The End Of An Era

Exploring Greenland’s lost independence and the downfall of the colonies

You know the Sagas. They’re about Icelanders, right? Well, there’s also the Grænlendinga saga (the Saga of the Greenlanders), which tells the tales of the Viking settlement of — you guessed it — Greenland. We’ve been recapping that in recent issues, but now we’re taking a little diversion into a history lesson of sorts.

Much like how they adapted Christianity from Leif Eriksson, Medieval Greenlanders seem to have given up their independence with a minimum of fuss. In 1247, the newly anointed bishop Ólafur arrived in Garðar from Norway and announced that the country should become a part of the realm of king Håkon Håkonsson. The Greenlanders deliberated but, in 1261, they agreed.

In Iceland, the process was in both cases rather different. In the year 1000, the adaptation of Christianity had almost caused a civil war and by the mid-1200s, an actual civil war was raging between the five leading families. The strife was finally brought to an end with Icelanders becoming subjects of the Norwegian king in 1262.

That same year, bishop Ólafur of Garðar headed to Norway to tell the king the good news, but was caught in a storm and spent the winter in Iceland. Having thus witnessed the end of both the Icelandic and the Greenlandic commonwealth in the space of a year, he finally arrived at the court of the king.

The first king of Iceland and Greenland would be known to history as Håkon the Old and would die the next year at the age of 59. His moniker can be attributed to the fact that he reigned for 46 years — longer than any Norwegian king since the semi-mythological Harald Fairhair. Håkon brought an end to the civil wars raging in his own country and is well-liked there — rather less so in Iceland.

At first, the end of independence in Greenland caused little direct change. Taxes would be paid to the king and restitution paid for murder would not go to the bereaved but to the royal coffers. A similar arrangement was made in Iceland, where the new order at least kept the peace. In Greenland, however, the results were to prove catastrophic in the long run.

From riches to rags

Like others, Greenlanders were expected to contribute to the various crusades and also pay direct taxes to the church in Rome. For the Archbishop of Niðarós in Norway, whose dominion reached Greenland, getting paid was no easy task. It might take three to five years to go back and forth to Greenland to supervise the collecting. There was also little hope that the Greenlanders could pay in the required silver. In 1267, the Pope allowed him to send an emissary to Greenland with wide-ranging powers.

The emissary returned four years later with a boatload of sealskins, whale’s teeth and leather harnesses. The Archbishop, rather perplexed, wrote again to the Pope and asked what to do with all this. The Pope replied that he should sell the lot and change the proceeds to silver, which should be sent to Rome without delay. The precedent was created that this sole bishopric in Christendom could pay its taxes to Rome in animal produce rather than coin.

The king also wanted his share and decreed that the Greenland trade was now a Royal Monopoly, which only those appointed by him were allowed to conduct. Far fewer ships would now make the trip. Walrus tusks were a sought-after product and a valuable cargo was reported in 1327, with half of the proceeds going to the king to aid in his war against the orthodox Russians and the other half going to Rome. The number of Greenlandic taxpayers is presumed to be at 4000, which indicated a still vital settlement.

But things soon took a turn for the worse. The Greenlanders were having trouble importing necessities and, in 1345, the Pope granted them an exemption from the Crusader tax. Two years later, the king granted the Cathedral of Garðar a hundred marks of silver to purchase church materials. Greenland was becoming a burden.

The sun sets on a civilization

It was around this time that the Western Settlement was abandoned. In 1342, it is reported that Norse Greenlanders had converted to the Inuit’s faith, although this probably only applied to small, remote groups so far. In 1355, the Greenland ship from Norway was ordered to make sure that Greenland’s Christianity didn’t end “in our time.”

Things went from bad to worse. Black Death arrived in Scandinavia at the end of the 1340s. Norway was badly hit, which again reduced the king’s power in the North Atlantic. English pirates roamed the seas. From 1349 to 1368, no bishop was appointed to Greenland. In 1383, it was belatedly reported the bishop Álfr had died six years previous. He was to be the last resident bishop of Garðar, as later appointed bishops decided to stay at home in Norway and never made the trip over. The larger Eastern Settlement was also nearing its end.

Norway became a part of the Kingdom of Denmark in 1380, its own aristocracy decimated by plague. By centuries’ end, Queen Margret of Denmark would rule over Sweden, too. This left Norway on the periphery of the new Union State, its dependencies even more so, while focus switched to the Baltic.

But there was no let-up in the Royal Monopoly, even though the last official trading ship sank in 1368 and was not renewed. In Bergen in 1389, two ship captains were sentenced to hanging for illicit trading with Greenland. The sentences were commuted when they claimed that they had been washed ashore by bad weather and, besotted with hunger and scurvy, saw no other option available than to trade some of their goods for food. The explanation may be untrue but shows how severely the Monopoly was upheld.

The Danish period would later be referred to by nationalist Norwegian historians as the “400 year-night.” In Iceland, it could be argued that this night lasted even longer. In Norse Greenland, the sun was never to rise again. Their final fate remains a mystery.

Keep up with Valur Gunnarsson’s Greenland Ho! series and tune in to the podcast series over on YouTube.