Evening Star Newspaper, September 20, 1931, Page 81

THE SUNDAY STAR, WASHINGTON, D. ¢, SEPTEMBER” 20, 1931, King Haakon VII of Norway believes his country is entitled to a part of Greenland for the very good reason that his Scandinavian ancestors origi- mally discovered the island. BY HAL BORLAND. F that doughty old Viking, Eric the Red, can look down from Valhalla and view the affairs of his Norse world in this year of 1931, what a laugh he must be enjoying! Greenland, the icy, forbidding land which he sought out as a haven after his expul- sion from Iceland nearly 10 centuries ago, the land in the naming of which old Eric displayed a sagacity to be envied by the most enterprising of modern real estate promoters, has become an international problam. More than that, it has become a bone of contention between two nations of Eric’s native Scandinavia. Most of all, title to its lands is being disputed. by Kings who are brothers, Christian X of Denmark and Haakon VII of Norway. The rival claims have been carried to The Hague, where they will be by the Permanent Court of International Justice. ” “Pother!” old Eric’s shade might exclaim. “And all for a land which the whole world for- got for the better part of two centuries.” LD Eric himself, as discoverer and colonizer of Greenland, is the first of those con- Iceland for more told of his new colony. He even went so far as to dub it a land of green, which, considering Iceland’s nat- ural characteristics, was not so much of a brag, but it did sound good. And Eric enticed other malcontents back to Greenland with him. His colony prospered, made some progress with the agriculture of the times, took fish and furs and achieved some measure of ivportance in co- Word to his father’s colony, Greenland. But on the voyage Leif is said have struck bad weather—his route lay through that part of the North Atlantic which has baffied countless port which he sought beginning, to tell his father, first of all, new land he had found. Brother Kings Fight for Land the W orld Forgot Permanent Court of International Justice at The Hague Will Have to Settle the Dispute Raging Among Norse De- scendants of Famous Eric the Red for Possession of Long-Neglected Greenland. Eric the Red was compelled to leave Iceland, so he set out on an expedition and found Greenland. This £idure is from “Viking Tales,” by Jennie Hall, published by Rand, McNally & Co. out and found a new land which was the main- land of North America, and that old Eric him- self was the first man to hear the details of that trip when Leif returmed to Greenland. Later other expeditions set out from Greenland, one headed by Leif’s sister-in-law, Gudrid, and her second husband, Thorfinn Karlsefni, snd not only landed on this Vinland which Leif had found, but tried to establish a colony. And al- though all seem to have failed, oxen and crude farming implements were taken to the Amer- jcan mainland from Greenland, and at least one white baby, the son of Gudrid and Thor- finn, which was named Snorri, was born in the new land. And all this between the years 1000 and 1020—nearly half a century before the bat- tle of Hastings was fought in England. Old Eric had died before the last of the col- onizing expeditions set out for Vinland, but Leif undoubtedly lived to see a considerable popula- tion on Greenland’s west coast, in two Norway and thus came into the wunion’ teenth century. But its world which had ever been aware of its exist- ence—for 166 years. And not until 1579 was any real effort to redeem the colony made by the parent country. That effort failed and for another 140 years Greenland remained dor- mant, touched by occasional English and Dutch navigators, but generally ignored. This long period of neglect, however, only recently has been brightened by research by Prof. Luis Ulloa, director of the National Li- brary at Lima, Peru, who made a search of the archives in Madrid while looking for data on Christopher Columbus. Prof Ulloa says he has found evidence that Columbus reached Amer- ica some years before that date made easy schoolboy memories by the lines: “In 1492 Columbus sailed the ocean blue.” on a much shorter route to the New World. UT whether or not Columbus ever saw old King Christian X of Denmark is the older brother of the Norwegian ruler, and he has appealed to the World Court to settle his claims for the dis- puted territory in Greenland. of the world—including Norway—seemed have forgotten. During the nineteenth century that title was clinched, the treaty of Kie] in 1814 having signalized King Frederick VI's re« agreed to by all concerned. Meanwhile, changes were going on in the Scandinavian homeland. Norway had come under the Swedish crown, remained there for one cause or another until 1905. Then the Storthing, which was in control of Norwegian affairs, offered the crown of Nore way to Prince Charles of Denmark, the grande EyEEE T :g;i it i £ od