medievalpoc:The Inuit Discovery of Scotland in 1682James Wallace (d. September, 1688), a minister in

medievalpoc:The Inuit Discovery of Scotland in 1682James Wallace (d. September, 1688), a minister in Kirkwall, recorded the arrival of the Inuit in Orkney, a group of islands which lie just off the north coast of the Scottish mainland. He drafted his account of the event at some point between 1685 and 1688, but it did not appear in print until the posthumous publication of his A Description of the Isles of Orkney (1693).Wallace recorded the Inuit ‘Finnmen’, a local term that associated them with Finland, but he had read widely and correctly identified their origin as Inuit from Greenland.Wallace’s account is as follows:“Sometime about this Country are seen these Men which are called Finnmen; In the year 1682, one was seen sometime sailing, sometime Rowing up and down in his little Boat at the south end of the isle of Eda[y], most of the people of the Isle flocked to see him, and when they adventured to put out a boat with men to see if they could apprehend him, he presently sped away most swiftly: And in the Year 1684, another was seen from Westra[y], and for a while after they got a few or no Fishes: for they have this Remark here, that these Finnmen drive away the fishes from the place to which they come.”Read more by Dr. Mark JardineThere is quite a bit of evidence that this “discovery” was actually an ongoing amount of traffic between the Inuit peoples in Greenland and Orkney and a few parts of Scandinavia, as is discussed later in the article linked above. Distinctively Inuit tools (like harpoon heads), clothing, other material evidence and written records exist that point to Inuit presence in Europe significantly earlier. You can read an exploration of this evidence in The American Discovery of Europe by Jack D. Forbes, (Chapter 6: The Inuit Route to Europe, p. 133). -- source link

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