A translation of the _Flatey Book_ saga relates that when Karlsefni’s people returned to Greenland they “carried away with them much booty in vines and grapes and peltries,” and that after this “there was much new talk in Greenland about voyaging to Vinland, for this enterprise was now considered both profitable and honorable.” Not to be outdone in the matter of profit Freydis, the illegitimate daughter of Eric the Red and with a heart as murderous as that of her father, led an expedition to Vinland a few years later. Honor appears to have had no part in her plans. Freydis had a husband, but she made the plans. Before leaving Greenland, she arranged with Leif for the loan of his house in Vinland and induced two unsuspecting brothers of another family who had a particularly fine ship to become her partners in the venture. These two men were pledged to take only thirty warriors and their women. Freydis had agreed to take a like number, but somehow she contrived to conceal five extra men in her smaller ship. After they arrived in Vinland, Freydis managed to keep the two groups apart by fomenting antagonism. The brothers were forced to build a separate house for their men and women. This house, together with too much wine and heavy sleep, proved to be the means of their undoing--all according to the Viking lady’s plan it appears. And what a red-handed proceeding it was! Freydis, with her husband’s grudging cooperation, succeeded in murdering the two brothers in their house one night after shackling their company. She had all of their men put to death and personally wielded the axe that killed their five women when no one else would do it. Then, taking her deceased partners’ fine trading ship, she returned to Greenland with a rich cargo of furs, wine and lumber. One shudders to think how she went about extracting the furs from the Skraelings! For two or three hundred years the Greenland republic maintained an active trade between America and Norway, and with other countries, in walrus hides, seal and fur skins, dried fish and whale fat. Norwegian port records, as well as the sagas, testify to trade with “Markland,” the name which had been given to Nova Scotia by Leif Ericson. There are old church records which show that quantities of the pelts of animals not indigenous to Greenland were exported from that country to Norway, pelts that could have come only from the mainland of America. The bills of lading listing church taxes which had been collected _in natura_ include elk, black bear, beaver, otter, ermine, sable, lynx, glutton and wolf. But, in 1261, the Greenland parliament renounced its independence and swore allegiance to Norway. Independent traffic with other countries was promptly curtailed. Subsequently the dominance of the Hanseatic League through its monopolistic factory at Bergen, which took no interest in Greenland, brought about a withering of all commerce between Greenland and the continent.