Danish Greenland, its people and its products / by Henry Rink, edited by Robert Brown.

  • Hinrich Johannes Rink
Date:
1877
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Danish Greenland, its people and its products / by Henry Rink, edited by Robert Brown. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    29/530
    DANISH GREENLAND. CHAPTER I. INTRODUCTORY HISTORICAL REMARKS. VERY doubtful and scanty remains have hitherto been found on the North American continent itself, which bear witness to its having been visited by voyagers from this side of the ocean, and even to its having been inhabited by European settlers several hundred years before the dis- covery of America by Columbus. Our sole knowledge of these ancient enterprises has been derived from the Icelandic sagas, or popular tales. These sources of inestimable value, on account of their having been written down at so early a period, when the events related in them were still in fresh remembrance, though historical, exist of course only in a fragmentary condition, and bear the general character of popular traditions to such a degree that they stand much in need of being corroborated by collateral proofs if we are wholly to rely upon them in such a question as an ancient colonisation of America. In Greenland several ruins are still to be found throwing light upon the story of its having been colonised at the same time and by the same race of seafaring people. These early settlers un- doubtedly carried on a rough and frugal existence, and for that reason their habitations and other buildings were insignificant in size and almost without the application of