Of all the attested relations, that of Biorno of Skarsaa, concerning Bishop Amund of Skalholt, who was driven upon the coast of Greenland, deserves most to be credited; by which we learn, that the colony of the Eastern district flourished about one hundred and fifty years after the commerce and navigation ceased between Norway and Greenland; and, for aught we know, is not yet wholly destitute of its old Norwegian inhabitants. We have not been able to get any account of this matter from the modern Greenlanders, as they entertain no correspondence with those parts: either being hindered by the ice, which renders them altogether inaccessible; or else for fear the inhabitants of that country might kill and devour them; for they represent them as a cruel, barbarous, and inhuman nation, that destroy and eat all foreigners that fall into their hands. Yet notwithstanding this, if we may believe the relation of those adventurers, who have coasted a great part of the Eastern shore, there is no other sort of inhabitants found on this than on the Western side. But how it comes to pass, that the Eastern district, which was so well settled with Norway and Iceland colonies, that it contained twelve large parishes, and one hundred and ninety villages, besides one bishop’s see and two convents, and flourished till the year 1540, at last has been destroyed and laid waste, is what I cannot conceive. The opinion of some, that the black plague, so called, which ravaged the Northern countries in the year 1348, also reached Greenland, and made its havock among its Eastern colonies, is without any ground or reason; because the commerce was carried into Greenland until the year 1406; and in 1540 that colony was still subsisting. If therefore this district be destitute or bereft of its old inhabitants, it is not unlikely they have undergone the same fatality as the Western ones, being destroyed by the barbarity of the savage Schrellingers.