In the following summer Eric, having conciliated the forgiveness, or
purchased the forbearance, of his enemies in Iceland, returned to that
country to procure an additional supply of inhabitants for his new
settlement. In order to render his proposals more attractive, he named
the country for which he was endeavouring to provide colonists,
Greenland, as if, compared with the rugged sterility of their native
Iceland, it was a region of verdure and delight. He described it as
abounding in cattle, and as rich in every species of game and fish. And
as such delusive representations, when assisted by the vivid eloquence
of enthusiasm, or the unhesitating assurance of effrontery, seldom fail
of their effect, Eric returned to his recent acquisition with numerous
ships, and a large body of settlers, from Iceland.
In less than twenty years after Eric the Red had begun to colonize
Greenland, his son Leiff, who had made a voyage into Norway, renounced
his Pagan errors, and received the baptismal rite. His conversion was
owing to the example and the admonitions of King Olave Tryggwine, or
Trugguerus[5], who had himself recently embraced the same doctrine, and
had been very successful in causing it to be diffused throughout his
dominions.
Leiff, having passed the winter at the court of the King of Norway,
returned to Greenland, in company with a priest and some other
missionaries, whom the King had commissioned to instruct Eric, and the
other settlers, in the faith which Leiff had embraced. On their voyage
to Greenland they met some mariners, who were floating upon a wreck in
the open sea. These they took on board, and conveyed to the new
settlement. Eric, at first, incensed with his son for having laid open
to strangers the route to the new-discovered country, turned a deaf ear
to his Christian admonitions. But the earnestness of the son, seconded
by the instruction of the missionaries, at last prevailed over the
insensibility of the father, who submitted to the rite of baptism, when
the other Greenlanders followed his example.
The Christian doctrine, which had been thus introduced, was so much
approved, and so generally received, that churches were established in
twelve different parts of East Greenland, and in four of the Western
district. Torfæus makes the year 1000 the era of the conversion of the
Greenland colonists to the Christian faith. This historian of ancient
Greenland has also preserved a list of its bishops, from the year 1021
to 1406, after which period no mention is made of any subsequent
episcopal appointments; and indeed the intercourse between Greenland and
the native region of the first settlers appears to have been previously
discontinued.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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