102 GREENLAND OR GREEN ISLAND the average fifty miles wide and occasionally much wider. It was partly shut in by forbidding headlands and perverse currents, but feasible of access when the true course was disclosed. Some parts of this region were, and still are, green with grass and bright with summer flowers. Nansen, who certainly ought to know, declares that the Greenland sites chosen would have seemed more attractive than Iceland to an Icelander. Rink, who was connected with the Greenland government for a full generation, mentions certain places with special approval and regards life in most parts of the inhabited region quite contentedly. 13 Pro- fessor Hovgaard tells us: 14 ICELANDIC SETTLEMENT It was on this strip of land that the Icelanders settled at the end of the tenth century. Though barren on the outer shores and islands and on the hills, it is covered at the inner part of the fiords on the low level by a rich growth of grass together with stunted birch trees and various bushes, par- ticularly willows. On the north side of the valleys crowberries (Empetrum nigrurri) may be found. . . Eric settled in Ericsfiord, the present Tunugdliarfik, at a place which he called Brattahlid, now Kagsiarsuk, in 985 or 986. Two distinct colonies were founded, the Eastern Settlement, extending from about Cape Fare- well to a point well beyond Cape Desolation, comprising the whole of Julianehaab Bay and the coast past Ivigtut, and the Western Settlement, beginning about one hundred and seventy miles farther north at Lysu- fiord, [i.e. Agnafiord], the present Ameralikfiord, comprising the district of Godthaab. The fiord next Ericsfiord in the Eastern Settlement was Einarsfiord, now Igalikofiord. These fiords were separated at their head by a low and narrow strip of land, the present Igaliko Isthmus. It was here, at Gardar, that the Althing of Greenland met, and here was also found the bishop's seat, established at the beginning of the twelfth century. There were as many as sixteen churches in Greenland, for almost every fiord had its own church on account of the long distances and difficult traveling between the fiords. The unfamiliar localities above named may be followed by the aid of the accompanying map (Fig. 15) copied from Finnur 1S Henry Rink: Danish Greenland, Its People and Its Products, London, 1877, pp. 306-312 and passim. 14 William Hovgaard: The Voyages of the Norsemen to America (Scandinavian Monographs, Vol. i), American-Scandinavian Foundation, New York, 1914, pp. 25 and 26.
