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Early Religious Practice in Norse Greenland

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Early Religious Practice in Norse Greenland Hugvísindasvið Early Religious Practice in Norse Greenland: th From the Period of Settlement to the 12 Century Ritgerð til M.A.-prófs Andrew Umbrich September 2012 U m b r i c h | 2 Háskóli Íslands Hugvísindasvið Medieval Icelandic Studies Early Religious Practice in Norse Greenland: th From the Period of Settlement to the 12 Century Ritgerð til M.A.-prófs Andrew Umbrich Kt.: 130388-4269 Leiðbeinandi: Gísli Sigurðsson September 2012 U m b r i c h | 3 Table of Contents 1.0 Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 5 1.1 Scholarly Works and Sources Used in This Study ...................................................... 8 1.2 Inherent Problems with This Study: Written Sources and Archaeology .................... 9 1.3 Origin of Greenland Settlers and Greenlandic Law .................................................. 10 2.0 Historiography ................................................................................................................. 12 2.1 Lesley Abrams’ Early Religious Practice in the Greenland Settlement.................... 12 2.2 Jonathan Grove’s The Place of Greenland in Medieval Icelandic Saga Narratives.. 14 2.3 Gísli Sigurðsson’s Greenland in the Sagas of Icelanders: What Did the Writers Know - And How Did They Know It? and The Medieval Icelandic Saga and Oral Tradition: A Discourse on Method....................................................................................... 15 2.4 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 17 3.0 The Sources.................................................................................................................. 19 3.1 Brief Summary of Old Iceland Sagas in Scholarship ..................................................... 19 3.2 Íslendingabók and Landnámabók.............................................................................. 20 3.3 Eiríks saga rauða ....................................................................................................... 22 3.4 Grœnlendinga saga .................................................................................................... 26 3.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 30 4.0 Archaeology ................................................................................................................. 32 4.1 Brief Summary of Archaeological History in Greenland.......................................... 32 4.2 Greenland Churches and Farms ................................................................................ 33 4.3 Graveyard and Skeletal Remains .............................................................................. 35 4.4 Pagan proof ............................................................................................................... 38 4.5 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 41 5.0 Origin of Norse Greenland Settlers ........................................................................... 44 5.1 The Origin of the Icelandic Settlers in Greenland ..................................................... 44 5.2 Greenlandic Law ....................................................................................................... 47 5.3 Conclusion ................................................................................................................. 50 6.0 Conclusion ................................................................................................................... 51 Reference List of Illustrations............................................................................................... 55 Bibliography ........................................................................................................................... 56 U m b r i c h | 4 List of Pictures Figure: 1 Family tree of the Greenlanders and the Vínland voyagers. ................................... 30 Figure: 2 Krogh’s drawing of the cemetery surrounding Þjóðhildr’s church during the excavations of 1962-5. Red indicates women, blue indicates men, and the children are in green. The church walls are shown with heavy shading. ................................ 38 Figure: 3. Steatite loom-weight from Qassiarsuk decorated with Thor's hammer. ................ 40 Figure: 4 A drawing of the Narsaq stick. Sides are indicated by the letters on the left hand side. ............................................................................................................................ 41 Figure: 5 Areas settled by people from the British Isles, both of Norse and Gaelic origins. Compiled by Gísli Sigurðsson from Hermann Pálsson, Keltar á Íslandi (based on Landnámabók evidence). ........................................................................................... 47 U m b r i c h | 5 1.0 Introduction The Norse colony in Greenland existed from its discovery and settlement by Eiríkr rauði in 985/6 until its decline in the 15th century. The exact causes of this decline are widely disputed and are the topic of many books and papers but will not be discussed in this paper due to its complexity and lack of relevance to this thesis. The exact population of Greenland is unknown but modern estimates place the population of both Eastern and Western Settlements to between 3000 and 5000 at the peak of the colonies and an overall population during the colonies’ existence at about 70 0001. The history of this period is not well known for there are no accounts written by the Greenland Norse yet the memory of Greenland remained alive in archaeology, the medieval Icelandic Sagas, contemporary knowledge, Grœnlendinga þáttir (Tales of Greenlanders), Icelandic annals, and several other works. Its status became known as an independent but secondary settlement from Iceland with its own political organization and connections to Norway. Contact between Greenland and the rest of the world was not well recorded but there is much evidence that suggests that trade was abundant2. Scholars believe that communication between Greenland with Norway and Iceland started strong but slowly deteriorated or eventually stopped sometime during the 14th and 15th centuries. All the sagas written about or that include Greenland were written at least 200 years after its settlement (1200 C.E. +) and were not based on accurate historical knowledge, rather they were based on multiple oral traditions both contemporary and older, hearsay from travelers and merchants, and creative fiction by the authors. The sagas kept the memory of early Greenland alive and portrayed an image of the remote land which included tales and notions of savage paganism, the supernatural including trolls and other monsters, outlawry and exile, and an unforgiving harsh and barely inhabited wilderness which served as a perfect setting for Icelanders to explore and meet physical and religious conflicts in a heroic narrative. It can be discomforting for readers and scholars to know that Greenland’s history will never be fully known. Fortunately we can still gather much information and a lot can be said without too much doubt. 1 Seaver, Kirsten A. The Frozen Echo: Greenland and the Exploration of North America ca A.D. 1000-1500. Stanford: Standford University Press, 1996: page 202. 2 Kirsten Seaver devotes an entire chapter in her latest book The Last Vikings (pages 101-116) on Greenland’s foreign trade. She talks about the lucrative walrus tooth and narwhal horn trade and explains how they may have been kept hidden or secret for economic gain; this may also explains as to why there are few written documents and we know so little on communication between Greenland and the rest of the world. U m b r i c h | 6 Norse Greenland scholarship assumes that in the founding of Norse Greenland Christianity already existed3. However, very little work has been done on this topic and little has been said for certain. There have been a few works done on the topic but they are only brief summaries and they assume information rather than provide evidence for it. Early religious practice in Greenland is usually just a side note on the topic of settlement or a small chapter in a larger body of work and few authors go into any real detail. In fact, there is actually a lot of information on the topic and many reasonable conclusions can be drawn. How many Icelanders were Christian at the time of Greenland’s settlement? Were there any pagans? Did Greenland ever officially convert to Christianity and, if so, when? These questions cannot be answered with complete certainty. However, an awareness of what is known and unknown about religion in Greenland can help answer these questions. One of the biggest problems with this topic is that there is a large lack of written material available. The most troubling thing about this subject is that there are two conflicting forces at play, each telling a difference story; the first is the written record that suggests Greenland was first inhabited by a pagan majority with a Christian minority, while the second is the archaeological record which suggests the land was held by a solely Christian society exempting one stone loom-weight depicting Thor's Hammer and a stick inscribed with runes possibly relating to Norse mythology. Because of these opposing records, the historical record must consult other forms
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