THE CHURCHNo pagan graves have been found in Greenland, and from the initial settlement the
leading landnám families may have had Christian churches and burial grounds attached
to their farms. In time some churches were demolished while others were enlarged. No
doubt as in Iceland the churches were privately owned and formed an important part of
the economic and social organisation of the society (Arneborg 1991 ). Directly contrary
to the interests of the Roman Church the system of privately owned churches gave the
secular church owners opportunities to gain economic advantages, and the payments
to the church may have been a sizeable source of income for the church owners. Thus,
the development from many small churches to fewer and larger churches may reflect the
concentration of power in Norse Greenland society.
However, despite this development, power in the society never seems to have been
monopolised by the few, and the group of elite families seems to have maintained some
kind of mutual equilibrium that did not permit one family to gain superiority. In
Iceland the family at Skálholt was powerful enough to seize the crosier in the middle of
the eleventh century and turn their family farm into the first Icelandic Episcopal
residence; contrary to that the bishop’s see in Greenland was established by Norwegian
initiative at the beginning of the twelfth century. The bishop of Norse Greenland was
never a Greenlander. The effect was twofold. No Greenland family gained power and
position on the basis of the office, and the influence of the Roman Church in Greenland
seems to have been restricted during the entire settlement period (Arneborg 1991 ). The
last bishop residing in Greenland died in 1378 , which was thirty years before the
wedding (mentioned above) took place in the Hvalsey fjord church.
THE GREENLANDERS AND EUROPEGreenland never adopted a monetary economy. Both external trade and internal
exchange were dominated by the exchange of what were considered valuables in Europe
and in Greenland. The Greenlanders exported first and foremost walrus ivory, which
was considered valuable on the European market in the Viking and early medieval
period, and they imported the requisite iron, which they could not produce in Green-
land (Buchwald 2001 ). They also imported other items that were considered luxuries or
valuables in Greenland. Trade and internal exchange were organised in a redistributive
system with the high-status or elite farmers in the role as distributors. The control of
exchange and trade formed part of the position of power of the elite farmers and not only
did they organise and profit by the system they also took an active part in acquiring the
trade commodities. According to the written accounts of Haukur Erlendsson (d. 1334 )
the elite farmers owned the ships that went to the hunting grounds, and they also owned
the hunting equipment (see Halldórsson 1978 : 55 ).
In the first period of settlement the Greenlandic farmers had their own ships to take
them and their commodities to the markets in Europe. In the late twelfth century they
were among the merchants that traded in Bergen (Magerøy 1993 : 34 ). Less than a
century later the Greenlanders depended on Norwegian merchants sailing to Greenland
and in 1261 they – as the Icelanders – subjected to the Norwegian king in order to
ensure the traffic between Greenland and Norway (Magerøy 1993 : 62 ). The reasons for
this development are obscure. One explanation is the lack of sea-going ships; this
–– chapter 43 : The Norse settlements in Greenland––