succession of bishops appointed by the papal court, down at least to 1409, and seventeen of these bishops are mentioned by name. We do not learn that any of them ever repeated Eric's experiment of searching for Vinland. So far as existing Icelandic vellums know, there was no voyage to Vinland after 1121. Very likely, however, there may have been occasional voyages for timber from Greenland to the coast of the American continent, which did not attract attention or call for comment in Iceland. This is rendered somewhat probable from an entry in the "Elder Skálholt Annals," The ship from Markland, 1347. a vellum written about 1362. This informs us that in 1347 "there came a ship from Greenland, less in size than small Icelandic trading-vessels. It was without an anchor. There were seventeen men on board, and they had sailed to Markland, but had afterwards been driven hither by storms at sea."[272] This is the latest mention of any voyage to or from the countries beyond Greenland.