ABSTRACT
A larger part of the profits must have gone to merchants in the walrus trade. The Greenland trade with its walrus products and exotic animals belongs to this category. Some peasants living at the estuary of the Trondheim fjord owned ships on which they traded with Greenland, but the merchandise which they brought from Greenland, was sold in Bergen. Danish and American archaeologists still write about Greenland's trade and shipping going to "Europe". How did the visiting, overseas merchants sell their goods in Greenland? The written evidence reveals an organisation adapted to the irregular character of Greenland's foreign trade. Shipping across the Mediterranean was reduced because of tensions between Muslim and Christian states between the 7th and 13th centuries. The most important of these were defence against the Inuit who came ever closer, and shipping which could bring people, goods and cultural impulses to the increasingly isolated community.
