CHAPTER X. CIVIL GOVERNMENT OF GREENLAND. It was, presumably, more in his quality of a useful citizen than of a religious supervisor if Bishop Eric went over to Greenland, and moved from Steines to Gardar, near the capital of the country, even before being consecrated; as it is related by De Costa and intimated by others.1 However this may be, there is every reason to believe that the bishops of Greenland took an active part in the deliberations of the civil government of the people; nor can it be doubted that the Greenland colonists, as sincere converts to Christianity, like their cousins of Iceland, followed the example of these by giving to their bishop one of the first seats at their national conventions. The bishop, the spiritual father of the land, of whom the Greenlanders of the twelfth century were not willing to be deprived, was naturally the born support of a governmental system which was truly patriarchal in its beginnings. Eric the Red enjoyed the highest confidence and supreme authority among his fellow-colonists: they all submitted to his will,3 and he was both their protector and their judge. His children proved worthy of being intrusted with their father's jurisdiction, and Leif the Fortunate and his son Thorkell, after him, continued to govern with moderation the new, growing nation. Brat 1 Supra, p. 201. 2 First Part of the Grágás, ed. Magnussen. 3 Rafn, Antiq. Amer., p. 20. talidha, their farm and homestead, was, without any dispute, the capital of the whole country,' even though successive immigrations had made the more northern province sufficiently important to be chosen by the first bishops as the place of their principal head-quarters. De Costa2 communicates an interesting detail in regard to this capital, from the Description of Greenland by Ivar Bardson, "translated in the yeere 1608 for the use of me Henrie Hudson :" "Farther in the Sound of Ericks Ford standeth a church called Leaden Kerke [elsewhere, Leyder or Leidhar Kyrka,-i.e., Church of the Assembly]. To this church belongeth all thereabout to the sea. . . . There lyeth also a great orchard, called Grote Lead (Brattalidh), in which the Gusman (that is, a chief or Bayliffe over the Boores) doth dwell." From this particular it appears that the people of Greenland had their general convention, called Althing in Iceland, at a determined place near the home of the chief magistrate, and convened under the auspices of religion, probably in a church dedicated for this purpose. There was no divorce of Church and State in the oldest American republic. The circumstances of the election of Arnold as bishop of Gardar in the year 1123 will further confirm the fact that in ancient Greenland there existed no antagonistic dualism betwixt man as a Christian and man as a citizen. A further remark of Beauvois would, however, give us to understand that the people's assembly church was none other than the very cathedral of Gardar." The Scandinavians of Greenland, if not of Iceland, 1 Beauvois, Origines, p. 33; Gravier, p. 34, n. 2. 2 Sailing Directions, p. 74 or seq. 3 Cf. Beauvois, Origines, p. 33. Origines, p. 33. 5 Referring to 2e Épisode des Groenlandais, ch. v., in Groenl. Hist. Mindesm., t. ii. p. 704. were the first in the western hemisphere, as far back as history may inform us, who, after having fled from European tyranny, appeared as a free, independent people, in the solemn councils of a government of, for, and by themselves. As their countrymen in England and in Normandy, as those in southern Italy and in Iceland, so they established in Greenland a new State, independent of the mother-countries, republican in its general outlines, yet aristocratic in reality. And, indeed, where is to be found a republic that is democratic? As in Iceland, so in Greenland, there were Norwegian vikings, who volunteered to take other families under their protection, provided the latter should become their abettors and supporters in the feuds that ere long arose among the richest farmers, hunters, and fishers of the country; and provided they should pay them, either in produce or labor, a duty consequent upon proffered tutelage and correlative right of vassalage.-Will humanity ever attain a higher degree of independence? -The first white Americans that we know of with certainty rose up to this apex of social progress.* The grandees of the country, strong with the fidelity of their protégés, felt independent of one another, and had no rule of behavior but the general laws that were sanctioned by the assembly of the people at the "Things" of Gardar. As the form of government, so are also these laws an imitation of, if not the same as, those of Iceland and of Norway. The ancient code of the Northmen carefully provides for all occurrences of the settlers' daily 1 Cf. Ch. C. Rafn, in Mémoires des Antiquaires, 1845-49, pp. 99, 126. 2 Cf. Hin forna Lögbók Islendinga, p. ii. 3 Mémoires 1840-44, p. 97. des Antiquaires, avocations. Thus the lessee of a horse cannot let the animal grow thinner, there is a law against tying up a horse so that it cannot graze, and there is a special chapter on letting out horses to pasture. Further we find several chapters on milch-cows and other larger and smaller cattle.' In Section IX. of the Grágás's Second Part, Chapter VI. is "Of Pasturage;" the fourteenth, "Of the Division of the Land;" the fifteenth, "Of Building Fences;" the twenty-second, "Of Burning Grass on the Field;" the twenty-sixth, "Of Fencing One's Hay-Stack on Another Man's Land;" the thirtieth, "Of Hay-Barns; the thirty-second, "Of Irrigation Ditches; the thirty-third, "Of the Repartition of Water;" and Chapter XLII., "Of Winter Pastures and of the Number of Animals allowed on Common Pasturage." The safety of all other property, the security of persons, and the prosperity of commerce are attended to in equally careful details. 2 The statutes of the country were enforced and their violations punished by the chief magistrate, called "Lögmadhr" or Man of the Law, who resided at the capital, Brattalidha, and by the prefects of the various centres of settlements. These officers were named and paid by the people. When Björn, a magistrate of Iceland, returned from Jerusalem, in the year 1391, he was cast upon the coast of Greenland, and, after escaping starvation by hunting along the shore, he met with some of the colonists, who received him well, and appointed him as prefect of Eiriksfjord, at a salary of "one hundred and thirty sheep's forequarters, together with such parts of the sides as are usually left attached to them." 3 1 Grágás, ed. Magnussen, pp. 139, 427. 2 Magnussen, Grágás. 3 Torfæus, Gronl. Ant., cap. xxxii. p. 260. The Greenlanders thus lived happy and free under a well-regulated administration; and, although independent from, and paying no tribute whatever to, the mother-country,' they still enjoyed the benefits of the good-will and protection of Norway's first Christian kings, who, like St. Olaf and Sigurd the Crusader, materially assisted them in promoting both their religious and material interests. Their colonies prospered and increased with wonderful rapidity. Every available spot in both Östre- and Vestrebygd was soon occupied by new-comers, and their bold vessels were ploughing the ocean in every direction. By a wonder of nature the infancy of this new State was stronger than its adult age. It had, almost from its beginning, men and means to expand its activity and enlarge its vast domains. The continent of the western hemisphere lay at its door, and the frozen island of America soon followed in the New World the example set by barren Scandinavia in the Old; the sunnier countries on both sides of the Atlantic were found and claimed by the sturdy race of the frigid outposts of the earth. 1 Torfæus, Gronl. Ant., cap. iii. p. 17. |