heir
fiords at Brattahlid and come in a flock to these pleasanter places, he
must call to mind two important circumstances. First, the settlers in
southern Greenland did not meet with barbarous natives, but only with
vestiges of their former presence. It was not until the twelfth century
that, in roaming the icy deserts of the far north in quest of seals and
bearskins, the Norse hunters encountered tribes of Eskimo using stone
knives and whalebone arrow-heads;[273] and it was not until the
fourteenth century that we hear of their getting into a war with these
people. In 1349 the West Bygd was attacked and destroyed by Eskimos; in
1379 they invaded the East Bygd and wrought sad havoc; and it is
generally believed that some time after 1409 they completed the
destruction of the colony.

[Footnote 273: Storm, _Monumenta historica Norvegiae_, p. 77.]

[Sidenote: Queen Margaret's monopoly, and its baneful effects.]

Secondly, the relative proximity of Greenland to the mother country,
Iceland, made it much easier to sustain a colony there than in the more
distant Vinland. In colonizing, as in campaigning, distance from one's
base is sometimes the supreme circumstance. This is illustrated by the
fact that the very existence of the Greenland colony itself depended
upon perpetual and untrammelled exchange of commodities with Iceland;
and when once the source of supply was cut off, the colony soon
languished. In 1380 and 1387 the crowns of Norway and Denmark descended
upon Queen Margaret, and soon she made her precious contribution to the
innumerable swarm of instances that show with how little wisdom the
world is ruled. She made the trade to Greenland, Iceland, and the Faeroe
isles "a royal monopoly which could only be carried on in ships
belonging to, or licensed by, the sovereign.... Under the monopoly of
trade the Icelanders could have no vessels, and no object for sailing to
Greenland; and the vessels fitted out by government, or its lessees,
would only be ready to leave Denmark or Bergen for Iceland at the season
they ought to have been ready to leave Iceland to go to Greenland. The
colony gradually fell into oblivion."[274] When this prohibitory
management was abandoned after 1534 by Christian III., it was altogether
too late. Starved by the miserable policy of governmental interference
with freedom of trade, the little Greenland colony soon became too weak
to sustain itself against the natives whose hostility ha