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Herjolfsnes was a Norse settlement in Greenland, located approximately 50 km northwest of Cape Farewell. It was established by Herjolf Bardsson in the late 10th century and is believed to have lasted approximately 500 years. The fate of its Norse inhabitants, as with the Norse Greenland colony as a whole, is unknown. The site is known today for having yielded remarkably well-preserved medieval garments, excavated by Danish archaeologist Paul Norland in 1921. Its name roughly translates as Herjolf's Point or Peninsula. == Establishment == Prior to the arrival of the Norse, successive waves of Paleo-Eskimo cultures had inhabited Greenland, perhaps as far back as 2,500 BC. However, the island is believed to have been essentially uninhabited by the time of the Norse arrival, except perhaps for the extreme northwest region. The Little Climatic Optimum then underway would have made the southwest coast especially unsuited to arctic hunter-gatherers. As noted in the Landnámabók (Book of Settlements), Herjolf Bardsson was one of the founding chieftains of the Norse colony in Greenland. He was part of an exodus from Iceland accompanying Erik the Red, who led an expedition of colonists in 25 ships circa 985 AD. Landing on Greenland's southwest coast, Erik and his other kinsmen almost invariably chose to settle further inland, away from the open Labrador Sea, in the heads of the fjords where the land was better suited to farming. By contrast, Herjolf's decision to establish himself at the end of a fjord on the open ocean near Greenland's southernmost tip suggests that his primary intention was not farming, but rather the establishment of the new colony's major port-of-call for incoming ships from Iceland and Europe.〔Farley Mowat, ''Westviking'' (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 1965), pg. 84-5〕 Herjolf's homestead was situated on the west shore of a fjord that came to bear his name, Herjolfsfjord, and was the southern- and easternmost major homestead of the colony's Eastern Settlement. The Greenlanders Saga tells of how the settlement was named. Herjolf's son Bjarni had been conducting business in Norway and returned to Iceland to spend Yule at the family's homestead, only to learn Herjolf had joined the exodus to the new Greenland colony. Bjarni set out to follow Herjolf, but was blown off course to the southwest, becoming the first known European to skirt, if not land on, the North American coast. Realizing he had overshot Greenland, Bjarni reversed course to the northeast and came to a land that matched the description he had been given. The saga states, ''"...they landed in the evening under a ness; and there was a boat by the ness, and just here lived Bjarni's father, and from him has the ness taken its name, and is since called Herjolfsness."''〔''The Greenlanders Saga''〕 In Erik The Red's Saga (which covers essentially the same events as the Greenlanders Saga), the famous Icelander Gudrid Thorbjornsdottir is said to have landed at Herjolfsnes after a difficult journey and lived there for a while. Curiously, this saga claims that the homestead was owned by a man named Thorkell, and makes no mention of Herjolf or Bjarni. Anne Stine Ingstad believes that the saga's author may have written them out of the story in order to elevate the exploits of Lief Eriksson, the first known European to land in North America.〔Helge & Anne Stine Ingstad, ''The Viking Discovery of America'' (St. John's: Breakwater, 2000) pg. 71〕 By contrast, in The Greenlanders Saga, Lief is said to have prepared for his voyage to Vinland by purchasing Bjarni's ship and receiving his counsel. Herjolfsnes established its own church after the colony's conversion to Christianity. The ruins that are visible today are that of a church built in the 13th century, and was likely raised on the site of an older, conversion-era church. It had a rectangular foundation similar to that of the churches at Hvalsey and Battahlid further north in a style that was common in medieval northern Europe. The Herjolfsnes church was the 3rd largest in the Norse Greenland colony, behind Gardar and Brattahlid.〔Helge Instad, ''Land Under the Pole Star'' (New York: St. Martin's, 1966), pg. 254〕 Given that Gardar was the bishopric of Norse Greenland and the seat of its Althing parliament, while Brattahlid was the de facto centre of secular authority, the fact that Herjolfsnes boasted a comparably sized church gives a hint of the homestead's relative importance and stature among the Norse Greenland settlements. The church's graveyard hosted the remains of local inhabitants and also those who had died during ocean voyages to the colony. One account tells of 12th century Icelanders who were shipwrecked on the east coast and perished while trying to cross the inland glaciers in an attempt to reach Herjolfsnes, only to be buried there instead. For bodies lost or buried at sea, it appears to have been the custom to carve commemorative runes onto a stick which was then placed in the Herjolfsnes graveyard when the ship made landfall there. One such rune stick found at Herjolfsnes reads, ''"This woman, whose name was Gudveg, was laid overboard in the Greenland Sea."''〔Niels Lynnerup, "The Greenland Norse," ''Monographs on Greenland'' no. 24 (1998): pg. 54〕 Some of the departed at Herjolfsnes had been laid to rest in wooden coffins. However, perhaps owing to the scarcity of wood, it increasingly became the practice to wrap the deceased in layers of wool clothing.〔Else Østergård, ''Woven Into The Earth'' (Aarhus: Aarhus U Press, 2004) pg. 22〕 This practice inadvertently created a treasure trove of medieval textile and fashion artifacts when the graves and well-preserved clothes were excavated in the early 20th century. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Herjolfsnes (Norse Greenland)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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