however is hardly consistent with the fact that in the same period they had ships to cross
the Melville Bay in North Greenland (see below). Another explanation could be the
wish of the Norwegian kings – especially King Håkon Håkonsson ( 1204 – 63 ) was
successful – to subject the North Atlantic colonies, and an effective means to succeed
was to refuse their traders admittance to Norwegian harbours.
Despite the agreement of 1261 , the numbers of Norwegians sailing to Greenland
declined during the late fourteenth century. The famous late medieval garments from
the churchyard at Ikigaat (in Old Norse Herjólfsnes) clearly show that communication
between Greenland and Europe lasted at least to the beginning of the fifteenth century
(Arneborg 1996 ; Østergaard 2004 ); the number of ships that arrived in Greenland is
however unknown, and in the later part of the century the official Norwegian sailings to
Greenland had stopped completely (Magerøy 1993 : 228 ).
THE HUNTERS OF THE NORTHOn their hunting trips to the north the Norse Greenlanders may have met both the late
Dorset people and the Thule culture people. The late Dorset Palaeo Eskimos appeared in
the Nares Strait/Smith Sound region in the eighth century and the Thule Inuit arrived
around 1200. Both people seem to have been in the region in the period 1200 – 1300 :
the late Dorset declining; the Thule culture on the rise (Gulløv 2000 ). The Norse
Greenlanders regarded the late Dorset and the Thule people as the same as the Vinland
skrælings (weaklings), and most probably the name expresses their opinion of the hunters
of the north. Archaeological finds and written sources indicate some interaction between
the Dorset, Thule and Norse people; the nature of the contacts is however hardly known,
but written sources indicate Norse interest in the skrælings (see Halldórsson 1978 : 53 f.)
and one explanation could be the exchange of commodities (Arneborg 1997 ). The Norse
may have acquired walrus ivory from the Palaeo Eskimo and Inuit hunters in return
for metals. The majority of Norse finds found in Thule culture context are metals
(Gulløv 2000 : 326 ).
During the fourteenth century the Thule culture people moved southwards to Green-
land’s west coast. They arrived in the Western Settlement region around the middle
of the fourteenth century about the same time as the Norse deserted the settlement and
they may have lived for a generation or two on the outer coast of the Eastern Settlement
region while the Norse were still living on their farms in the inner parts of the fjords.
How the relations between the two people developed, as they physically got closer to
each other, are unknown but we may guess that the two very different ways of under-
standing the world may have caused problems.
DESERTED SETTLEMENTSThe written and the archaeological record agree that the northernmost Western Settle-
ment was depopulated in the second half of the fourteenth century, and according to
the archaeological finds in the Eastern Settlement it is most likely that this settlement
was abandoned about 100 years later. For many years the predominant theory pointed
to the advancing Thule culture people who were thought to have wiped out the Norse
population. The theory was, however, based on one interpretation of the written sources
–– Jette Arneborg––