There is no ground for this
belief. The name 'Greenland' did not imply a country of
trees and luxuriant vegetation, but only referred to the
bright carpet of grass still seen in the short Greenland
summer in the warmer hollows of the hillsides. It may
have been that the settlement, never strong in numbers,
was overwhelmed by the Eskimos, who are known to have
often attacked the colony: very likely, too, it suffered
from the great plague, the Black Death, that swept over
all Europe in the fourteenth century. Whatever the cause,
the colony came to an end, and centuries elapsed before
Greenland was again known to Europe.
This whole story of the Greenland settlement is historical
fact which cannot be doubted. Partly by accident and
partly by design, the Norsemen had been carried from
Norway to the Orkneys and the Hebrides and Iceland, and
from there to Greenland. This having happened, it was
natural that their ships should go beyond Greenland
itself. During the four hundred years in which the Norse
ships went from Europe to Greenland, their navigators
had neither chart nor compass, and they sailed huge open
boats, carrying only a great square sail.
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