Lands of Ice and Mice: An Alternate History of the Thule

[Falecius]

Originally Posted by DValdron

No they didn't. Even after contact, there's a lot of experimenting with writing medium.



Grandfather had a misstep there. He was too influenced by his exposure to Arabic letters when he created his symbols. This is why the THULE 1, family was supplanted by the THULE 6 which employed straight lines rather than curve and loop.

Why and how is he ever exposed to Arabic letters?

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by Falecius

Well, makes sense, much sense. The only thing I am not entirely convinced, is what at first sight seems unnecessary complication of the Thule-1 system and its distance to the latin alphabetic system.

Grandfather is good, but not a genius. He's also a man who devised a numeric system that went up to 14 because he got too tired and bored to keep making up symbols for 15, 16, 17, etc.

Grandfather didn't particularly like the latin alphabetic writing system. He was finding it cumbersome and difficult to master. To him, it seemed unnecessarily complicated and ineffectual, much like their God.

At first he thought of a logographic system - ie, a symbol for every word, but decided that wasn't any good. Far too many symbols to learn, and it would be a lot of work. Even a modified logographic system just seemed complicated for him.

Grandfather is not getting just the idea of writing, he's getting the idea of phonetic writing.

That's his inspiration and laziness. On the one hand, he's frustrated with the latin/arabic alphabet method which is cumbersome and difficult. He has to struggle with it. He doesn't want to work. Doing a phonetic syllabary is his flash of insight.

It took Sequoyah almost ten years to make that leap, Grandfather does it in a few months. It doesn't mean that Grandfather is more brilliant than Sequoyah. Possibly. It might simply mean that Sequoyah was more stubborn and driven than Grandfather and willing to work a lot harder.

I see that you are taking the examples of "inspired" writings like Sequoya and the Cree syllabary. But there are also "transmitted" writings (a script is adopted with modifications or sometimes wholesale) which are indeed very common in the Old World. And endless combinations.

And Grandfather's script is a bit of a combination itself. Part syllabary, part hieroglyphs, visually reminiscent of the latin/arabic alphabet in parts.

In this context, what prevents grandfather to just pick a set of symbols derived from Latin script and Runes, adapt it to the Thule phonetics and aestethics, and devise an alphabet derived from European forms? In other words, why is he Sequoyah rather than St. Cyril or St. Mesrop?

Tough question. I suppose nothing really stops him from going down one path or another. It may come down to the vagaries of the personality.

For one thing, he's often impressed by the Norse, but as often unimpressed. They strike him as mixtures of idiot savants. They do remarkable things, but quite often they do remarkable things badly. They have strange and wonderful animals, but these animals seem very unsuited for the environment. They live in funny houses. They dress funny. He respects the fact that they are devout in their worship, but he has considerable skepticism about their god who he considers an erratic underperformer.

So he struggles with the latin alphabet and decides its cumbersome and unwieldy. Once again like so much that is Norse, a remarkable thing done badly. Exposure to the Runic writing opens him up to the idea that there can be different forms of writing, he never gets around to learning Runic, but he is exposed to it.

So he decides he wants his own alphabet or writing symbols, something that will not be easy to use and not too hard to learn. In this sense, its good that Grandfather is merely smart and not a genius. A genius might well have come up with something so elaborate and complicated that only geniuses could learn it.

Of course, syllabic and phonetic writing systems tend to spread much more quickly than ideographic ones, and are easier to imitate.

Correct. This is either Grandfather's brilliant intuitive leap, or him just getting lucky and picking a good direction rather than a blind alley right out of the starting gate.

I know only a case where an alphabetic system reverted to a partial logography, and it was preislamic Persia, where a caste of priests had somewhat an interest in keeping the script complicated.

Interesting.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by Falecius

Why and how is he ever exposed to Arabic letters?

Sorry, I keep referring to the latin alphabet that way. I think it might be a brain glitch - cross referring arabic numerals.

[Falecius]

Originally Posted by DValdron

Sorry, I keep referring to the latin alphabet that way. I think it might be a brain glitch - cross referring arabic numerals.

By the way, I'm not sure that so-called Arabic numerals made it to Norse Greenland. They were not really widespread in Europe before late twelfth/early thirteenth century AFAIK and were surprisingly slow in spreading North. By the point they were commonplace in places like Norway, Iceland was beyond her own cultural peak and Greenland on the way to isolation.
Heck, I would not even be sure that ROMAN numerals were ever used up there... . I think they are mostly sticking to Runes used as numerals for the most part.
Also, how much knowledge of Latin is likely to be in place by the time of the Interchange? The local Norse might not even be able to read their own Latin Bibles anywhere near correctly... or maybe not

Interestingly, Icelandic linguistics were very advanced by European medieval standards. There was a guy called the First Grammarian who devised an incredibly modern and refined phonetic writing system based on Latin alphabet adapted to Old Icelandic phonetics, that is largely the basis for modern Icelandic script though it went forgotten for centuries in Early Modern times, when Iceland had become a backwater.
I have no clue as to how much of all this may have leaked to Greenland, and by this late era it is likely to have been already lost anyway.
But at their height, the Greenland Norse were in the position to be on the receiving end of ALL the most advanced linguistic tradition available in Medieval Europe, including the Icelandic and the Irish ones that had gotten lost elsewhere.
Theoretically, VERY interesting potential, but I'm afraid little would came out of this.

[DValdron]

As I understand it, latin was the language of religion and scholarship and something of a lingua franca. They wouldn't start holding masses in local languages until Vatican II.

The Greenland Norse were Christians, and fairly devout. I've read of high ranking Greenland women petitioning the construction of a chapel. And of course there was an assigned Bishop (who apparently seldom visited) and presumably priests. Colonies tend to cultural conservatism and to strongly emulate the mother land, preserving as much as they could of home even generations removed in a strange land.

Indeed, one of the reasons given for Norwegians to go back to Greenland and check out the place was concern that they were all Catholics whose souls were lost.

So it's very likely, almost a lock, that the Roman Catholics of Greenland were holding very strongly onto the latin traditions of Catholicism and latin bibles, and there were at least a few people who could read them. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that they're reading latin badly and that latin literacy is a struggling thing. Which might explain some of Grandfather's difficulties in mastering it.... his self appointed teachers weren't very good.

As far as arabic versus roman numerals go... I just don't know. As a trading colony, I figured that they might adopt arabic numerals rather than roman numerals. Or that numbering systems were part of the bible. I'm inclined to just go with it, I don't think it makes a big difference.

[Falecius]

Originally Posted by DValdron

As I understand it, latin was the language of religion and scholarship and something of a lingua franca. They wouldn't start holding masses in local languages until Vatican II.

The Greenland Norse were Christians, and fairly devout. I've read of high ranking Greenland women petitioning the construction of a chapel. And of course there was an assigned Bishop (who apparently seldom visited) and presumably priests. Colonies tend to cultural conservatism and to strongly emulate the mother land, preserving as much as they could of home even generations removed in a strange land.

Indeed, one of the reasons given for Norwegians to go back to Greenland and check out the place was concern that they were all Catholics whose souls were lost.

So it's very likely, almost a lock, that the Roman Catholics of Greenland were holding very strongly onto the latin traditions of Catholicism and latin bibles, and there were at least a few people who could read them. On the other hand, it's entirely possible that they're reading latin badly and that latin literacy is a struggling thing. Which might explain some of Grandfather's difficulties in mastering it.... his self appointed teachers weren't very good.

As far as arabic versus roman numerals go... I just don't know. As a trading colony, I figured that they might adopt arabic numerals rather than roman numerals. Or that numbering systems were part of the bible. I'm inclined to just go with it, I don't think it makes a big difference.

I don't know either, TBH. Latin Bible would contain both Latin numerals and, if it is the Vulgate, reference to the Greek and Hebrew numbering systems based on numeral values of letters (interestingly, attaching some significance to number seven, so Grandfather's choice with a 14 base will be understood as relevant by Christian missionaries down the line, even if it is just out laziness). So Roman numbers are surely in place.
Arabic numerals, I don't know, but they aren't all this necessary in your scenario. It does appear that the Thule are going with an additive system, not a positional one.
Knowledge of Latin would be there as well, but a bit shaky especially when it comes to phonetics. Everyone in Medieval Europe wrote Latin more or less the same (well, sort of) but the pronounciation varied a lot (and still does). The congregation would not really understand much of the Mass anyway, it really did not matter. However, Latin as the exclusive liturgy for Catholic, as other presently highly felt Catholic features like strict priestly celibacy, where not really enforced in the Middle Ages especially in Northern Europe. I expect that an Italian monk would burn at the stake half the Greenlanders as heretics or something similar.
There are documented instances of masses in Gaelic IIRC. I don't know about Norse but I would not be surprised.
Interestingly, the Church used to mellow a lot of such requirements in faraway places. I think that Quechua and Nahuatl were used as Catholic liturgical languages well before Italian or French.
So, well, it may go many ways.
I doubt the Europeans would find many Latin or Old Norse speaking Thule in, say, 1600, but it would really fun if they do.

[wannis]

I'm not sure how much Latin a priest in such a faraway place would even know, and what books would be available. Even if the local priest has a full bible (and not just a missal or something like that), he would probably be highly apalled by someone wanting to read it, especially a pagan who was only just baptised. Independent bible study wasn't really encouraged by the medieval church.
Would they even have a priest at this late stage? Do we know when the last priest was ordained or sent over there?
I'd say learning runes, which were in actual use among the population and used to write Norse, the language actually spoken, are a much better basis for the Thule to acquire writing, than the Latin alphabet which, in the Greenland contact area, was mostly (only?) used to encode ritual in a language its users (the local priest (priests?)) probably only had a partial understanding of. I mean, the chain is quite complicated - the priest needs to explain that what Grandfather hears during mass is based on signs in a book, he needs to read the text to him and to translate from Latin. What he would really do is just to tell Grandfather about the Christian faith and refer to Church authority.

[Falecius]

Originally Posted by wannis

I'm not sure how much Latin a priest in such a faraway place would even know, and what books would be available. Even if the local priest has a full bible (and not just a missal or something like that), he would probably be highly apalled by someone wanting to read it, especially a pagan who was only just baptised. Independent bible study wasn't really encouraged by the medieval church.
Would they even have a priest at this late stage? Do we know when the last priest was ordained or sent over there?
I'd say learning runes, which were in actual use among the population and used to write Norse, the language actually spoken, are a much better basis for the Thule to acquire writing, than the Latin alphabet which, in the Greenland contact area, was mostly (only?) used to encode ritual in a language its users (the local priest (priests?)) probably only had a partial understanding of. I mean, the chain is quite complicated - the priest needs to explain that what Grandfather hears during mass is based on signs in a book, he needs to read the text to him and to translate from Latin. What he would really do is just to tell Grandfather about the Christian faith and refer to Church authority.

Well, Iceland had switched from Runes to adapted Latin script two centuries before, so maybe Greenland had Latin alphabet used for the local Norse as well (do we have inscription in Latin Script in Norse from there? I sort of recall reading something about it but not really sure).
Independent study of the Bible was allowed, and even encouraged, IF useful to convert pagans. In this sense, the Medieval Church was more lenient, especially in the periphery, than its later self. But yeah, on average, nobody was big with letting laymen into it. I suppose Greenlanders wouldn't give a fuck anyway. They are starving, this strange man is helping and seems willing to convert and wants to see the Bible, and he would not be able to study it in any INDEPENDENT way really. It's not like they are risking Inquisition sniffing around.
But the real issue is, do they really have priests? They haven't seen any bishop for, what, a century now, so who could ordain priests?
Canonical code provides emergency measures for such cases. When a rightfully ordained priest is not in place and cannot be found, anybody with adequate knowledge, hopefully a deacon, can impart emergency baptisms and perform other stuff, though I'm not sure he can celebrate the Communion. So the basic spiritual needs of often far away and ill-connected communities could be met even when proprerly ordained people weren't around, and this was really not so uncommon throughout history.
So the last priests would pass knowledge of some Latin, and surely basic literacy, but don't expect to find any Scholastic philosopher from the Sorbonne in the general neighborhood.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by wannis

I'm not sure how much Latin a priest in such a faraway place would even know, and what books would be available. Even if the local priest has a full bible (and not just a missal or something like that), he would probably be highly apalled by someone wanting to read it, especially a pagan who was only just baptised. Independent bible study wasn't really encouraged by the medieval church.

But Grandfather is not just an ordinary fellow, but clearly a holy man and a very important personage from a culture that they are engaged in a vital relationship with. He's smart and persuasive...

If showing him or letting him read the bible or what passes for the holy is helpful to community relations.... that's very hard to say no to. If he's willing to accept Christianity, that's makes it even harder to say no to. And if Grandfather allows that he might be willing to or motivated to spreading the word to his fellow Skraelings, well, that's extremely hard to say no to.

Bottom line, if Grandfather wants something, he's fairly good at getting his way.

Would they even have a priest at this late stage? Do we know when the last priest was ordained or sent over there?

Those records may still exist, but if so, I don't have access to them. So we don't know when the last priest was ordained or sent over. It's not clear whether they had an official - Rome Approved - Priest.

But then again, it's a devout community, the population peak was perhaps somewhere between two and five thousand, and even at this point of decline I'd warrant that there are still a few hundred. So who knows, its hardly out of the question.

But I will bet you dollars to donuts that even if they didn't have an official priest, they had someone in the chapel giving the sermons, looking after the bible and whatever passed for relics. Might have even been a woman. People make compromises in strange places and circumstances as has been pointed out.

I'd say learning runes, which were in actual use among the population and used to write Norse, the language actually spoken, are a much better basis for the Thule to acquire writing,

Here's your problem. No one cares. That's not a slam, but that's essentially what's going on.

With Christianity, the entire community and particularly the local political and religious is extremely invested in converting Grandfather over to Christianity. It's a matter of saving his soul, which is no small thing. It's also a huge matter of converting him from a stranger and possible danger to an ally and member of their community. And that's very important.

Grandfather is the guy who, when its the hard part of winter and the cattle are thin and everyone is starting to starve.... he's the guy that goes off into the night and comes back with a herd of Caribou from his Skraeling friends for slaughter. He brings stuff in. He's the one who can talk to them, and more important, he talks to all the rest of his dangerous Skraeling friends.

So there's a very strong incentive to incorporate grandfather into the community, to make him 'one of us' to the extent possible. To make him Christian.

So that's not going to involve dragging him off to chapel and making him sit while some half comprhensible latin mass is mumbled. No, they're going to go full court press. Full bore and boring. They're going to tell him all the stories, the birth, the miracles, the resurrection and redemption. They're going to tell him the old testament, from genesis to David. They're going to show him the chapel and the relics and the ceremonies and works. They'll show him the bible or missal or anything they have and they'll work at teaching him.

Because having Grandfather on side may well be one of the most important things in the world.

That's what they are going to care about, and that's what they'll be highly motivated to do. They will be powerfully motivated. And that's where Grandfather is going to get his intensive contact with writing - even if he doesn't initially know what it is, doesn't understand what it is, and doesn't grasp the significance until he's going along for a while.

Now let's take the case for learning the runic way: Where's the motivation.

I don't see any strong motivation within the community to put this in front of Grandfather. Why does anyone in the community feel a need to teach some old skraeling the Runic writing. Doing it amounts to an investment of time and energy. Why make that investment? Even if someone diddles around with it, how strong is that motivation going to be? Not terribly.

What's grandfather's motivation? He doesn't have any. He's a complete outsider, he has no idea what writing is, and he is not likely to understand it easily. He's not going to grasp the significance instantly or early, or realize the potential and implications.

There's all these other things in this new alien community to draw his attention. I don't see him automatically singling out an utterly alien art for which he has almost no frame of reference and on his own making a huge investment of time and energy to learn and understand it.

Mere proximity doesn't necessarily do the trick. The Cree had centuries of the fur trade and doubtless witnessed and observed reading and writing many times. But it was to alien for them to really grasp or to have the motivation to grasp. It's not until Evans gets the bee in his bonnet that writing is a way to bring them to the lord that it takes off. Sequoyah came from a Cherokee culture that had been exposed to white writing for a while. But he was the first to seize it as a concept.

It's not impossible that Grandfather could have some passing experience with runes, have that bolt of lightning inspiration, unilaterally self motivate and expend the time and energy in learning it, and at some point in the process grasp the potential. It's simply far far less likely.

It's there and he could. But I see this as a situation where a person has to be brought to something, rather than them seeking it out.

Like it or not, Grandfather is just too new and too ignorant of this to really make anything of it, or to make a choice or to pursue it aggressively on his own. Its possible, but its extremely unlikely. Low probability.

So the drive to bring Grandfather into awareness of writing has to come from the community. And there's no motivation there for either the teaching of Runes or the teaching of Latin as objectives or purposes in and of itself.

So you have to back it up to the next level - what does the community urgently want to teach grandfather that will end up exposing him to writing: Christianity. That's your high probability.

than the Latin alphabet which, in the Greenland contact area, was mostly (only?) used to encode ritual in a language its users (the local priest (priests?)) probably only had a partial understanding of. I mean, the chain is quite complicated - the priest needs to explain that what Grandfather hears during mass is based on signs in a book, he needs to read the text to him and to translate from Latin.

It is indeed complicated, and the lessons that Grandfather takes are not the ones that they are so desperate to teach him. But that's how things usually work.

What he would really do is just to tell Grandfather about the Christian faith and refer to Church authority.

No. There's far too much at stake. Grandfather is a skraeling, he's not Christian, he's not invested in the Church authority. He doesn't know or care about the Pope or the church hierarchy and it has no significance to him. The Chapel is a pile of stones. So it's not the same as just instructing a peasant.

Bringing this guy into the fold is going to be a huge thing. It's along the line of converting a king or a warrior chieftain or a powerful local magician.... which as far as the Greenlanders know, Grandfather might be any or all of. It won't be a casual thing, and any and all significant resources and selling points are going to be deployed strongly. And Grandfather, if he plays ball, is going to get the royal treatment.

Anyway, I hope that this clarifies my thinking and makes a persuasive case. If you are not persuaded, then that's regrettable.

Because the bottom line is: My (and DirtyCommy's) timeline. It's been written. That's how it happened. Case closed. End of story.

Don't want to be rude about things but... game over, decision made.

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by Falecius

But yeah, on average, nobody was big with letting laymen into it. I suppose Greenlanders wouldn't give a fuck anyway. They are starving, this strange man is helping and seems willing to convert and wants to see the Bible, and he would not be able to study it in any INDEPENDENT way really. It's not like they are risking Inquisition sniffing around.

I agree with your comments on the whole, and I may be gilding the lilly a bit, since I already have made comments on the point.

But the Greenlanders absolutely give a fuck. They're starving, and he's standing there as the key to not starving. He's not a casual figure. And he's an alien representative from an alien culture which is profoundly dangerous (remember the Saga's tell the story of an encounter that left 18 norse dead and 2 kidnapped - 20 out of a population of maybe 2000. If something happened to 1% of our population, we'd crap our pants.).

So really, this guy represents a range of outcomes which on the positive side is eating well and avoiding winter famine to a negative side of all of of us being slaughtered in our sleep by ravening hordes of Skraeling.

They want the nice outcome. They want it desperately. They don't want Grandfather to give the command to have war rain down on them. They want to live with less fear and suffering. They want to be able to trust him. They want to make him something they trust. If he actually reads passages of the bible and doesn't burst into flames, they'll practically swoon with joy.

[wannis]

Well, I just doubt that at this stage, the Norse of the Eastern settlement would have the necessary competence to sit down with Grandfather, translating Latin holy scriptures to him, etc. Knowledge of Latin would be absent in such a community aside from the priest, and I doubt that even he would be up to such a task or that they'd even have a real, schooled priest at that stage. More probably someone who could perform the rituals without really understanding what he's saying. But, as you say, it's your TL, and as long as we don't know whether there was a priest competent in Latin in the Eastern settlement at that time, we can as well assume there was.

[DValdron]

My impression of latin was that it was quite widespread as the lingua franca of ecclesiastical and upper classes. Remember that at the time, it actually was the language of God, it had a cachet and significance that its hard for us to conceive of now. I think its more than plausible that in a community that small and desperate, that maintaining some latin would be a mark of the 'better classes', given that they had so little to set them apart.

[RGB]

Hey Valdron.

Awesome TL so far. I know we discussed canine omnivory elsewhere, but there's lots of things here I had not the first clue about.

Will also echo my dismay about Thule displacing the Chukchi. They were tough, tough customers. Your timeline also will create effects: the Yakuts are moving north at this point (12th c. on?), and while they are not adapted to their new place as thoroughly as now they're bringing pretty serious military technology with them. Prior to Russian arrival the entire area was either Yakut tributaries or Chukchi tributaries.

That will change.

Not sure about knowledge of Latin in Greenland at the time, but Latin script would not be unknown. Someone wrote those letters, did they not? Likewise, Runes may have well been used as numbers. Not sure on the Arabic, but ultimately not very important for the TL.

[DValdron]

I'm well aware of just how tough the Chukchi and the Yakut are. Make no mistake.

On the other hand, even the OTL Thule were no pushovers themselves. Within a couple of centuries of bursting out of Alaska, they'd pushed all the way to Greenland, obliterating the Dorset and rival arctic cultures on the one hand, and even succeeded in pushing a little into Siberia in the face of broadly superior packages in the hands of the Chuchki.

In this timeline, the Thule will be hitting Siberia in vastly greater numbers, they'll be hitting with more support and assistance from home. They'll be arriving with at least one major domestic up on the Chuchki, the Musk Ox. They'll also be arriving with Bronze age technology, the additional and accumulated technology that they inherited from the Dorset (which in OTL did not move westward), and an enhanced suite of domesticated and productive plants and microlivestock.

So yeah, they'll push the Chuchki back. They won't push the Yakut and Chuchki out completely, but they'll dominate in the arctic north where their technology gives them a net advantage. The Chuchki and will just be pushed further south, the Yakut will simply find the arctic north denied to them, a little bit further south where their cattle and horses work fine, they'll continue to rule.

Siberia's going to be a pretty violent place though.

[wannis]

Originally Posted by DValdron

My impression of latin was that it was quite widespread as the lingua franca of ecclesiastical and upper classes. Remember that at the time, it actually was the language of God, it had a cachet and significance that its hard for us to conceive of now. I think its more than plausible that in a community that small and desperate, that maintaining some latin would be a mark of the 'better classes', given that they had so little to set them apart.

Knowledge of Latin was mostly limited to clergy, scholars, lawyers, court officials, and diplomats. Even the average noble or merchant wouldn't know more than a smattering of it. At that time, the trade language of Scandinavia, besides the Scandinavian languages, was Lower German (due to the Hanse). I doubt that in a rural settlement like we have on Greenland anyone except for the priest would know more of Latin than you'd need to respond in a mass. The situation would be different in bigger cities or at a feudal court, where one certainly would have found merchants and nobles with a classical education, but that's not exactly what the Eastern settlement was...

[DValdron]

Originally Posted by wannis

Knowledge of Latin was mostly limited to clergy, scholars, lawyers, court officials, and diplomats. Even the average noble or merchant wouldn't know more than a smattering of it. At that time, the trade language of Scandinavia, besides the Scandinavian languages, was Lower German (due to the Hanse). I doubt that in a rural settlement like we have on Greenland anyone except for the priest would know more of Latin than you'd need to respond in a mass. The situation would be different in bigger cities or at a feudal court, where one certainly would have found merchants and nobles with a classical education, but that's not exactly what the Eastern settlement was...

Got some references?

[DValdron]

Okay, here's the location of Eastern Settlement and known significant sites. Downloaded from Wikipedia, the article on the Eastern Settlement. Note that there are at least two churches - Hvalsey and Dyrnes church. There's also a Nun's Monastary and a Monk's Monastery (also known as a male nunnery). I've read elswhere that Eastern Settlement supported as many as five different Churches. Now, the map doesn't give us a date, but it suggests that with at least two depicted churches and two ecclesiastical centers that there was a thriving ecclesiastical community at one point.

[DValdron]

Here's the Wikipedia link on the Bishopric in Greenland. It indicates sitting Bishops from 1124 until 1378. The notation also indicates that the Bishop's see was one of the largest farms in Greenland, with 160 head of cattle.


Huge investment went into the Church infrastructure. Some of the stones at the Church at Hvalsey weighed over five tons, and the design suggests that Scottish craftsmen were imported for its construction At Eric the Red's estate, the Church had an imported bell.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gardar,_Greenland

Here's a description of the Estate of Eric the Red, which contains a fairly elaborate Church.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brattahl%C3%AD%C3%B0

Here's the Church at Hvalsey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hvalsey

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_Hvalsey

The Church at Havalsey was in use until 1408, when a wedding was recorded to take place there.

So basically we have a Bishop clearly up until 50 years from Grandfather, and a wedding less than 25 years before Grandfather to suggest an ongoing ecclesiastical tradition and community. We have two monasteries and as many as 16 churches in the East Settlement.

No indication of Churches in the West Settlement, but I'm willing to bet that there'd have been a couple, and even likely one in the Middle Settlement.

I don't think its unreasonable to suggest that even by circa 1430, there's enough ecclesiastics and educated lay supporters, even badly educated ones, to introduce Grandfather to Latin as part of a wholesale religious indoctrination.

It's a mistake to think of the Church during this time in modern terms. They were major landowners, they were the effective taxing authority, they maintained the social welfare infrastructure - looking after the sick, the disabled, the infirm, the elderly and the hungry. And they obviously provided a social refuge in the form of monasteries and nunneries.

[Falecius]

Originally Posted by DValdron

My impression of latin was that it was quite widespread as the lingua franca of ecclesiastical and upper classes. Remember that at the time, it actually was the language of God, it had a cachet and significance that its hard for us to conceive of now. I think its more than plausible that in a community that small and desperate, that maintaining some latin would be a mark of the 'better classes', given that they had so little to set them apart.

Well, relatively widespread, especially in the North. But does not really matter.
There will be someone there who maybe is not a regularly ordained priest but basically acts as such in most cases, and he knows some Latin, is literate in the Latin script, and is supposed to pass on the precious little knowledge he has to the next generation as he can.
The Latin Grandfather is taught would be sketchy and approximate and unrecognizable to a Renaissance scholar, but this is hardly important when it comes to passing the IDEA of writing. The "priest" would be surely able to read, and would know the main stories in the book, and that's little more required then. Proper and correct Latin grammar would be not something anybody in Greenland would care about at this point, either Norse or Thule.
Greenlander version of Latin in this era would seem barbaric babble to anybody else in Europe, but who would ever know or care after all?

[DValdron]

That's my own thinking, articulated better than I've been. And I take the message behind it. Thanks Falecius.