"Item in Greenland there are silver-mines [which are not found there], white bears having red spots on the head [sic!].... Item in Greenland great tempests never come. Item snow falls much in Greenland, it is not so cold there as in Iceland and Norway, there grows on high mountains and down below fruit as large as some apples and good to eat, the best wheat that can be grows there."[82]
As will be seen, one absurdity succeeds another. It may be objected that as it is not stated that this last paragraph is due to Ivar the Greenlander, it may have been added later; but it contains an admixture of statements that must come from Greenland--e.g., about the white bears, whales' tusks (i.e., of walrus or narwhale), walrus hides, soapstone (steatite), of which they make pots, and large vessels; it is also stated that "there are many reindeer," and it seems probable that it is all derived from the same untrustworthy source.
To what has here been said some will object that, even if this description ascribed to Ivar Bárdsson bears evident marks of being inexact, it shows at any rate that in Norway, when it was taken down, the view prevailed that the Western Settlement had been destroyed by an attack of the Skrælings. But nothing of the kind is really stated in the account (cf. above, p. 108, note 3); and the possibly contemporary statement (of 1342 ?) which has already been given (p. 100) shows that in Iceland, at any rate in the seventeenth century, the contrary view prevailed, unless indeed we are to explain this statement as having arisen through a misunderstanding of Lyschander.
Under the year 1379 the so-called "Gottskalks Annáll" (of the second half of the sixteenth century) has a statement which cannot be regarded as certain, as it is not found in the other Icelandic annals, but which may have been taken from older sources. It reads [G. Storm's edition of Islandske Annaler, 1888, p. 364]:
"The Skrælings harried the Greenlanders and killed of them eighteen men and took two boys and made slaves of them."
[Sidenote: Björn Jorsalafarer's account, 1385-87]
It is possible that this may have some historical foundation, and in that case it doubtless refers to some collision or attack, perhaps at sea, in which the Eskimo were superior and the Greenlanders were defeated, which latter circumstance is the reason of our hearing something about it; in the contrary case it would not have been reported. That the Eskimo took two boys is conceivable if they were quite young, so that they could be trained for sealing; they would thus provide an increase of the capital of the community. It is not unlikely that rumours of some such collisions as this may have contributed to form the ideas prevalent in Norway as to the formidable character of the Skrælings,[83] while at the same time there existed ideas of their flying from Europeans, which appear in the reports of the Pygmies (cf. the letter to the Pope, about 1450, and Walkendorf, above, p. 86). Whether the encounter referred to took place in the Western or in the Eastern Settlement (or perhaps in Nordrsetur ?) we do not know. If we are to place any reliance on Ivar Bárdsson's description, we must suppose that the Western Settlement and its fate were little known at that time. But that friendly relations between the Greenlanders and the Eskimo may have prevailed also in the Eastern Settlement later than this seems to result from the account of the widely travelled Icelander Björn Einarsson Jorsalafarer's stay in Greenland from 1385 to 1387. On a voyage to Iceland in 1385 he was in distress, and was driven out of his course to the Eastern Settlement with four ships, which all arrived safe and well in Iceland in 1387.[84] It seems that there was a difficulty in feeding all these crews, but Björn is said to have had the district of Eric's fjord handed over to him while he was there (?), and received as a contribution 130 fore-quarters of sheep (?). There is also related a fable that on his coming there and going down to the sea to look for seals he happened to witness a combat between a polar bear and a walrus, "who always fight when they meet,[85] and he afterwards killed them both."