SAGA-BOOK - Viking Society Web Publications

Saga-Book of the Viking Society
of timber in Iceland, because in fact drift-wood was
plentiful and good in many places on the island up to very
recent times. His assertion (p. 31) that "architecture and
illumination were in the nature of things beyond their
(the Icelanders') reach" must also be challenged. Nor was
the end of the republic as dramatic an event as he would
have it (p. 38). This part smacks too much of the views
of the leaders in the struggle for independence in the last
century. The agreement reached with the king of
Norway in 1262, Gamli sdttmdli, became the Magna
Charta of the Icelanders.
Greenland.
The occupation and settlement of Greenland is recorded
in early Icelandic and Norwegian writings, in certain
medieval documents, in antiquities and in Greenlandic
oral tales of the Kalatdlits. Recent archaeological
research has revealed that in many respects the Icelandic
writings are reliable on the subject of ancient Greenland.
They contain accounts of happenings in the first 150 years
of the settlements, but for the period after that they have
little to tell us. Some Greenlandic events in the
years 1404-1409 are, however, recorded in the last of
the medieval Icelandic annals. Then everything seemed
to be going well in the Eystribygg6 (julianehab
Kommune). After that there are no certain reports of
the Scandinavian inhabitants of Greenland. It has been
suggested that they were overcome by Skrselings
(Kalatdlits) or destroyed by English pirates; that they
were decimated by famine or plague; that they
degenerated, went to Canada and interbred with the
Eskimo. Some reasons have been adduced for all these
theories, although the theory of degeneracy can now be
seen to be based on very weak foundations.
In the summer of 1962 Professor Jones took part in the
excavation of pj66hildarkirkja in Brattahllo. He has
a personal knowledge of the topography, and he traces