We hear of Pining, and his associate Pothorst, in an old (Icelandic ?) report which, together with Ivar Bárdsson's description of Greenland, was found in an old book of accounts in the Faroes, and which in an English translation was included in "Purchas his Pilgrimes" (London, 1625, vol. iii.), where we read:
"Item, Punnus [corruption of Pinning] and Potharse, have inhabited Island certayne yeeres, and sometimes have gone to Sea, and have had their trade in Groneland. Also Punnus did give the Islanders their Lawes, and caused them to bee written. Which Lawes doe continue to this day in Island, and are called by name Punnus Lawes."
As this last statement agrees with the two "Pining's Laws" mentioned above, there may also be some truth in the voyages to Greenland. An unexpected confirmation of this recently came to light in the discovery of a document by Louis Bobé [1909] at Copenhagen; it is a letter, dated March 3, 1551, from Burgomaster Carsten Grip, of Kiel, to King Christiern III. Grip was, as we are told in the letter, the king's commissioner for the purchase of books, paintings, and the like. He tells the king that he has not found any valuable books or suitable pictures, but sends him two maps of the world,
"from which your majesty may see that your majesty's land of Greenland extends on both maps towards the new world and the islands which the Portuguese and Spaniards have discovered, so that these countries may be reached overland from Greenland. Likewise that they may be reached overland from Lampeland [i.e., Lapland], from the castle of Vardöhus, etc.[96] This year there is also published at Paris in France a map of your majesty's land of Iceland and of the wonders there to be seen and heard of; it is there remarked that Iceland is twice as large as Sicily, and that the two skippers ['sceppere,' i.e., commodores or admirals] Pyningk and Poidthorsth, who were sent out by your majesty's royal grandfather, King Christiern the First, at the request of his majesty of Portugal, with certain ships to explore new countries and islands in the north, have raised on the rock Wydthszerck [Hvitserk], lying off Greenland and towards Sniefeldsiekel in Iceland on the sea, a great sea-mark on account of the Greenland pirates, who with many small ships without keels ('szunder bodem') fall in large numbers upon other ships," etc.