Page:The Heimskringla; or, Chronicle of the Kings of Norway Vol 1.djvu/165

before in the sagas, when he finds in this—the most questionable perhaps of all the saga statements—that a considerable Icelandic colony actually had existed in Greenland from the 10th century. The facts they state are fully supported by the discoveries made on the spot within this century. A similar moral confidence in the sagas is given to the few saga readers who happen to be acquainted with the Orkney Islands, from finding, in the Orkneyinga Saga, a minute and accurate knowledge of places, distances, names, and other details of the localities mentioned. In this case of Greenland the remains discovered carry conviction to all. At Karkortog, a branch of a long fiord called Igalik, in latitude 60° 50' north, and longitude 44° 37', near to the settlement of Julianahope, is a ruin of a building 51 feet in length by 25 feet in breadth, with well-built stone walls, 4 feet thick, standing to the height of 16 and 18 feet; and with two round arched windows, one in each gable, and four other windows not arched, on each side, and with two door-ways,—evidently intended for a church. This appears the most perfect of the ruins yet discovered. Foundations, with walls in some parts 4 feet high, have been found of buildings 120 feet in length by 100 feet in breadth; and from such rows being found in various places, the families may be supposed to have lived in contiguous houses. But single dwellings also have been used, as foundations overgrown with dwarf-willow, and the berry-bearing shrubs, are found in favourable situations on the sides of the fiords. In what appears to have been a church, the foundations being 96 feet long by 48 feet broad, at the extremity of the fiord Igalikkoi, latitude 60° 55', a stone with a Bunic inscription was found in 1830; and to the readers of Bunic the inscription offered no difficulty:—"Yigdis, M. D. Hvilir Her. Glsede Gud Sal Hennar;" that is, "Yigdisa rests here: God bless her soul." The