Arctic Obsession. Alexis S. Troubetzkoy

      A rendering of the ninth-century Viking village at Hedeby at the southern reaches of the Jutland Peninsula. By the eleventh century, the settlement had developed into Denmark’s largest at the time.

      “Green Land” proved to be something of a misnomer; life was seriously more difficult than anticipated. Sufficient tracts of arable land were few and far between, the soil was generally inferior to that of Iceland, and wood was hard to come by. Of necessity they resorted to fish which were abundant in the local waters. In summer months the colonists regularly travelled 625 miles north along the coastline as far as Disko Bay at latitude 70°, well above the Arctic Circle. Here they hunted for walrus and seal, not only for the blubber content, but for ivory and sealskin, which they used to fashion rope. A saga written in 986 relates that “they found many settlements, toward the east and west, and remains of skin boats and stone implements, which shows that to that place journeyed the kind of people … whom the [Norse] called Skrælings [Inuit].”[4] It was not long thereafter that the colonists came face to face with the indigenous people, who, much to their surprise, proved welcoming and hospitable. Initial relations between the two peoples were warm, but friction was not long in coming and lamentably the relationship soon deteriorated, eventually growing so antagonistic that bloody encounters became common.

      Despite the challenges of the harsh life, Greenland’s Norse population continued to swell, and by the thirteenth century it numbered 3,500 inhabitants. Christianity came to the land at the time that the Norwegians converted, and by 1125 a bishopric had been established, having within it sixteen separate churches, a monastery, and a nunnery, all of which, incidentally, contributed — rather, were levied — funds for the Crusades. Following Icelandic and Greenlandic acceptance of Norwegian rule in 1262, the king granted a trade monopoly to a coterie of Bergen merchants, who in quick time demonstrated indifference to the far-off island by imposing such extortionate terms upon the Greenlanders that commercial relations withered and all but died. Records indicate, for example, that at one time seven or more trading vessels arrived from Norway each year. In the six-year period following the takeover by the Norwegian merchants, only one ship entered Greenland waters. As the island’s traders suffered, so did the farmers. For centuries, these stalwart tillers of the soil had worked the coastal lands, but then a severe worsening of climate set in, bringing exceptional cold — the “New Ice Age.” For the people, the entire way of life had become altered.

      The short of it is that by the early 1500s, settlements on eastern and western Greenland ceased to exist. The people had quite simply vanished, and what it was specifically that befell them remains a mystery. Quite possibly it was the worsening of climate that caused a disruption in the food supply and brought famine to many parts. Perhaps the tyranny of the Bergen merchants impacted the Greenlanders more severely than acknowledged — their denial to the island of an adequate supply of essential goods. Disease in one form or another was unquestionably a factor in the population’s decimation, with one hypothesis stating that the Black Plague that so devastated Europe at the time eventually hit Greenland. And undoubtedly, the deterioration of relations with the Inuit had become so severe that many European settlements were simply exterminated by them. A saga written in 1379, for example, mentions an incident when “Skrælings assaulted the Greenlanders, killed eighteen men and captured two swains and one bondswoman.”[5] But most probably the disappearance of the early Greenlanders was a result of all these factors.

      For over two hundred years Greenland lay barely inhabited. The Europeans were gone, and for whatever reason the Inuit who at one time had been scattered along the central and southern coastlines, migrated to the far north, with a goodly number crossing the sixteen-mile trait to Ellesmere Island in Canada.

      The country to which Erik enticed settlers and called home is a unique corner of the globe. Greenland is the world’s largest island with a coastline of some twenty-five thousand miles — nearly the same length as the equator — and in area it is approximately the same size as Mexico or Saudi Arabia. Its northernmost point is less than five hundred miles from the North Pole, and the southernmost is on the same latitude as St. Petersburg, Oslo, and Churchill, Manitoba. North–south it stretches 1,700 miles or a distance equal to that of New York to Miami. As part of the Laurentian Shield, the island structurally is part of the North American continent, but historically and politically, it is European, while geophysically and in ethnicity it is undeniably Arctic — virtually all of it lies above the Arctic Circle.

      For the most part, the island is bordered by mountains and fjords, although in some places the coast rises straight up to considerable heights; the highest elevation is 12,200 feet. A vast, asymmetrical, dome-shaped glacier covers 80 percent of the surface, extending over seven hundred thousand square miles, in some places reaching depths of ten thousand feet. It is of such massive weight that a depression has been created in the central part of the island, forming a basin one thousand feet below sea level. Little wonder that the sixteenth-century explorer, John Davis, called the place “the land of desolation.”

      The first Vikings reaching Greenland had travelled west from Iceland; the first reaching Iceland had travelled west from Norway. For the Norse, the lure of the west seems to have been no less strong than for many restless Americans of the nineteenth century — “Go west, young man, go west!” — some irresistible force tugging. The first Greenlander heeding the call was the eldest of Erik the Red’s four children, Leif Eriksson. His boyhood friend, Bjarni Herjolfsson, had once been severely driven off course while sailing from Iceland to Greenland, and in the process he spotted in the far distance an unfamiliar mountainous land, one that was forested and ice-bound. It was an intriguing report, and word of trees was particularly tantalizing as Icelanders were wood-starved. Curiosity got the better of Leif and about the year 1000 he persuaded his elderly father to lead an expedition in search of the mysterious place. Erik agreed with some reluctance, but as preparations for the journey got under way, he tumbled from his horse and sprained an ankle. Deeming this to be an ill omen he begged off the voyage, leaving Leif on his own. Thus it was that the restless young man, accompanied by thirty-five others, sailed from home to explore the prospects of the viewed, but untouched land. The congenital need of Vikings for fame