Above it all towered snow-covered peaks. They saw
only the summer day; they did not know how brief it was, and how
long the winter night, and they called the country Greenland. They
built their homes there, and other settlers came. They were hardy
men, bred in a harsh climate, and they stayed. They built churches
and had their priests and bishops, for Norway was Christian by that
time. And they prospered after their fashion. They even paid Peter's
Pence to Rome. There is a record that their contribution, being in
kind, namely, walrus teeth, was sold in 1386 by the Pope's agent to
a merchant in Flanders for twelve livres, fourteen sous. They kept
up communication with their kin across the seas until the Black
Death swept through the Old World in the Fourteenth Century; Norway,
when it was gone, was like a vast tomb. Two-thirds of its people lay
dead. Those who were left had enough to do at home; and Greenland
was forgotten.
The seasons passed, and the savages, with whom the colonists had
carried on a running feud, came out of the frozen North and
overwhelmed them. Dim traditions that were whispered among the
natives for centuries told of that last fight. It was the Ragnarok
of the Northmen. Not one was left to tell the tale.
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