Citadel, old town and fortifications of Derbent. Greenland: historical background Development of Greenland

Strange name. This land is not at all green, as it is called. It is white, or rather, icy. The name Iceland would be quite suitable for it. But it was assigned to the incomparably greener island. This is a geographic paradox. But, like any true paradox, it has a logical explanation.

At the beginning of the new era, Northwestern Europe was increasingly populated by enterprising, strong and courageous people. They herded livestock, farmed, hunted, and fished. However, despite the relatively mild climate of Scandinavia, there was not very much land suitable for agriculture. And the soils were quickly depleted.

The increase in population density, coupled with the impossibility of more intensive farming and cattle breeding, caused internal conflicts. More and more young, strong people began to go to sea robbery - to Viking, as they called it.

At first, perhaps, they simply tried to find and populate new territories. But the path to the west and southwest across the sea led to the well-inhabited lands of Britain and Ireland. The same thing happened on the western edge of Europe. In these parts the Vikings carried out predatory raids and conquests.

The largest geographical discoveries fell to those Scandinavians (Normans, Norwegians) who were looking not for wealth, but for a decent, peaceful life.

Residents British Isles suffered from Viking raids. For this reason, or simply from a desire to escape the bustle of the world, groups of Irish monks began to go to sea, settling on deserted islands.

According to the medieval Irish chronicler Dicuil, at the end of the 8th century one such group spent the spring and summer on a large desert island northwest of Ireland. This was Iceland. Some people returned to their homeland, but some remained.

In 867, one of the Viking leaders, Naddod, and his retinue were returning from Norway to their possessions in the Faroe Islands. The storm threw his draka far to the northwest. He saw a mountainous land with snow-capped mountains and named it Iceland. Perhaps he didn't want her to attract people to her.

Soon another group of Vikings, led by Gardar, discovered this land, walked around it and became convinced that it was an island, and quite an attractive one at that. The Norwegian chronicler Ari Thorgilsson Frode left the following description: “In those days, Iceland from the mountains to the coast was covered with forests, and Christians lived there, whom the Norwegians called papars. But later these people, not wanting to communicate with the pagans, left there, leaving behind Irish books, bells and staves; from this it is clear that they were Irish.”

The name Greenland would be quite suitable for such an island. But for some reason the Norwegians preferred to call it “ice land.” According to one version, the choice of name was influenced by the wintering experience that one of the princes, the Viking Floki, who sailed from Norway, spent on the island. These settlers did not stock up on enough food for their livestock. The winter turned out to be long and snowy, and the livestock died. People could not leave the land because the sea was covered with ice. With considerable hardships, they survived until the summer and returned to their homeland.

Over time, not only economic life, but also government life improved on the island. In 930, residents at a general meeting decided to establish a supreme council - the Althing. This was the first parliament in the world. However, the Novgorod Republic arose about a century earlier with its government elected by citizens. But it did not last long due to internal strife and was replaced by a monarchy.

The Althing allowed the inhabitants of the island to restore order and coordinate their actions, and fight crime. This circumstance played a role in the discovery of a new land.

The owner of one of the estates, Eirik, nicknamed Red, killed two people in a quarrel that turned into a fight. He was sentenced to three years of exile. The circumstances of this case are unclear. Apparently there were some disputes over land ownership or long-standing feuds; and there was not just a fight, but a whole massacre, in which representatives of two clans took part. It is unlikely that the murder was vile and groundless, otherwise the punishment would not have been relatively mild: three years of exile. By the way, Eirik’s father and his family were expelled from Norway to Iceland, also for murder. Apparently, the men in this family were generally distinguished by their tough dispositions.

So, Eirik and his people in 981 or 982 embarked on drakars - long, sharp-nosed boats - and left Iceland. They knew that there was no room in the east, in Norway, and in the south, in Ireland and Britain. Extended to the north to unknown limits cold ocean. In the west, as some sailors said, there is some unknown land. Perhaps Eirik himself had previously approached her during voyages.

This time they had to get used to the inhospitable deserted shores, behind which glaciers were piled up. The sailors moved south along the coast, choosing a suitable harbor with green meadows suitable for cattle breeding. They walked more than 600 km to the southern edge of the island and established a settlement. This is how Ari Thorgilsson Frode described the event:

“The country called Greenland was discovered and settled from Iceland. From there, Eirik the Red from Beidi Fjord headed to Greenland. He gave the country a name, calling it Greenland; he said people would want to go there if the country had a good name. They found traces of housing in the east and west of the country, as well as the remains of boats and stone tools. This is what was told to Thorkel, son of Gellir, in Greenland by a man who himself was on this journey with Eirik the Red.”

After the first winter, the settlers explored the western shores of the island, also about 600 km. In some places there were areas where it was possible to organize settlements. Eirik turned from an unfortunate outcast into the master of a vast country. One problem - nature was harsh. And another thing - there was no population. How to attract people here?

By that time, apparently, there were no territories left in Iceland that were more or less suitable for habitation. When, after serving his sentence, Eirik returned to his native island, he managed to persuade many people to go to Greenland, a green country. Moreover, it was located (in its part examined by Eirik) at the same latitudes as Iceland, even further south.

Eirik was not exaggerating too much when he called the land he discovered “green.” He could not know either the true size of the island - the largest in the world, or the fact that it was almost entirely under ice. The explorers did not go deep into the island, and its coast almost everywhere, especially in the southwest, was indeed green. Perhaps there were even small groves here and there in the valleys. Tree trunks washed ashore served as building and heating material.

In 985, Eirik led a whole flotilla to the new land - 25 ships with families, belongings, and livestock. On the way they were caught in a storm. Several Drakars sank, a few turned back, but most reached Greenland. In total, it is estimated that 400-500 people arrived. They settled on the southern edge of the great island in places chosen in advance by Eirik.

Soon life in the new place improved. The population of Greenland was growing. In the 13th century there were already about a hundred small villages and up to five thousand inhabitants. There was an established regular connection with the continent: from there, bread, iron products, and construction timber were delivered to the colonists. And to the mainland the Greenlanders sent products from hunting birds and sea animals: eider down, whalebone, walrus tusks, skins of sea animals.

However, in the 14th century, the situation on the island began to deteriorate more and more, settlements fell into disrepair, people were increasingly getting sick and dying. Two hundred years later, the Norman population of Greenland almost completely died out.

Many geographers believe that this is due to a period of cold weather, the so-called “Little Ice Age”. However, there is no reason for such global climate change. Was it there? In any case, the most significant thing is that the political situation in Northwestern Europe has changed.

Iceland lost its independence in 1281 and was annexed by Norway. Now the trade relations between the Greenlanders and Iceland were disrupted and ceased to be regular.

About another century later, Denmark established its power over Norway. Ships almost completely stopped sailing to Greenland. The settlers increasingly had to engage in armed clashes with the Eskimos, who were pressing them from the north, where they had previously been forced to retreat. Now all that was left was to dream about a calm and satisfying life. After all Agriculture, which already required a lot of work, fell into decay: in the north, the soils quickly lose fertility, and the vegetation cover is poorly renewed.

The Danes sent only one ship a year to Greenland (all others were prohibited from having trade relations with northern islands). Deprived of adequate food, good wood and metal tools, and hunting tools, the Normans found themselves in a critical situation. Those of them who did not die and did not move to the mainland destroyed churches and mixed with the Eskimos.

It turns out that both the prosperity and death of Europeans in Greenland were determined not by geographical reasons, more or less stable, but by environmental and socio-political ones. Living in isolation on an island, where nature is harsh and scarce, is possible only by joining the primitive economic system, which is fully consistent with the local nature.

Mainly for the same reason, the first attempt by Europeans to establish colonies in the New World - in North America - failed. But this is another story and another great geographical discovery.

There is no doubt that Greenland exists and has always existed, but it does not exist and never existed within the boundaries indicated on some ancient maps. In addition, it is very likely that the real Greenland that we know today got its name from the name of the mythical island.

The names "Iceland" and "Greenland" have always made me want to think about them. How could it be that a place not normally covered with ice was called Iceland (the Ice Land) and a harsh, barren Arctic desert was called Greenland (the Green Land)? As for Iceland, two theories are most likely: one is that the Viking Floki, who discovered the island (or perhaps rediscovered it) in the 870s, noticed pack ice washed up on the northern shore (rare but possible case); the second assumes that the Ancient Norse settlers deliberately gave their new homeland an unattractive name to discourage pirate raids.

The name “Greenland” is traditionally explained as follows: Eric the Red gave it to the land he discovered in order to attract promising colonists to it. But this doesn't sound very convincing. Whatever a fraudster Eric was, it is difficult to believe that he would want to so shamelessly and openly deceive a group of Scandinavian warriors devoted to him, among whom he was going to live, remaining their leader. The source for this version was the work of Ari the Wise, an 11th-century Icelandic chronicler. However, the earliest copy of his work known to us was made in the 13th century, and it is assumed that it was supplemented by other authors who may have added their own interpretation to it. In any case, this explanation of the name "Greenland" is very similar to fiction and must be treated with great caution.

To establish the true origin of this name, we may have to go back to the times of ancient Rome. The 1st century AD Roman writer Plutarch is famous mainly for his Book of Biographies, but he wrote other works, including a book entitled The Face in the Moon, one of those collections of eccentric information that was apparently beloved Romans. In this book he quotes a statement from a certain Demetrius, a Roman official who lived for several years in Britain. Demetrius allegedly told him that the British knew of an island lying to the west, which they called in their language something like “Kronos”.

This word requires comment. It cannot be British, since the Britons spoke the so-called "R-Gaelic" branch of the Celtic language, where glottal sounds were replaced by labial sounds, as opposed to "Q-Gaelic". So, for example, the word for “son” in Q Gaelic (modern Scottish and Irish languages) is mac, in R Gaelic (modern Welsh and Breton languages) it is ar, originally tar. Thus the word cronos would have sounded something like pronos in Old British.

University of California professor Arthur Hutson opined that the most likely source of the name would have been Cruidhne - the ancient Irish name for the island of Britain - and that this association with an island to the west (Ireland) had led to it being misinterpreted as the name of a western island. If this were so, then the original Greenland would have been Britain itself.

This idea of ​​an island called "Cronos" would fit well with traditional Greco-Roman religious concepts that Cronus, the debunked father of Zeus, lies in eternal sleep somewhere on one of the western islands. Probably the authority of Plutarch, who quoted Demetrius, was enough to enrich Roman geography with the island of Cronia in the Atlantic.

The final part of the theory is that the scientists of the early Middle Ages, who spoke the Teutonic language, replaced the Teutonic suffix with a Latin one and changed the initial letter, replacing “c” with the letter “g”, more characteristic of their guttural language; it turned out Cronia - Cronland - Gronland. That this new form of the word meant Green Land in their language was purely coincidental, and gradually the idea that somewhere in the Atlantic there was an island called Greenland became a tradition. And when Erik the Red discovered a new land, he simply assumed that this was Greenland, which he had already heard about, so he called it that.

There is evidence that the Scandinavians living in Iceland knew about the existence of Greenland before 982, but it was only in 982 that Erik the Red undertook the first serious exploration of this country. While still a young man, Eric traveled with his father from Norway to Iceland, a country that was considered promising at the time. But when they arrived there, it turned out that all the fertile land had been dismantled, and at the head of the society were old settlers who looked askance at the new arrivals. Eric's father soon died, and Eric himself eventually managed to get a piece of land, but his neighbors did not recognize him. The Icelanders' way of life at that time was rough and cruel, and each of them's best friend was their own sword. Twice Eric killed a man in a duel. In both cases it was apparently self-defense, but he had no influential friends, and both times he was sentenced to exile: the first time for one year, the second - for three.

When the second incident occurred, all his wealth consisted of a ship and faithful servants, and he decided to sail west to explore the islands located in that direction, perhaps the "skerries of Gunbjorn", now defunct. His efforts were not in vain. He discovered the vast island of Greenland and created a colony on it. When three years of exile were over, he returned to Iceland to recruit new colonists.

For more than a century, information about Greenland was passed on from mouth to mouth, reflected in the Icelandic sagas. The first written evidence of this island, which circulated among European geographers, dates back to approximately 1070.

At this time, a German priest known as Adam of Bremen completed his work "History of the Diocese of Hamburg." This title will seem uninteresting if you do not take into account the fact that at that time the diocese of Hamburg included all of Scandinavia and all the overseas countries colonized by Scandinavia, and that this book is a valuable source of information about the life of the ancient Scandinavians and their research. Adam had conversations with King Svein II of Denmark regarding these areas, and his references to Greenland and Vinland are the first reliable accounts of America in all European literature.

About Greenland, he said: “... in the north the ocean flows past the Orkney Islands, then endlessly far around the circle of the earth, leaving on the left Hibernia [now called Ireland], the homeland of cattle, on the right the Norwegian skerries, and then the islands of Iceland and Greenland.”

And below, in another paragraph: “...besides, there are many other islands in the distant ocean, of which Greenland is not the smallest; it is located further, opposite the Swedish, or Riphean, mountains. The distance to it is such that it is a journey by ship from Norway to this island it is said to take from five to seven days, the same as to Iceland. The people living there are bluish-green from the salt water, and therefore these places are called "Greenland". Their way of life is the same, "like the Icelanders, but they are savages and commit pirate raids on seafarers. They report that Christianity has recently reached them."

Here we have a fair amount of confusion, which was destined to leave its mark on cartography. In the first of these quotes, Greenland is definitely given a place somewhere far in the ocean, while in the second, it is somehow associated with the Swedish Mountains (“Riphean Mountains” are themselves mythical, they will be discussed in Chapter 11). In medieval geography, the position “opposite” something meant “on the same latitude,” which means that Adam of Bremen correctly spoke about what was then known about Greenland. But such loose terminology was a serious source of misunderstanding, and, obviously, it was these two incompatible statements of Adam of Bremen that led to the period late Middle Ages to the idea that Greenland is a peninsula of Europe or an area associated with Europe long bridge sushi.

I am informed that in the library of Florence there exists, or at any rate existed before the disastrous flood of 1966, a map dated 1417 in which Groinlandia is shown in almost the correct place and connected with Europe. But I did not have the opportunity to see this map or obtain a copy of it. If it exists, it is the earliest known map depicting Greenland.

As far as I have been able to trace cartographic sources, the earliest depiction of Greenland on a map appeared ten years after the Florentine map mentioned above. It was made by the Danish cartographer Claudius Schwartz, for some unknown reason better known in history under the name Claudius Claus. Obviously, he was influenced by Adam of Bremen, but there is little doubt that he had other, more modern sources of information. Claus's first map of 1427 shows only the east coast of Greenland. Its location is correct, and the pattern of the coastline is amazingly accurate; but his Greenland is the western end of a long, looping bridge of land that extends far north from Iceland and joins the shores of northern Europe east of White Sea. This misconception about Greenland was later reflected in many later maps.

Clavus lived most of his adult life in Italy and had a great influence on cartographers of the Mediterranean. He created another map in 1467 that showed both shores of Greenland. This map reproduces Greenland's location and shape with amazing accuracy, but Greenland's connection with the northern coast of Europe still remains.

Clavus's attempt to reconcile the conflicting evidence of Adam of Bremen was not accepted by everyone. The famous "Map of Vinland" from about 1440, the discovery of which caused a sensation in 1965, shows a correctly placed Greenland with regular outlines, although rather small and not connected with Europe. However, some scholars consider this edition to be more recent. Even earlier, about three years after the appearance of the first map of Clavus in 1427, one of the representatives of the French clergy, Gilome de Filastre, published a new edition of Ptolemy, in which he argued, based only on names, that Greenland should be located south of Iceland , "despite the fact that Clavus described these northern regions and drew up a map of them, which shows them connected with Europe."

It is difficult to illustrate more eloquently all the movements of Greenland on a map before the period of serious voyages for the purpose of exploration than by describing its various configurations on maps of the fifteenth century.

The Genoese map of 1447, following Claudius Clavus, depicts Greenland connected to Europe. Fra Mauro's map of 1459 (the first European map to show Japan and accurately depict the outline of Africa) depicts Greenland as the promontory of northern Scandinavia extending to the west.

The map appended to Ptolemy's 1467 edition follows Claus, but it appears to be the first of the maps produced under his influence to show Greenland not connected with Europe.

A Catalan map from about 1480 (mentioned already in Chapter 4) showing the elongated Ilia Verde (literally translated: "Green Land") in the latitude of Ireland, associated with the island of Brazil.

Nicholas Denis's 1482 map roughly correctly shows Greenland not connected to Europe, but shows another island called Engronelant next to it. This confusion of two names referring to the same island will be repeated in the future.

An anonymous map from about the same time shows Gronland almost in the correct place, but duplicates it with another island, Engroneland, north of Norway, and further north places Pillappelanth (Lapland) - "the last of the inhabited lands."

In Martin Behaim's 1492 globe, Greenland is again represented as an Arctic peninsula north of Norway.

Johann Ruisch's map of about 1495 places the small land of Gruenlant to the west-southwest of Iceland.

Juan de la Cosa, in his map of 1500, represented Greenland as a cluster of small islands north of Iceland.

In this chaos it is impossible to imagine any system. The fact is that the geographers of the 15th century obviously simply did not know where Greenland was or what it was; the sources of information they used were confusing and contradictory, and everything depended on which of them a particular cartographer chose to use. The Norman colony in Greenland ceased to exist by mid-century; the last record of contact with it is contained in one of the papal letters of 1418, from which it appears that church services were still held there. If we consider the possible means of communication of that time, it will not be surprising that in the circles of the main geographers of the Mediterranean, Greenland, after fifty years of absence of any contact, could turn into an almost forgotten “something” on the edge of a complete “nothing”.

But although Greenland was out of control, it was not forgotten. At least two popes, Nicholas V in 1448 and Alexander VI in 1492, expressed their concern about this furthest outpost of Christendom. Voyages for the rediscovery of this country were inevitable, and it was clear that they would be initiated by the Danish-Norwegian kingdom, from where the first Greenlandic settlers came.

The first of these voyages, of which there is only vague written evidence, is the most obscure of all voyages ever made for the purpose of exploration; it is known only from scanty references that appeared here and there many years after the event itself, mainly on maps of the 16th century. It is not certain whether this journey took place in 1472 or 1476, and it is unclear who led it. Modern historians believe that these men were Didrik Piening and Hans Potthorst, two famous Norwegian captains, but most ancient maps attribute the leadership of this voyage to one John Skolvus, who, according to the Danish geographer Cornelis Witfleet, was a Pole. Portugal at this time was in the midst of a great era of discovery, when a route to India was found around the southern tip of Africa, but the Portuguese did not lose interest in northern routes. Henry the Navigator pursued a policy of developing good relations with the Danes in order to take advantage of their extensive experience of sailing in the northern seas, and it is possible that the expedition of the 70s of the 15th century was largely stimulated by the Portuguese. Many Danes participated in Portuguese explorations of the African coast, but instead two Portuguese took part in the Arctic voyage of the 1470s: Joao Vaz Cortirial and Alvaro Martins Omen.

Where exactly this expedition was heading remains unclear. There is no doubt that she visited Greenland; it is very likely that she traveled further, stopping in other areas of Arctic America. Frisius, on his 1537 globe, places the land of the Quij people north of the Gulf of St. Lawrence and attributes its discovery to John Scolvus. It is believed that this name is one of the variants of the name of the Cree Indian tribe, which at that time, apparently, lived much further east than at present.

Upon Cortirial's return to Portugal, King Affonso I granted his request and granted him a deed of gift for the lands he had discovered. But Kortirial did not take any further steps to develop these lands. His years were getting old, and he preferred the post of governor in the Azores, which required less effort. There he met an imaginative young German geographer from Bohemia, known as Martin Behaim (Martin of Bohemia), who married a relative of his wife and learned a lot from him. In his famous globe of 1492, Behaim does not avoid the mistake of his predecessors and depicts Greenland as a peninsula of Arctic Europe, but to the west of it he places several islands strikingly similar to the islands flanking the mouth of the Gulf of St. Lawrence.

In 1493, a certain Monetarius from Nuremberg, a friend of Behaim, wrote a letter to King John of Portugal in which he mentioned that “several years ago” an expedition sent by the Moscow prince discovered Greenland and that there was still a significant Russian colony in Greenland. This account can only refer to Spitsbergen, which the Russians apparently reached as early as 1435 and where they founded a colony near modern Belsund Bay. Svalbard would later reappear in connection with Greenland's tangled history to further confuse it.

Deed of gift for open lands, granted to Cortirial, remained the property of his family, and when the Spaniards began to explore and exploit the West Indies and the surrounding areas, the sons of Cortirial asked the king to do something before it was too late to preserve the integrity of the Portuguese possessions in the New World . According to the famous line of demarcation drawn by Pope Alexander VI in 1493, the entire open world was divided between Spain and Portugal, and Greenland clearly fell into the Spanish sector. Even the revision of this line a year later in Tordesillas did not actually change the situation: all inhabited promising areas were transferred to Spain. But at that time this agreement was not implemented. And besides, since determining longitude was a very unreliable procedure in those days, a controversial situation could arise regarding the placement of Greenland east of this line.

The three sons of Cortirial spent the entire family fortune in search of the land that their father had visited. In 1500, the youngest son, Gašpar, led a journey that was unsuccessful; then in 1501 another one that cost him his life. But this time two of his ships returned with news of the rediscovery of Greenland and the "Land of Labrador." That is why this northern region of America has a Portuguese name. Gašpar Kortirial must be given credit for his genuine second discovery of Greenland. His elder brother, Miguel, set sail in 1502 in order to take actual possession of these lands, but also disappeared.

The discovery of Cortirial immediately had geographical consequences. The former supposed Greenland north of Norway was immediately removed from the maps, returned to its original location, and taken to its correct position in the western Atlantic. Cantino's 1502 map placed it on the eastern (Portuguese) side of the demarcation line and showed it to be too small and too far south, but the map at least reflected the reality of Greenland at the time.

The further history of the “wandering” Greenland relates mainly to the field of cartography, so we will briefly list the expeditions that searched for it. The main result of Cortirial's journey was that Greenland was taken from the Danes and given to the Portuguese, but the Portuguese did not complete the job, and Greenland was left without a master. King Christian II of Denmark planned a voyage to Greenland in 1513, but circumstances prevented him from carrying out his plan; the same thing happened in 1522, when King Frederick I planned a similar trip. In 1578, Frederick II finally sent an expedition under the command of one Magnus Henningsen, who saw the coast of Greenland, but did not land on it. It was about the same time that Martin Frobisher (as mentioned in Chapter 3) landed in southern Greenland, mistook it for Friesland, and took possession of it as West England.

Since that time, Greenland has become a territory quite well known throughout the world. Various English expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage explored its shores to at least 75 north latitude. At the beginning of the 17th century, the Danes set sail several times; Four of these voyages were led by James Hall, an Englishman who had William Baffin as navigator on his ship in 1612. Hall was killed in a minor skirmish with Greenlandic Eskimos. During the 17th and 18th centuries, Greenland was a hunting ground for walruses and seals, famous for whalers of all nationalities. But it was only in 1721, as a result of the voyage of the missionary Hans Egede, that Denmark's rights in Greenland were restored. Egede set out on a journey with the hope of finding the remains of a lost and by that time half-legendary Scandinavian colony in order to preach Protestant Christianity there, but not finding it, he remained to preach among the Eskimos. This was followed in 1832 by the voyage of Wilhelm Graa, a representative of the Danish navy; during this voyage traces of ancient Scandinavian settlements were discovered and the Danish claim was confirmed, which has since continued to remain in force.

So, we have summarized the data on practical research. Mapping data is not easy to summarize.

Greenland had been turned into part of Europe, and now in a short time it had to be presented as part of Asia. We have already mentioned that immediately after the discovery of America by Columbus, South America, which became known everywhere as a new land, was universally recognized as such, and North America was considered as a very likely extension to the east of the Old World. This concept led to the famous Contarini map of 1506. On it, South America is connected to Asia by the Isthmus of Panama; there is no North American continent, and at the latitudes where it should be, a huge elongated peninsula sticks out like a deformed thumb. The names of its extreme points in the east are identical to the names that Cortirial gave to the lands he discovered - Greenland and Labrador.

But something else is strange. Greenland's displacements and separations usually entailed one of two errors: duplication or restoration of the land bridge.

The duplication is easy to explain. After Greenland was discovered by Cortirial and again took its place on the map, not as a romantic object whose existence was simply believed, but as a well-known reality, it became common among cartographers to translate the name "Greenland" into the languages ​​in which they worked, with the words Green Land (Green Land), no matter how it is written (Greenland, Gronland, Engroenland or some other way). Thus, the almost unknown Green Island appeared on the map under this name (in many languages) and as a result was quickly dissociated from Greenland.

Coppo's 1528 map shows Isola Verde (Green Island) almost in the right place. But as Greenland became more famous and its Scandinavian name more stereotypical, cartographers began to make the mistake of assuming that two duplicate names hid two islands.

It hardly makes sense to list here all the cards of that time. Throughout the 16th and almost all of the 17th centuries, maps showing true Greenland also depicted Green Island (Isla Verde or Insula Viridis) somewhere in American waters, usually in the North Atlantic - clear evidence that the name "Green Island" associated with this area.

But not all Green Islands are the result of this mistake. In 1503, Rodrigo Bastidas sailed from Seville to the West Indies and discovered a small island off Guadeloupe, which he named Isla Verde, and appears on Pedro Mártir's 1511 map. Obviously, in this case the name was associated with the vegetation of the island and had nothing to do with Greenland.

The imaginary North Atlantic Green Island was destined to live a long life, but in the course of events another smaller version of Greenland appeared. At the end of the 16th century, Greenland began to appear on maps, accompanied on the western side by a much smaller island called Grokland.

From the fact that this island was constantly placed west of Greenland, it seems that we can conclude that Baffin Island has been known for a long time.

The name Grocland undoubtedly comes from the ancient spelling of the word Greenland as Groe-land with a tilde, that is, as a result of the same abbreviation, which apparently misled Nicolo Zeno, who read the name Sinclair as Zichmni, as already mentioned mentioned in chapter three. It’s not hard to imagine that the tilde could have been overlooked and the “e” read as “s”. In addition, at this time it was customary to place as many islands on the map as there were names.

But I cannot say that I was much ahead of previous researchers in the question of which of the cartographers was the first to mistakenly place Grokland Island on his map and what exactly caused the disappearance of this island from the maps. The earliest map I know of that shows Grockland is Mercator's 1569 map, the latest is Matthias Cuadus's 1608 map. Hessel Gerritz's 1612 map of Henry Hudson's discoveries shows Greenland quite well, and there is still land to the west of it, but Grokland is not on it. In fact, Grockland did not last long on maps, but since he appeared at the moment when the great classics of ancient cartography were working, and was included in the maps they produced, he acquired more fame than he deserved.

Some curiosities of this time are curious. Ortelius in 1571 reduced mighty Greenland to a tiny squiggle, eclipsed in the west by the mythical island of Estotilandia, and he placed Grokland further north, directly below the imaginary Unknown Northern Continent (Chapter 6).

Michael Lock's map, published by Hakluyt in 1582, shows little Greenland just north of the mythical Friesland. And to the west of it, approximately on the site of Baffin Island, a much larger territory called Jac is depicted. Scolvus Grocland. This placement is interesting. Michael Locke was a very educated man who traveled extensively. He was keenly interested in geography and was undoubtedly familiar with the most reliable sources of the time. It is very likely that he obtained the information on which this map was based from some report, now lost or as yet undiscovered, which mentioned a Danish expedition in the 1470s, which was supposed to have been led, regardless of who was its real boss was a certain Scolvus, who is usually called John, not Jacob. This map can be seen as evidence that the expedition entered North America beyond Greenland, but there is no conclusive evidence to support this fact.

Meanwhile, it turned out that some misconceptions are also common to the Danes themselves. The Royal Library of Copenhagen contains a map made by the Icelander Sigurd Stefansson in 1590, apparently intended to illustrate the ancient discoveries made by the Scandinavians in America. Here Greenland has almost the correct shape and size, but is a large peninsula of the American continent. It was already part of Europe and Asia, and now it has become part of North America. All other names are borrowed from the Scandinavian sagas dedicated to the discovery of Leif Erikson: Vitserk and Herjulfsnes in Greenland and further south, along east coast North America, Helluland, Markland, Promontory, Vinland and Skrölingland.

But even more interesting is the map created in 1605 by Johannes Resen, rector of the Royal University of Denmark. It also depicts Greenland as a peninsula of North America and repeats all the names used by Stefansson. The outlines of the coast are also repeated, but some more modern sources are added. Friesland and Estotiland are labeled according to Zeno's narrative (with Estotiland being equivalent to Stefansson's Helluland), and south of Vinland there is a small bay, believed to be the Gulf of St. Lawrence, called Portus Jacob! Carterii Anno 1525 (Port of Jacques Cartier, year 1525 [more correctly 1535]). The simplest explanation for this would be that Resen simply copied Stefansson with some embellishment. But among the notes in the margins of the map there is a note from Resen, which says that this map is several hundred years old. It is possible that he made a copy from the original, dating back to the time of actual contacts of the Scandinavians with North America. It is possible that one day a lucky discovery will be made, such as the famous "map of Vinland", which will confirm this assumption, but at the moment the source of Resen's borrowing is not known to us.

In 1596, the Danish navigator Billem Barents, heading east in search of a northern sea passage, saw the shores of a land that he called Spitsbergen and mistook for part of Greenland. Barents himself did not live to see the end of the journey, but members of his crew brought with them a report, the result of which was another movement of Greenland.

As already mentioned, the message about the discovery and colonization of Spitsbergen by the Russians penetrated into Europe a hundred years before Barents's voyage, and then it was believed that Spitsbergen was Greenland. But since at that time it was widely assumed that Greenland was part of northern Europe adjacent to Russia, this did not in any way affect the geographical concepts.

Since the 1520s, almost all European maps have shown Greenland as separated from Europe. By this time, no actual data had been obtained that would confirm the existence of a land bridge between them. In addition, I wanted to believe in the existence of the open sea in the north, since this, in turn, allowed for the possibility of the existence of the Northeast or Northwest passages. The map appended to Zeno's account in 1558 is an exception: it shows Greenland as a greatly elongated peninsula of Europe. But it is likely that Nicolo Zeno II copied this feature from a very time-damaged map, which he had to restore and which undoubtedly reflected the concepts of his era. Greenland connected to Europe was, as far as I know, first depicted on a map by Claudius Claus in 1427, but the idea of ​​this connection may have taken root much earlier, otherwise he would not have been able to map Greenland in this form.

By Barents's time, as a result of Arctic travel north of Europe, the land bridge theory had lost favor, but the possibility that Greenland extended far to the east and that Spitsbergen was part of its territory had not yet been ruled out. If this concept were confirmed, then the ancient land bridge could have a factual basis.

Purches in his book describes many trips to "Greenland", meaning Spitsbergen, as well as some trips to the Greenland that we know now. That is, he considers both of these areas as one territory.

When the rich hunting grounds for walruses and seals became known, as well as the abundant fishing grounds off Spitsbergen, this island turned into a tasty morsel, which immediately attracted many hunters. At first, the right to this territory belonged to the Dutch, since they discovered it and gave it a name. During the English expedition of 1613, part of Spitsbergen was captured by the British and named "King James's New Land", but this name was never consolidated. In addition, some Englishmen began to make unsubstantiated claims that the archipelago was actually discovered in 1553, long before Barents, by Hugh Willoughby during his voyage in search of the Northeast Passage. Many insisted that Spitsbergen be renamed "Willoughby Land", but most often they themselves called it Greenland.

The rivalry between the English and the Dutch over Svalbard led to some intricate diplomatic maneuvering, but as the Dutch gradually established effective control of the harbours, the British acquiesced. By the 1640s, the Dutch had complete control over the waters of Svalbard and exploited them mercilessly. On the coast, extensive enterprises for salting fish and producing blubber were created, and the famous Arctic city of Smirenburg appeared, where workers were provided with housing and everything necessary, where life was in full swing during the short summer season, and money flowed like a river. Then, during the long winter, it became empty and only a few remained, the permanent staff preparing everything for the next season. And in the spring the ships returned.

On maps of the 17th century, Spitsbergen was usually shown shifted to the west, towards Greenland. It was assumed that they were one whole, but by this time it was no longer customary to depict a hypothetical connection connecting them coastline.

Chapter Six already mentioned the hydrographer Joseph Moxon and his meeting in the 1650s with a Dutch sailor who had just returned from fishing in “Greenland” and claimed that he had sailed across the North Pole; it was also mentioned that Moxon's "Greenland" was actually Spitsbergen. Now the reader understands where this error came from. In a 1675 map published by Moxon, the present Greenland is called Groenland and Spitsbergen is called Greenland. The area between them towards Europe is barely outlined, but resembles a timid attempt to show an old, discredited land bridge, which, however, hardly fits with Moxon’s attitude to the story of a Dutch sailor who allegedly sailed past “Greenland” to the North Pole. However, the fact remains: the inscription “Greenland” stretched on the map almost to the inscription “New Earth”.

The identification of Spitsbergen with Greenland was based on the idea that the Greenland coast stretched far to the east. On one of the maps of this time, the same mistake is made, but in the opposite direction: on it the coast of Greenland is stretched to the west. On the map of Nikolai Vischer, mentioned in Chapter Six, the western coast of Greenland at approximately latitude 78 turns to the west, then passes Baffin Island and makes a loop to the south, connecting with the western shores of Hudson Bay. If this were true, then no Northwest Passage could exist.

By the 1670s, the formerly rich fishing and hunting grounds began to be depleted by overexploitation. The Dutch began to visit the waters of Spitsbergen less and less often, and Spitsbergen lost its owner for two and a half centuries, until Norway in 1925 consolidated its claims to this island. But this will be discussed below. Meanwhile, the Dutch skipper Billem de Vlaming, in search of new seal hunting grounds, sailed north around Spitsbergen. This voyage was proof that Spitsbergen is not connected with Greenland. Vlaming accidentally managed to swim to latitude 88 10", the highest northern latitude reached by any European until 1827, when William Parry's expedition in search of the North Pole reached latitude 82 45".

By the beginning of the 18th century, the difference between Spitsbergen and Greenland had become clear, and Greenland, although its shores were still poorly understood, occupied approximately right place on the map. Still, she still had a few more moves to make.

The mythical Green Island still existed, which appeared as a result of the duplication of Greenland and continued to remain on maps in the area North Atlantic, usually in American waters, throughout the 18th and almost all of the 19th centuries. By the mid-19th century it had shrunk to the equally mythical Green Rock.

As already mentioned, the American researcher Elisha Kent Kane achieved north coast Greenland in 1854 and reported that there was open sea behind Greenland. The German geographer August Petermann was one of the main proponents of the Open Polar Sea hypothesis, a theory that was largely based on Kane's account. But to counter this theory, Petermann suggested in the 1860s that the still unexplored northern tip of Greenland might extend northwest, past the North Pole, and end at a cape just north of Cape Barrow in Alaska. Greenland was depicted in this way only on Petermann's own maps, but the idea was finally discarded only when Peary studied its northern tip in 1900 and Greenland appeared in its true light.

Greenland established itself in its place only in the 20th century. But even after this, its position was clarified, and the old concepts had not yet completely lost their popularity. Scottish explorer Rudmos Brown noticed in 1920 that seal hunters in his homeland still called Spitsbergen "Greenland".

The “Green Rock” also disappeared from the maps, but whether it really existed remained a mystery. William H. Babcock, an expert on the mythical islands of the Atlantic, was so unsure of its existence that he even made an inquiry about the island with the United States Hydrographic Survey. The officers of this service replied that they did not believe in its existence, but mentioned (referring to a certain Captain Tullock of New Hampshire) the story of Coombs, skipper of the ship Pallas, sailing from Bath in Maine, who reported that he had seen the Green rock. According to him, it was a large rock covered with green moss, which at first glance he mistook for the bottom of an overturned ship. The depth of the sea, according to measurements taken near it, was almost 3 kilometers.

Since the Atlantic has not yet been explored to within an inch, it is possible that there is something similar in description to the "Green Rock" and matching the mythical island. But its existence has apparently never been proven.

Finally, it remains to mention two more more or less modern wanderings of Greenland.

In 1194, during one of his travels, a land was discovered somewhere north of Iceland, which was named Svalbard. It is very likely that it was some part of the eastern coast of Greenland or the formidable rocky island now called Jan Mayen. But starting in the 1890s, seven centuries after its discovery, the Norwegian government officially insisted that Svalbard was Svalbard, and cited this as a valid reason for claiming ownership of the island, citing the fact that the first it was discovered by the Scandinavians. Such an identification is, to put it mildly, highly doubtful. But in 1925, the League of Nations ratified Norway's claim to Spitsbergen, and from that time on the Arctic archipelago was officially called Svalbard, a name that was apparently first given to part of Greenland.

While I was writing the first draft of this chapter, I first heard about the report of David Humphrey's expedition to explore Greenland in 1966, which showed that existing maps of Greenland had increased its territory by approximately thirty thousand square miles. Is it possible that the result of this latest research will be the stabilization of Greenland, in other words, the latest of its movements? Undoubtedly, time will answer this question. But it still seems that even in the space age, the romantic period in the geography of our earth has not yet ended.

Notes:

Not in our understanding of this word, but the word “Caribbean” distorted by the Spaniards).

The Romans called silk "sericum". - Approx. ed.

The first mention of America speaks of "an island in that ocean, frequented by many, which is called Vinland because wild grapes grow there, which produce the best wine in the world. Wild grains also grow there in abundance, and we know that This is not fiction, as the Danes confirm this in their messages.

Nicholas V called Greenland "an island north of Norway", and Hjalmar Haaland suggested that this was the origin of the erroneous idea that Greenland was connected to Europe. I couldn't agree more. In my opinion, the source of the error is the Clavus map of 1427, which preceded the pope's letter by twenty years, and the map in turn was influenced by Adam of Bremen.

According to this line, which was drawn from the North to the South Pole across the Atlantic Ocean at a distance of approximately two thousand kilometers from the Cape Verde Islands, all discoveries to the west of it belonged to the Spaniards, and to the east - to the Portuguese. - Approx. ed.

For me, this is one of the most convincing reasons for considering Zeno's narrative to be genuine. If Nicolo II had conceived a hoax (given that he lived in Venice, a serious cartographic center), he would have used more modern maps to confirm his messages, and would not have operated with geographical concepts that were already outdated by that time.

Babcock's story does not indicate the coordinates of the rock, nor the date of the message and the date of the letter from the Hydrographic Service. His book was published in 1922.

Between 870 and 920 The Norman, Norwegian sailor Gunbjorn Ulf-Krakason, heading to Iceland, was thrown far to the west by a storm and discovered a number of small islands at 65°30′ N. w, and 36°w. etc., which in the Icelandic ancestral saga “Landnamabok” are called the skerries of Gunbjorn.

Behind them was visible high ground covered with snow and ice, which he could not approach due to heavy ice. Around 980, a group of Icelanders sailing to the west were forced to spend the winter on skerries, which the winterers mistook for the skerries of Gunbjorn. Returning to their homeland, they confirmed the story about the big land beyond the skerries. This land could only be Greenland.

At this time, Eirik Turvaldson, nicknamed Raudi (“Red”), who was expelled from Norway for murder, lived in Iceland. He did not get along well in his new place and was expelled from there for three years “for his restless character.” With several relatives in 981, he set out in search of the western big land. It is most likely that Eirik went straight west from Iceland between 65-66° N. w. and at this latitude I saw land in the distance. After unsuccessful attempts to break through the ice, Eirik walked along the coast to the southwest for about 650 km until he reached the southern tip of the land he was exploring (Cape Farwell, at 60° N latitude). Eirik and his companions landed on an island 200 km from the northwestern cape and spent the winter there.

In the summer of 982, Eirik went on a reconnaissance expedition, discovered the western coast of a country covered with a giant glacier, indented by deep fjords, for 1000 km - from 60° to the Arctic Circle - and outlined locations for farms. From one of the coastal peaks, according to the modern Canadian writer-humanist F. Mowat, Eirik saw in the west high mountains- on a clear day, beyond the Davis Strait you can see the icy peak (2134 m) of the island. Baffin Island. Eirik, according to Mowat, crossed the strait for the first time and reached the Cumberland Peninsula. He explored the entire mountainous eastern coast of this peninsula and entered Cumberland Bay. The bulk of the summer was spent hunting walruses, storing fat, and collecting walrus bones and narwhal tusks. Upon his return to Greenland, Eirik reported the discovery of the Vestr Obyugdir ("Western Desert Regions"), which played an important role in the life of the Greenlandic settlers.

In the summer of 983, he passed from the Arctic Circle to the north, discovered Disko Bay, o. Disko, Nugssuak Peninsula, Svartenhoek and probably reached Melville Bay, at 76° N. sh., i.e., he followed the western coast of Greenland for another 1200 km and was the first to sail in the Baffin Sea. He was amazed by the abundance of polar bears, arctic foxes, reindeer, whales, narwhals, walruses, eiders, gyrfalcons and all kinds of fish. After two years of searching, Eirik chose several flat places in the southwest, relatively well protected from cold winds, covered with fresh green vegetation in the summer. The contrast between the surrounding icy desert and these areas was so great that Eirik dubbed the coast Greenland (“Green Land”) - an inappropriate name for the largest island on Earth with an area of ​​​​about 2.2 million km2, of which barely 15% is free from ice. cover. Landnamabok claims that Eirik wanted to attract Icelanders with a “beautiful name” in order to convince them to settle there. But the name given by Eirik initially applied only to the truly welcoming corners of the south- west coast and only much later (in the 15th century) it spread to the entire island.

In 984 Eirik returned to Iceland. The recruitment of colonists was very successful, and in the middle of summer 986 he led a flotilla of 25 Kners to the west. During the passage to Greenland during a storm, some of them died, several turned back, but 14 ships, on which there were more than 500 colonists, reached South Greenland. They settled in the places indicated by Eirik. He himself chose an area for settlement on the southern coast (at 61° N latitude), near the top of Bredefjord, at the mouth of which Julianshob now lies.

From south coast during the X-XI centuries. The Normans advanced along the western coast of Greenland to the Arctic Circle. They settled in small groups in well-protected places - deep in the fjords. The colonists brought livestock with them, but their main occupation was not cattle breeding, but fishing, hunting, and catching gyrfalcons and bears. White gyrfalcons turned out to be not an object of trade, but rather a diplomatic tool for the kings of Norway and other northern monarchs, since their southern neighbors willingly accepted expressions of friendship with these birds. An even more valuable diplomatic “token of attention,” but rarer and more difficult to obtain, were polar bears.

No later than the 11th century. in search of animals and birds, the colonists sailed along the western coast far to the north, again - after Eirik - between 68 and 70 ° N. w. Disco Bay, Nugssuak, Svartenhoek and islands were discovered. Disco. Here they discovered richer hunting grounds with good fishing spots and large stocks of driftwood and called them "nordseta" (northern campsites), or "hunting lands"). Beyond 76° N. w. they completed the opening of Melville Bay, entered the Kane Basin through Smith Strait, and possibly reached Kennedy Strait, 80° N. w. They called the northwestern protrusion of Greenland “Peninsula” (now Hayes Peninsula). In search of new land and pastures, as noted by the author of the mid-13th century. in their description of Greenland "The King's Mirror", the colonists "...often tried to penetrate into the country, climbed to the tops of the mountains in different places to look around and see if there was any land somewhere that was free of ice and suitable for settlement. But nowhere could they find such an area, except for what they had [already] captured—a narrow strip along the water’s edge.”

They also walked along the eastern, almost inaccessible coast of Greenland. Despite the almost continuous ice barrier, voyages were made between the coast and the inner edge of the pack ice. There are numerous indications in the sagas and other written sources that the colonists not only visited these areas, but even spent several years there. They were especially attracted to the area between 65° N. w. and the Arctic Circle, where polar bears were found. They also penetrated into more northern fjords, including Ollumlengri (“The Longest”) - most likely this is Scoresby Bay, near 70° N. latitude, 24°w. etc., i.e. the first ones swam in the Greenland Sea. Thus, the Norman “Greenlanders” discovered at least about 2,700 km of the western and about 2,000 km of the eastern coast of Greenland and on these “segments” they traced a huge ice sheet, the surface of which rises inland.

Perhaps they managed to bypass Greenland from the north and prove its island position. Adam of Bremen, writing in the third quarter of the 11th century, already knows about this: “In Atlantic Ocean there are a lot of... islands, of which Greenland is not the smallest. From the coast of Norway to Greenland, five to seven days of sailing...” His words are illustrated by a map of the North Atlantic created in 1598 by the Jesuits of Trnava University (discovered in 1945). Perhaps it is a copy of a drawing drawn up no earlier than the 12th century. Greenland is shown as an island with a large northwest protrusion and several bays. True, its dimensions are reduced by almost three times compared to the real ones. The cooling did not allow this great geographical discovery to be repeated.

Norman villages on the southern and southwestern coasts of Greenland, between 60 and 65° N. sh., existed for about 400 years. In the 13th century, when the colony reached its greatest prosperity, there were probably about 100 villages on this coast, albeit very small ones - a total of about 270 households. They were divided into two groups: the southern, which in the documents that have reached us for some reason is called Österbygd (“Eastern Settlement”), between 60-61° N. sh., and northwestern - Vesterbygd (“Western Settlement”), between 64-65° N. w. Needing bread, timber and iron products, the colonists maintained constant contact with Europe through Iceland, sending furs, skins of sea animals, walrus tusks, whalebone, eider down and other products of hunting and hunting in exchange for the goods they needed. While Iceland was independent, the Greenland colony developed: in the 13th century. According to various estimates, from 3 to 6 thousand people lived there. After the annexation of Iceland to Norway (1281), the situation of the colonists deteriorated sharply. They often suffered from a lack of essentials, as ships visited them less and less. Probably due to constant skirmishes with the Eskimos advancing from the north and the onset of a sharp cold spell in Vesterbygd already in the middle of the 14th century. was abandoned by the colonists. Their further fate is unknown.

The situation in Österbygda became very difficult at the end of the 14th century, when Norway submitted to Denmark. The Danish kings declared trade with the northwestern islands their monopoly. They allowed only one ship to be sent from Denmark to distant Greenland every year, and even that often did not reach Österbygd. Icelanders were forbidden to sail to Greenland. After 1410 Österbygd was completely abandoned. Without timber and iron, the colonists could not build new ships or repair old ones. Without bread they began to get sick and degenerate. Most of The colonists died out, the rest probably mixed with the Eskimos. But this happened not in the 14th-15th centuries, as previously assumed, but in the 16th or even 17th centuries.

The Norman discoveries in the Northwest Atlantic are reflected in the map of the Dane Claudius Claussen Swart (1427), better known by his Latin nickname Claudius Claus Niger. It shows Greenland as part of Europe. There is no doubt that the remaining lands discovered by the Normans south of Greenland were considered as European islands, and not as the shores of the New World. The idea of ​​a new, western continent, unknown “even to the ancients,” could not have arisen before the era of great discoveries.

Early Paleo-Eskimo cultures

History of ancient Greenland - history of repeated migrations of Paleo-Eskimos from the Arctic islands of North America. A common feature of all these cultures was the need to survive in the extremely unfavorable conditions of the most remote region of the Arctic, on the very border of the habitat suitable for human existence. Even small fluctuations in climate turned barely favorable conditions into incompatible conditions for human life and led to the disappearance of ill-adapted crops and the devastation of entire regions through migration and extinction.

Archaeologists identify four Paleo-Eskimo cultures in Greenland that existed before the discovery of the island by the Vikings, but the dates of their existence are determined very roughly:

• Saqqaq culture: 2500 BC e. - 800 BC e. in southern Greenland;
• Independence I culture: 2400 BC e. - 1300 BC e. in northern Greenland;
• Independence II culture: 800 BC e. - 1 BC e. mainly in northern Greenland;
• Early Dorset culture, Dorset I: 700 BC e. - 200 N. e. in southern Greenland.

These crops were not unique to Greenland. As a rule, they arose and developed in the territories of Arctic Canada and Alaska long before their penetration into Greenland, and could persist in other places in the Arctic after their disappearance from the island.

After the decline of culture, the island remained uninhabited for centuries. The carriers of the Inuit Thule culture, the ancestors of the modern indigenous inhabitants of Greenland, began to penetrate the north of the island at the beginning of the 13th century.

Viking settlements

The last written evidence of Greenlandic Vikings is a record of a wedding in the Hvalsi Church dating back to 1408. The ruins of this church are one of the best preserved monuments of Viking culture.

There are many theories regarding the reasons for the disappearance of Norse settlements in Greenland. Jared Diamond, author of Collapse: Why Some Societies Survive While Others Die, lists five factors that may have contributed to the disappearance of the Greenland colony: environmental degradation, climate change, enmity with neighboring peoples, isolation from Europe, failure to adapt. A large number of scientific studies and publications are devoted to the study of these factors.

Environmental degradation

The vegetation of Greenland belongs to the tundra type and consists mainly of sedge, cotton grass and lichens; trees are almost completely absent, with the exception of dwarf birch, willow and alder, which grow in some places. There is very little fertile land here, which, as a result of the lack of forests, suffers from erosion; In addition, the short and cold summer makes farming almost impossible, so the Norwegian settlers were forced to mainly engage in cattle breeding. Overexploitation of pastures in the extremely sensitive tundra environment with unstable soils could increase erosion, lead to deterioration of pastures and a drop in their productivity.

Climate change

Drilling results from glacial ice reveal climate patterns in Greenland over centuries. They show that during the medieval climatic optimum there was indeed some softening of the local climate from 800 to 1200, but cooling began at the beginning of the 14th century; The "Little Ice Age" reached its peak in Greenland around the 1420s. The lower layers of the scavengers near the oldest Norse settlements contain significantly more bones from sheep and goats than from pigs and cattle; however, in deposits from the middle of the 14th century. near rich dwellings there are only bones of cattle and deer, and near poor ones there are almost solid seal bones. The version about the decline of cattle breeding as a result of cooling and changes in the feeding habits of the Greenlandic Vikings is also confirmed by studies of skeletons from cemeteries near Norwegian settlements. Most of these skeletons bear traces of pronounced rachitic changes, characterized by deformation of the spine and chest, and in women, the pelvic bones.

Feud with neighbors

At the time of the establishment of Norse settlements, Greenland was completely devoid of native people, but the Vikings were subsequently forced into contact with the Inuit. The Inuit of the Thule culture began arriving in Greenland from Ellesmere Island at the end of the 12th - beginning of the 13th century. Researchers know that the Vikings called the Inuit, like the aborigines of Vinland, skræling (Norwegian skræling). The Icelandic Annals is one of the few sources that indicate the existence of contacts between the Norwegians and the Inuit. They tell of an Inuit attack on the Norwegians, during which eighteen Norwegians were killed and two children were captured. There is archaeological evidence that the Inuit traded with the Norwegians, as many items of Norwegian work have been found during excavations at Inuit sites; however, the Norwegians apparently were not very interested in the Inuit, or at least there are no known finds of Inuit artifacts in Viking settlements. The Norwegians also did not adopt kayak construction technology or ringed seal hunting techniques from the Inuit. In general, it is believed that the relationship between the Norwegians and the Inuit was quite hostile. It is known from archaeological evidence that by 1300, Inuit winter camps already existed along the banks of the fjords near the Western Settlement. Somewhere between 1325 and 1350. The Norwegians completely abandoned the Western Settlement and its surrounding area, possibly due to their failure to resist Inuit attacks.

Kirsten Seaver in her book “Frozen Echoes” tries to prove that the Greenlanders had much better health and ate better than was believed, and therefore denies the version of the extinction of the Greenland colony from starvation. It is more likely, she argues, that the colony perished as a result of an attack by Indians, pirates, or a European military expedition, about which history has not preserved information; it is also likely that the Greenlanders would migrate back to Iceland or to Vinland in search of a more favorable home.

Contacts with Europe

In calm winter weather, the ship made the 1,400-kilometer journey from Iceland to southern Greenland in two weeks. The Greenlanders had to maintain relations with Iceland and Norway in order to trade with them. The Greenlanders could not build ships themselves because they did not have timber, and depended on supplies from Icelandic merchants and on expeditions for timber to Vinland. The sagas tell of Icelandic traders who sailed to trade in Greenland, but trade was in the hands of the owners of large estates. It was they who traded with the arriving merchants and then resold the goods to small landowners. The main Greenlandic export was walrus tusks. In Europe they were used in decorative arts as a substitute for ivory, the trade of which had declined during the hostility with the Islamic world during the era of the Crusades. It is considered likely that as a result of Europe's improving relations with the Islamic world and the advent of the trans-Saharan caravan trade in ivory, the demand for walrus tusks fell significantly, and this may have contributed to the loss of merchant interest in Greenland, the reduction in contacts and the eventual demise of the Norwegian colony on the island.

However, the cultural influence of Christian Europe was felt quite well in Greenland. In 1921, Danish historian Paul Norland dug up a Viking burial in a church cemetery near the Eastern Settlement. The bodies were dressed in European medieval clothing of the 15th century and showed no signs of rachitic changes or genetic degeneration. Most had a crucifix on their necks and their hands in a prayer gesture.

From the records of the papal archives it is known that in 1345 the Greenlanders were exempted from paying church tithes due to the fact that the colony was seriously suffering from poverty.

The last ship to visit Greenland, sometime in the 1510s, was an Icelandic ship that was blown west by a storm. His team did not come into contact with any residents of the island.

Around the same time, around 1501, a Portuguese expedition visited the Greenland area. The European rediscovery of Greenland is believed to have occurred around 1500 by the Portuguese expedition of the Cortirial brothers. They are usually credited with the rediscovery of Greenland by Europeans.

Danish expeditions to Greenland in the 15th century

Since that time, Greenland has become a territory quite well known throughout the world. Various English expeditions in search of the Northwest Passage explored its shores to at least 75° north latitude.

Strategic importance

Autonomous Greenland declared itself a state of the Inuit people. Danish geographical names were changed to local ones. The country began to be called Kalaallit Nunaat. The island's administrative center, Gothob, became Nuuk, the capital of a nearly sovereign country, and the Greenlandic flag was adopted in 1985. However, the movement for the independence of the island still remains weak.

Thanks to the progress of new technologies, especially the development of aviation, Greenland has now become much more accessible to the outside world. Local television broadcasts began in 1982.

In 2008, a referendum on self-government was held in Greenland, following which on May 20, 2009, the Danish Parliament adopted a law on expanded autonomy for Greenland. Expanded autonomy for Greenland was proclaimed on June 21 of the same year. There are people both inside and outside Greenland who see increased autonomy as a step towards Greenland's independence from Denmark

The Atlantic Ocean, which today is a great highway for shipping, was in ancient times an insurmountable desert of water between East and West. In three places, however, geographical conditions favored crossing the ocean. On both sides of the equator, trade winds and the currents they cause are directed from the Old World to the shores South America and West Indies. The water spaces south of the equator, favorable for navigation, were never used to any significant extent: the peoples of Africa were at too low a stage of development to develop them. The use of waters to the north for navigation is associated with the name of Columbus. The waters along the line passing through the Faroe Islands, Iceland and Greenland were used for navigation before any other, the Scandinavian countries raised a generation of sailors who were the first of the peoples of Europe to overcome the dangers of the open ocean. True, this did not lead to such practical results as the discovery of Columbus, and precisely because European culture in those early times was not yet mature enough to cope with the serious danger of navigation in the northern seas.

Thus, geographical position Greenland is the reason that this country came to the attention of Europe more than five centuries before Columbus landed in America. The discovery of Greenland is a natural link to sea voyages during the Viking era. The first period of these campaigns dates back to around 800. In a short period of time, this led to the creation of Scandinavian possessions from Ireland and Normandy all the way to the heart of Russia; The Vikings penetrated to the White Sea and Constantinople. After the unification of Norway, Iceland was discovered. Following this, almost simultaneously, the first, still inaccurate information about Greenland appeared. According to the old Icelandic written source “Landnamabok”, even then (about 875) Greenland was seen from afar by “Gunbjorn, son of Ulf Krake, when he was abandoned by a storm northwest of Iceland and discovered the Gunbjorn Islands.” Apparently, it was about a group of small islands near the modern trading post of Angmagsalik.

Discovery of Greenland by Erik Thorvaldsen (Red)

Following the relatively quiet tenth century, the spark of enterprise was suddenly rekindled. In the north, a route was found to Greenland and Vinland. The peasant Erik Thorvaldsen, nicknamed Red, who as a child moved with his father from his homeland of Norway to Iceland, where in 982 he was sentenced to exile for murder for three years, decided to find the country that Gunbjorn saw from afar. From Cape Snefellsnes, he headed west and saw the eastern coast of Greenland “at the middle glacier in the place where it is called Bloserk”; natural conditions, apparently prevented the landing at this place, where the coast is completely blocked for most of the year floating ice. Then he changed course to the south in order to find out whether the land there was suitable for habitation, and, rounding Cape Farvel, apparently landed in the area of ​​​​the present settlement of Julianehob, near the southern tip of the island. This was the first white man to set foot in the New World! He gave the country the name Greenland, because he believed that it would attract people if the country had an attractive name,” as reported one hundred and fifty years later in the oldest source about the discovery of Greenland, in Are Frode’s book “Islendingabok.” Eric intended to add a new link to the chain of widespread Scandinavian settlements and used his three years of exile for detailed research, extending into more northern territory, up to the present area of ​​Gothob.

First settlements in Greenland

The following summer, after returning to Iceland, he set sail again, with no less than 25 ships in his wake, of which, however, only 14 reached the promised land. The settlers settled in two areas - Österbygden (eastern settlement) and Västerbygden (western settlement); the first of them was located in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bthe present Julianehob and the southern part of the Frederikshob district, the second - in the present Gotthob district.

The settlers led a harsh life in this country, where even the unpretentious barley did not ripen. The struggle of the Scandinavians for existence led to the fact that they gradually became familiar with the surroundings of the settlements, and this knowledge was subsequently forgotten and restored only in the 18th century.

The Scandinavian exploration of Greenland was largely the result of summer trips to collect driftwood (precious in this treeless country) and hunt for seals, walruses and whales. The fishing grounds extended as far north as Disko Bay. Some industrialists reached even more northern places. On far north, in the area of ​​​​the present colony of Upernavik, near the stone pyramids on the island of Kingigtorsuaq, a small stone with runic writing was found. Judging by the linguistic structure, the signature dates back to approximately 1300.

It is possible that the Normans penetrated even further. One of the Icelandic sources reports a journey to explore the country north of the fishing grounds in the summer of 1265 or 1266. How far the explorers penetrated is impossible to establish, since it is not possible to determine the distances indicated in the book; however, it is possible that the explorers reached Melville Bay. But this is not enough. In the northernmost part of the Thule region, near Marshall Bay, between Smith Sound and the Humboldt Glacier, during excavations of ancient Eskimo ruins, various objects of Scandinavian origin were found, including the remains of chain mail. It is possible that these items were introduced as a result of barter with the Eskimos; However, if we compare the finds and vague traditions of the Arctic Eskimos about many warlike white people who arrived in large rowing ships without masts, then the possibility can hardly be completely denied that the Scandinavians actually visited these extreme northern places.

Explorations of the east coast of Greenland

In contrast to the western coast, the eastern coast of Greenland, due to the presence of drifting ice, remained largely unexplored by the Scandinavians. There are indications that they knew the area in the vicinity of Scoresby Bay, which, despite its northern position, is still one of the most accessible parts of the coast. In any case, it is probably necessary to look for the Scandinavian settlement of Svalbard here, regardless of the fact that in later times this name was transferred to the island of Spitsbergen. For the most part, the eastern coast seems to have been visited only by shipwrecked people.

Then, towards the end of the Middle Ages, the darkness of the unknown spreads over Greenland and the Scandinavians there. The tragedy that unfolded here is reflected in the brief reports that have reached us about that period, which become increasingly scanty as time goes on. It may seem puzzling that so little has been done on the Scandinavian side to support the message. It must be noted, however, that Greenland was never completely forgotten. Immediately following the cessation of ancient sea voyages there follows a period during which fruitless attempts were made to explore Greenland.

The incentive for such research was the friendly relations that existed in the 15th century between the courts of Denmark and Portugal, the homeland of the great geographical discoveries. The Portuguese prince Dom Henrique, or, as the Danes called him, Henry the Navigator, according to a fictitious medieval description of the journey that has come down to us, came to the idea that it was possible to find sea ​​route, leading directly from Norway to China and India. His cousin was married to the Danish king Eric of Pomerania, and Scandinavia at that time was considered the bearer of the old traditions of sea voyages to Greenland and Vinland. For this reason, the prince established cooperation with Denmark. The Danish nobles were first invited to participate in dangerous journeys along the African coast, after which in Denmark itself they began preparing for the voyage to the north. In the summer of 1473, Christien I equipped an expedition that can be called the first Danish polar expedition. Two admirals were appointed as leaders - Dietrich Piening and Hans Potthorst. The expedition's navigator, or "navigator", was apparently a Scandinavian named Ion Skolp (Johannes Okolvus), and the Portuguese Joao Vas Corteral also took part in the expedition. Very little is known about the journey itself. The starting point seems to have been Norway, the expedition spent some time in Iceland, from there the journey continued towards the east coast of Greenland, where a “compass” was carved on Mount Vidserk, that is, a sign that, in all likelihood, was based on the Portuguese model was supposed to indicate that the country was occupied. In his book “Carta Marina”, written in 1539, and later in his descriptions northern countries Swedish Archbishop Olaus Magnus gave a drawing of a “compass”, which, of course, was made from imagination. In all likelihood, the expedition experienced severe storms and may even have been shipwrecked; it is also known that the expedition had a battle with Eskimo “sea robbers”.

But nevertheless the expedition was carried out, and its greatest achievement was that it penetrated west and south of Greenland and, undoubtedly, discovered Newfoundland.

The expedition did not have any practical significance. However, the desire to recapture Greenland did not die out, although all Danish expeditions undertaken in the next century ended unsuccessfully. The expedition planned by Archbishop Eric Walkendorff was canceled due to the fact that the archbishop quarreled with King Christian II, and when the king subsequently took the enterprise into his own hands, the Swedish uprising broke out in 1520. At the end of the turbulent period of feudal feuds and reformation, which prevented equipment expeditions, other complications arose. The expeditions commissioned by King Frederick II - one in 1579 under the leadership of the Englishman Alday and another in 1581 under the leadership of the Faroese native Mogens Heinesen - were unsuccessful, as they encountered an impenetrable wall of drifting ice off the east coast and were forced to return without results. .