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 CHAPTER VII GREENLAND OR GREEN ISLAND The first account of Greenland given to the world, indeed the first mention of that region in literature, is by Adam of Bremen, an ecclesiastical official and geographical author. ADAM OF BREMEN'S ACCOUNT OF GREENLAND He interviewed in 1069 the enterprising king Sweyn of Den- mark, and acquired from him divers Scandinavian and other northern items which Adam embodied about 1076 in his work "Descriptio Insularum Aquilonis," the Description of the North- ern Islands. Nansen quotes, with other matter, the following passages: 1 . . . On the north this ocean flows past the Orchades, thence end- lessly around the circle of the earth, having on the left Hybernia, the home of the Scots, which is now called Ireland, and on the right the skerries of Nordmannia, and farther off the islands of Iceland and Green- land. . . Furthermore, there are many other islands in the great ocean, of which Greenland is not the least; it lies farther out in the ocean, opposite the mountains of Suedea, or the Riphean range. To this island, it is said, one can sail from the shore of Nortmannia [sic] in five or seven days, as like- wise to Iceland. The people there are blue ("cerulei", bluish-green) from the salt water; and from this the region takes its name. They live in a similar fashion to the Icelanders, except that they are more cruel and trouble seafarers by predatory attacks. To them also, as is reported, Christianity has lately been wafted. It was in fact about seventy-five years since Leif, son of Eric the Red, according to the sagas, had effected that wafting from the Christian court of Norway to the still pagan Norsemen of his 1 Fridtjof Nansen: In Northern Mists: Arctic Exploration in Early Times, transl. by A. G. Chater, 2 vols., New York, 1911; reference in Vol. i, pp. 192 and 194-