Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/161

1387, had made the trade to Greenland, Iceland, the Feroe Isles, Halogaland, and Finland, a royal monopoly, which could only he carried on in ships belonging to, or licensed by, the sovereign; and certain merchants who had visited Greenland about that time were accused of a treasonable violation of the royal edict, we are told by Torsæus in his "Grænlandia Antiqua," and only escaped punishment by pleading that stress of weather had driven them to those parts. Her successor, Eric of Pomerania, was too much engaged in Swedish affairs, and his successor, Christopher of Bavaria, in his contests with the Hanseatic League, to think of the colony of Greenland. Under the monopoly of trade the Icelanders could have no vessels, and no object for sailing to Greenland; and the vessels fitted out by government, or its lessees, to trade with them, would only be ready to leave Denmark or Bergen for Iceland, at the season they ought to have been ready to leave Iceland to go to Greenland. The colony gradually fell into oblivion. Its former existence even had become a matter of disputed or neglected tradition. Christian III., who came to the throne 1534, abolished the prohibition of sailing to Greenland; and a few feeble attempts were made at discovery by him and his successors from time to time, and at last even these were given up. It was not until 1721 that a Norwegian minister, Hans Egide,—one of those rare men who go on to their purpose unmoved by any selfish interest, and to whom fame, wealth, honour, comfort, are neither object nor reward,—resigned his living in Norway, and obtained permission, after much difficulty and many petitions to government, to settle himself as a missionary on the coast of Davis's Straits among the Esquimaux. The general opinion was, that the lost colony of Old Greenland was situated on the east coast of the peninsula, and not within Davis's Straits;