Thorkell leifsson biography of william hill

Table of contents :
PREFACE xi
INTRODUCTION 1
Chapter
1. The First Settlers 8
2. The Norse Settlers 26
3. The Neo-Eskimos in Greenland 89
4. The Norse Settlers from 1100 to 1400 103
5. The Fifteenth Century 153
6. The Sixteenth Century 183
7. Europe and Greenland 1600-1670 217
8. The West Greenland Eskimo Culture after 1650 259
9. European Activity 1670-1700 311
NOTES AND REFERENCES 319
LIST OF LITERATURE 334
GLOSSARY 34O
INDEX 34I

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The History of Greenland I : Earliest

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FINN GAD T H E C O M P L E X H IS T O R Y of human life in Greenland, a country offering one of the world’s most hostile environments, has now continued since the first Eskimo immigration about 5,000 years ago. A way of life that is unique and peculiar to Greenland and to nowhere else has evolved there. This is due not only to the Eskimos, who are found also in North America and Eastern Siberia, but to the nature of its settlement from Europe. Greenland has twice been colonised, by men from Scandinavia. The first settle­ ment, by Norsemen led by Erik the Red, lasted from ad 986 until about 1500; how the colonies came to an end is a classic historical mystery and tragedy. For the last 250 years Greenland has been colonised by Denmark. Contact between the early Norsemen and the Eskimos was at best tenuous, at worst hostile. Under the Danes, there has been extensive and deliberate culture-contact and miscegena­ tion, but, the environment being what it is, it is a specific “ Greenlandic” way of life which has come into being. Since the beginning of World War II, Greenland has been important in inter­ national relations as a focus of both strategic and civil communications. Interest on a world-wide scale in under­ developed societies and in both the econo­ mic and cultural aspects of colonial history is steadily growing. Hence it now seems an appropriate time for an historian

A Comparison of the Gesta Herwardi and Grettis saga

Chapter Summary

Preface

Sources and background Hereward is beloved by a girl, and fights on her behalf;

Chapter Summary 10 [9] Hereward comes to a girl and is recognized by her;

11 [10] Hereward goes to fight in Zeeland; 12 [11] Hereward manages the Zeeland wars;

13 [12] Hereward gets a swift horse; [cf. Grettis saga,ch. 47] 14 [12] Hereward returns from the Zeeland wars and divides up the spoils;

15 [13] Hereward returns from abroad and finds his brother dead; [cf. Grettis saga,ch. 47] 16 [14] Hereward panics the local Norman inhabitants, and gathers forces;

[15]

Hereward is made a knight in the English fashion;

18 [16] Hereward attacks a man who is plotting against him; [cf. Grettis saga,ch. 59] 19 [17] Hereward returns to Flanders, and performs heroic acts; Hereward's enemy (William) attempts to take the island (Ely), and nearly loses his entire army;

[21]

William's sole surviving soldier is well treated by Hereward, and returns to William with a glowing report; 24 [22] William is minded to make peace, but is dissuaded by some of his men;

25 [23] Hereward enters William's court disguised as a potter;

26 [24] Hereward enters William's court disguised as a fisherman; a witch is used to try to dislodge the besieged outlaws from the island; [cf. Grettis saga, 27 [25] Hereward is betrayed by the people of Ely, who want to make peace with the king;

28 [26] Hereward in dire straits is forced to kill his own horse;

29 [27] Hereward pre-empts the arrival of the Abbot of Peterborough, and plunders his church;

[28]

Hereward has a vision of St Peter and returns the plunder; his journey back is miraculous, with will o' the wisps and a white wolf;

Chapter Summary 31 [29] Hereward hunts down an enemy, and corners him in a toi

Table of contents :
Norse Greenland: Viking Peasants in the Arctic- Front Cover
Half Title
Title Page
Copyright Page
Contents
List of figures
Preface
Introduction
1 The problem
2 Earlier research
3 My contribution
Chapter 1: The initial settlement in ad 985/6
1 The Icelandic sagas as historical sources
2 The first Greenlanders
3 Conclusion
Chapter 2: Political organisation
1 Ethnic identity
2 Violence in a pre-state society
3 Jurisdiction in pre-state Greenland
4 The Brattahlid chieftain as pre-state political leader
5 Ties to the Norwegian king before 1261
6 Attempts to organise a state administration
after 1261
Chapter 3: Church and religion
1 Christianisation
2 Church organisation before the parish ad 1000–1124
3 The parish 1124–1340
4 The Gardar diocese
5 The monasteries
6 The supernatural and the natural world
7 The Greenland church in its final decades 1340–1410
Chapter 4: Trade and shipping
1 The imports
2 The exports
3 Ships and boats
4 Crossing the Greenland Ocean
5 The merchants
6 The political framework for trade and shipping
Chapter 5: Subsistence food production
1 The basis: animal husbandry
2 Providing fodder for domestic animals
3 Animal husbandry in crisis?
4 Hunting and fishing as flexible supplements
5 Did the quality of the diet decline?
Chapter 6: One land – two societies
1 Inuit attitude to violence
2 Norse encounters with the Inuit from beginning
to end
3 “We found a rich land, but are not destined to enjoy it”
Bibliography
Sources
Literature, reference books and abbreviations
Appendix I
W54 Nipaatsoq
GUS
W51 Sandnes
W59
W48 Niaquusat
E34 in Qorlortup valley
Eight farms in Vatnahverfi (1)
E17a Narsaq
E149 Vágar?
E29a Brattahlid
Appendix II, Introductory map and maps 1–10
Index of matters
Index of names (places and persons)

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Norse Greenland: Viking Peasants in the Arctic

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The Sagas are exceptional tales of everyday life and historical events that were kept alive in the oral tradition for two to three hundred years before they were recorded in the written format. The Sagas are not typical heroic literature, but rather tales of flesh and blood people burdened with heroic legacy in the Viking tradition of blood vengeance. They are deeply rooted in the real world of their day, concise and straightforward in style; the Sagas explore perennial human problems; love and hate, fate and freedom, crime and punishment, travel and exile. Read one Saga and you have the craze for another and another. The Sagas tell of the Viking age, the Icelandic laws and justice system that made up the Althing and the conversion of Icelanders to Christianity. The Sagas of the Icelanders rank with the world’s greatest literary treasures.

The Complete Sagas of Icelanders including 49 tales, a five volume set, was translated into English and published by the Leifur Eiriksson Publishing in 1997. These five volumes contain the first complete, coordinated English translation of The Sagas of Icelanders, forty in all, together with forty-nine of the shorter Tales of Icelanders.

The Sagas are the most precious possession of the Icelandic people. They have been preserved first on vellum and then on paper. The manuscripts show wear meaning that have been used. The Icelandic Saga manuscripts were collected and moved to Sweden and Denmark in the sixteenth century. Árni Magnússon spent much of his life collecting the manuscripts of the Icelandic Sagas. He lived in Denmark and on his deathbed, in 1730; he left all of his manuscripts to the University of Copenhagen.

Iceland regained its independents from Denmark in four stages. It received a separate constitution in 1874, home rule in 1904, independence under dual monarchy in 1918 and full independence in 1944. As part of these settlements the Icelandic manuscripts that had been taken to Denmark were to be retur