These particulars are apt not only to correct many prejudices, but also to prove that almost every one of the ancient colonists was amply supplied from the resources of his new home. Nay, they found in Greenland such plenty of several valuable commodities that they were enabled to entertain frequent commercial intercourse with the European mother country. Ivar Bardson concludes his description of Greenland by noticing some of the principal articles of export. "Greenland," he says, "is rich in silver-bearing lodes. It abounds with white bears having reddish spots on their heads, and with white falcons. It procures great quantities of whalebone and lots of walrus-skins (which, cut up in strips, form the strongest of ropes). Both in variety and abundance of fish Greenland excels all other countries. It has quarries of marble of various colors, fireproof stone, which the colonists carve and hollow out into kettles, urns, pitchers, and vats of the size of ten or twelve barrels. Reindeer are also to be found there." 1 3 The Greenlanders exported beef, stockfish, whaleoil, grease of seal, walrus-teeth, eiderdown, furs and skins, butter and cheese, besides several other articles of minor importance. The furs of seal and the teeth of walrus seem to have constituted the staple merchandise for exportation. The metropolitan of Drontheim paid, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, part of the census due the pontifical treasury with walrusteeth, evidently of Greenland origin. Peyrère discusses at full length the nature and value of this article of ancient commerce, and learnedly concludes that they 1 Rafn, Antiq. Amer., p. 318. 2 Winsor, vol. i. p. 68. 5 cium Vaticanum, Rationes Collectoriæ Svetiæ, Norwegiæ, Gotiæ et 3 Hayes, p. 22; Gravier, p. 217; Angliæ, 1306, 1313, 1326, fo. 3o. Torfæus, Gronl. Ant., p. 71. 4 Archivium Secretum Pontifi 5 P. 197. really were teeth, and not horns of unicorns. We may, however, presume that among them were not a few rather horns than teeth, when we know that the male of the narwhal has usually one long, twisted tusk projecting forward from the upper jaw like a horn.1 The walrus-teeth were for a time esteemed as ivory in Europe and sold at a high price, until they became known to be only teeth of fishes. Another commodity which the colonists of Greenland placed on the European markets was the precious wood, the "mösur," probably the curled maple, which they imported themselves from the coast of the American continent. One of the first traders between the opposite shores of the Atlantic Ocean, Thorfinn Karlsefne, sold, in the year 1014, to a merchant of Bremen, a piece of that wood for half a mark of gold. The sagas add that no vessel ever sailed from Greenland laden with a cargo more valuable than that which Thorfinn had exported from our shores.3 2 In return, the Northmen of Greenland received from Europe their weapons, tools, and all iron implements and wares. Some authors state that they also imported from Norway wood and timber for heating and building purposes; but, while it is probable that they found all needed fuel at home, it is intimated by several passages of the Icelandic records that what building-timber they could not gather from the drift-wood they imported from the adjoining continent.* Trade, among the Northmen, was mainly carried on by barter. Money was very scarce, and what there was was hardly worth having. "You have informed us,” John XXI. writes, in the year 1276, to the archbishop of Drontheim, "that the coin current in the kingdom of Norway is so utterly worthless that it is of no account whatever beyond the limits of the kingdom, and that in some parts of the said country there is no money at all." At the time of the introduction of Christianity into Iceland, or about A.D. 1000, all debts of any importance were paid in silver, says Magnussen,2-to wit, in money of pale color that contained more silver than copper, and so minted that sixty small coins would make an ounce weight of silver. But the standard was gradually lowered in such a manner that, during the reign of Waldemar II., in A.D. 1241, a mark of money was worth only one-third of a marc weight of silver, and the proportion afterwards grew lower still. Archbishop Jörund complained, alleging that the nominal value of the Norwegian money was ten times that of its material worth in silver. The kings and princes of the middle ages were generally insolvent bankrupts, and not a few had a peculiar way of increasing the slight amount of their assets. They called in the old coin of the country, and, by adding more copper to it, issued new coin of a lower standard, ordering, under severe penalties, that it should be received at the value of the former. The Hanseates, however, and other foreign merchants required from the Norwegians sound money of sterling silver. To obviate the scarcity of even this depreciated currency, the mark was afterwards divided into eight ounces, and each ounce into one hundred and forty-four skillings instead of the original sixty.* 3 The actual currency of the Northmen was, as that 1 See Document XXXVII., ƒ. Grágás, p. 500. 3 Allen, t. i. p. 242. of all other nations, established and regulated by law; but, instead of gold and green paper, they had cloth, skins, kettles, scythes, cows, oxen, horses, sheep, goats, wool, various kinds of game and fish, etc. The digest Grágás had fixed the exchange value of all those articles in relation to one another and to labor.1 In Iceland, for example, the wages of a laboring man were set by law at ten fishes or ten skillings, Lubeck, per day.2 Commerce with the Scandinavian peninsula, with Denmark and the British Isles, which commenced at the very beginning of the Greenland colonies, and hunting, fishing, and general husbandry were the great arteries diffusing contentment and prosperity all over the eastern shores of Davis' Strait and Baffin's Bay; and we should not wonder if new-comers from Iceland Sweden, and Norway steadily increased the number of the original settlers. The accounts of the Scandinavian population of Greenland differ widely, but there can be no doubt that it was quite important in its palmy days, although there may be difficulty in determining the exact figures. 3 Cooley evidently underrates, when he says that Greenland, while boasting of two cities, "Garda and Hvrattalid," did not, in regard to the number of inhabitants, equal the smallest parish of the mother country. Maltebrun seems to be of the same opinion in asserting that the people of Greenland were not more numerous than a third of the inhabitants of a large parish in Norway. Peyrère, more correct in his translation of the word "parochia," asserts that the Norwegians held such small possessions in Greenland as to have been reckoned in Denmark as equal only to 1 Magnussen, Grágás, p. 500. 'J. Anderson, Nachrichten, S. 131. 'Histoire Générale, t. i. p. 215. Geografia, t. i. p. 360. 5 Cf. Du Cange, art. Parochia. the third part of a bishopric. These data are vague and indefinite. We derive better information from the description of Ivar Bardson, which affords interesting details of one hundred and ninety "böygder" or settlements in the eastern district of the Scandinavian colonies, and of ninety in the western. Brockhaus states that during the fourteenth century there were in the latter province one hundred and ten farms.3 The round number of three hundred would, consequently, be that of all the settlements of ancient Greenland. 2 The very ruins of these numerous colonies, as, in particular, those of Brattalidha and of its religious edifices, attest that some of them had attained to quite considerable proportions and deservedly received the title of cities, or of towns at least. The others, even the smallest of them, necessarily corresponded to the importance of families or of aggregations of several individuals, as may be easily inferred from the distances intervening between them. Their topography further indicates that each "böygd," settlement or colony, was the home of at least one patriarch of a family, whose children and grandchildren continued to live with him, after the fashion in which we shall, farther on, see the children of Eric the Red marry and live in the house of their father. The Northmen of Greenland, no doubt followed the habits of their mother country, where each family established a village, and each village contained a patriarchal family, living and possessing in common, sleeping in one edifice erected as a common dormitory, eating together in another, keeping their provisions in a third, their cattle in a fourth, 1 Relation of Greenland, p. 194. 2 Torfæus, Gronl. Ant., p. 39; Scripta a Societate Hafniensi, t. ii. p. 141; Rafn in Mémoires des Antiquaires, 1845-49, p. 132. 3 Art. Groenland. 4 Mémoires des Antiquaires, 1840-44, p. 162. 5 Scripta a Societate Hafniensi, t. ii. p. 141. |