110 GREENLAND OR GREEN ISLAND
translated by various runologists, with differences in detail.
As given by Professor Hovgaard, it reads:
Erling Sigvatsson and Bjarne Thordarson and Endride Oddson built
this (or these) beacon(s) Saturday after "Gagnday" (April 25th) and
cleared (the place) (or made the inscription) 1135 (?)
The year is reported with some uncertainty; and it must be owned
that the body of the text offers several alternatives. Such a
memorial would more naturally be put up by the men who built
the beacons or those of about their time than by a later genera-
tion to commemorate the not vitally important doings of those
who were dead and gone. The year 1300 seems a little late for
venturing so far, as it was about the beginning of a period of
decadence and less than forty years before the Western Settle-
ment vanished altogether. The date 1135 would better accord
with the climax of Norse strenuousness and Greenland adven-
ture. Perhaps the runes were carved in the stone earlier than the
runologists suppose. But, whether the original visit took place
in the twelfth century or the fourteenth, and whether the stone
denotes two Norse visits to this place or only one, it is still con-
clusive that some Greenlanders had explored well to the north-
ward along the shore of Baffin Bay in the time of the old colony.
A more extensive exploration was undertaken in 1266 by the
clergy, apparently of the Bishop's seat, since they traveled home
to Gardar. It appears that certain men had been farther north
than usual but reported no sign of previous occupancy by the
Eskimos (who seem by this time to have awakened some concern
among the Norsemen) except at the unusually broad reindeer-
pasture land and hunting ground of Krogfiordsheath, a little
below Disko Bay. This made a good starting point for the ship,
which was thereupon sent "northward in order to explore the
regions north of the farthest point which they had hitherto
visited," apparently with a special view of getting more light
on the whereabouts of the heathen and their line of approach.
In these regards the adventure was barren; but the narrative of
one of the priests is interesting so far as it goes: 32
- Often quoted, e. g. by Hovgaard, p. 37.
