Greenland Sea

“ The Norwegian Sea, therefore, includes the whole of the region between Greenland and Norway, a portion of which, to the north west of the island of Jan Mayen, is sometimes known as the Greenland Sea. The Norwegian Sea is a well-marked basin cut off from the Atlantic by submarine ridges connecting the north of Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Ice land, and Greenland. On the summit of these ridges there is an average depth of about 250 fathoms. Between Spitzbergen and Lapland there is a wide opening into the Barents Sea, where the depth is from 100 to 200 fathoms. ”

“ On the Greenland coast the numerous small granite islands scattered in great numbers at the entrances of the deep fjords, are well clothed with moss, grasses, and wild flowers in the summer, and embosomed in a deep blue sea on which bergs and pack-ice float here and there, and become distorted on the horizon by refraction. Nowhere does nature present a more lovely scene. ”

“ The continent, as one might call Greenland, does not shed the bulk of its central waters in fluid rivers, but discharges them to the ocean in solid, crystalline, slowly progressing streams. They flow, or rather march, with irresistible, mighty force, and far-resounding footsteps, crossing the shore line, a perpetual procession of block-like masses, flat or diversified with hill and hollow on the top, advancing upon the sea until too deeply immersed longer to resist the buoyant power and pressure of the surrounding waters, when they break upwards, and float suspended in the vast oceanic abyss. ”

“ Of fishes properly so called, the Greenland sea has abundance and of great diversity, of which the largest is called Hay, whose flesh is much like that of the halibut, and is cured in the same manner; being cut into long slices, and hung up to be dried in the sun and in the air, as they cure them in the Northern parts of Norway; but the Greenlanders do not much care for it; its flesh being of a much coarser grain than that of the halibut. This fish has{90} two fins on the back, and six under the belly ”

“ Put a man like Markham in command. Then send this ship every June or July to inspect the barrier, with strict orders to keep out of the heavy ice unless there were a very clear water-way. For six years she might go in vain. On the seventh you might have an open season, hard, northerly winds, and a clear sea. In any case no expense or danger is incurred, and there could be no better training for young seamen. They will find the Greenland seas in summer much more healthy and pleasant than the Azores or Madeira, to which they are usually despatched. ”

“ It is a fish of prey, bites large pieces out of the whale’s body, and is very greedy after man’s flesh: he cannot be caught with lines made of hemp, for with his sharp teeth he snaps it off; but with iron chains. And the larger sort are taken with harpoons, as we do the whales. The rest of fishes that haunt the Greenland seas are the halibut, torbut, codfish, haddock, scate, small salmon, or{91} sea-trout of different kinds and sizes (the large salmon not being so frequent in Greenland) ; and these are very fat and good; they are found in all inlets, and mouths of rivers. ”

“ While Greenland, on the west coast, as gradually sinks into the sea, Norway rises at the rate of about four feet in a century. In Greenland the sinking is so well known that the natives never build close to the water's edge, and the Moravian missionaries more than once have had to move farther inland the poles on which their boats are rested.
Our Phantom Ship stands fairly now along the western coast of Greenland into Davis Straits. We observe that upon this western coast there is, by a great deal, less ice than on the eastern. ”

“ The Eastern coast extends itself in the North as far as Spitzbergen, between 78° and 80°; which is thought to be an island, separated from{2} the continent of Greenland. The Western shore is discovered as far as seventy odd degrees. Whether it be a large island, or borders upon countries to the North, is not yet found out; there seems great reason to believe it is contiguous to America on the North West side; because there we meet with the bay or inlet, which in the sea charts is called Davis’s Straits, from an Englishman, who in the year 1585 was the first discoverer of it ”

“ Greenland is considered as a peninsula attached to America, wretchedly barren, for no trees grow there. But God, who made man of the dust, also promised to supply his wants, and most wonderfully is this exemplified with regard to Greenland. To provide the inhabitants with the means of warming and nourishing their bodies, God causes the sea to drive vast quantities of wood from distant shores, and with thankfulness the poor Greenlanders regularly gather these providential supplies from their own coasts. ”

“ The most Eastern town in Greenland, says Ivar Bert, as exhibited in the French{xxvii} version of Peyrere, is called Skagefiord [6] , where is an uninhabitable rock, and farther out in the sea is a shoal, which prevents ships from entering the bay, except at high water, and it is at this time, or during a violent storm, that numbers of whales and of other fish enter the bay and are caught in abundance. ”

“ It is estimated that between Greenland and Spitzbergen about eighty or ninety cubic miles of water pour southward every day. The current, like that down Smith Sound, flows from the north, but the water cannot originate there. There is a very slight northward extension of the Gulf Stream drift along the west coasts of Spitzbergen and Greenland, but the main drift of North Atlantic water from the southward sets round the North Cape of Norway, keeping the sea free from ice all the year round. It is felt in the Kara Sea, and as a north-easterly stream along the coast of Novaya Zemlya. ”

“ The artists were constantly at work with camera and pencil. In this, the metropolis of Greenland, it was not difficult for the pleasure-seekers to find opportunity to amuse themselves and the captain whiled away the time by tearing to pieces the wreck of a whale-ship which had been run aground at the mouth of the harbor, as rumor had it, in order to secure insurance money. If such was the case, her people certainly took good care to insure their own lives, for the vessel was within sight of the town on a sandy beach, where the sea never breaks, and full a quarter of a mile out of the channel. ”

“ The ice-sea is the great reservoir of ice which covers the interior of Greenland, and the glacier of the fiord of Sermitsialik is but a branch—a stream—that descends from it through the valley to the fiord. It is one of many hundreds of similar streams which are to be seen upon the Greenland coast, and by which the precipitations from the atmosphere are discharged into the ocean. ”

“ Greenland may indeed be regarded as a vast reservoir - 138 - of ice. Upon the slopes of its lofty hills the downy snow-flake has become the hardened crystal; and, increasing little by little from year to year and from century to century, a broad cloak of frozen vapor has at length completely overspread the land, and along its wide border there pour a thousand crystal streams into the sea. ”

“ According to the relation and opinion of those Greenlanders, that inhabit the gulf of Disco, in 69°, Greenland is an island, which they infer from the strong current that runs from the North, and keeps the ice open even into the midst of the sea: they will also tell you, they have spoken with people different from themselves on the other side of the ice, and hailed them. Their language, they say, is the same, but the persons different, so that a small strait only divides Greenland from America. ”

“ Cape Prince Christian, Northwards. The information I have had of some Greenlanders, who in their boats have coasted a great part of the East side, confirms me in my opinion; for although an incredible quantity of driven ice yearly comes from Spitzbergen or New Greenland along this coast, and passes by the States Promontory, which hinders the approaching of ships as far as the ice stretches, whereabout the best part of the Norwegian colonies were settled; yet there have been found breaks and open sea near the shore, through which boats and smaller vessels may pass ”

“ THE Greenland Sea abounds in different sorts of animals, fowls, and fishes, of which the whale bears the sway, and is of divers kinds, shapes, and sizes. Some are called the finned whales, from the fins they have upon their back near the tail; but these are not much valued, yielding but little fat or blubber, and that of the meaner sort; they consist of nothing but lean flesh, sinews, and bones. They are of a long, round, and slender shape, very{67} dangerous to meddle with, for they rage and lay about them most furiously with their tail, so that nobody cares to come at them, or catch them. ”

“ The fact is, Julianashaab is some twenty miles from the sea, on the bank of a very long and tortuous frith or fiord, which is studded with islands. Difficult of access at all times, it is peculiarly so in July, for then the ice from the 24 Spitzbergen side of Greenland comes drifting down with the great polar current, a branch of which sweeps around Cape Farewell into Davis’s Strait and Baffin’s Bay, and proceeds north for a while before it is deflected to the westward to join the ice-incumbered stream that chills the region of Labrador, and bathes the coast of America even to the Floridas. ”

“ I allude now to mountains generally, for Greenland is not the only ice-factory of the world. That country has by no means a monopoly of the business, for nearly all parts of the earth have their great reservoirs of ice formed in the same manner from snow as the ice of Greenland, only with this difference, that the climate and the temperature necessary to the formation of glaciers from snow is higher above the sea-level in most other places than in Greenland. ”

“ Greenland might perhaps be crossed in that quarter, though the undertaking would be an exceedingly hazardous one. No food could, in my opinion, be obtained by the way, as I entertain no doubt that the whole interior of the country is but one vast sea of ice. It is only on the outer land that the snow melts and flows to the sea. ”

“ In the mean time longer, but more successful, voyages were made towards the South pole. There we do not find the same commingling of land and sea, ice and tempestuous thaws, that make up the great horror of Greenland. There is a boundless sea of immense and mighty waves, and a glacier far more extensive than ours of the North. ”

“ In such vessels, well stocked with food and weapons, the Northmen were accustomed to spend many weeks together on the sea, now and then touching land. In such vessels they made their way to Algiers and Constantinople, to the White Sea, to Baffin's Bay. It is not, therefore, their voyage to Greenland that seems strange, but it is their success in founding a colony which could last for more than four centuries in that inhospitable climate. The question is sometimes asked whether the climate of Greenland The climate of Greenland. may not have undergone some change within the last thousand years. ”

“ In the Arctic Ocean these land bodies are numerous and large, Greenland, almost continental in area, being the largest of them. West of Greenland, across Smith Sound, is the great extent of Grinnell Land, and south of this island are North Devon, Cockburn Land, and Baffin Land, with many other large islands to the west, including Bathurst, Melville, Prince of Wales, and North Somerset islands, and Prince Albert and Banks Land, the whole forming an extensive archipelago in the Arctic Sea. ”

“ The cool, salt flavor of the air spoke of wild stretches of the North Atlantic where sea-fogs have touched the eerie loneliness of Greenland bergs and passed it on to the wind. In this ghostly dusk of driving mist the smear of the rain across the face is like a touch of phantom hands coming out of unfathomed spaces, gentle but uncanny. ”

“ These evidences of the sinking of the Greenland coast from about Cape York, southward, are too well known to need any comment in this place; but I may dwell, for a few moments, upon the evidences of rising of the coast here and northward. At many conspicuous points, where the current is swift and the ice is pressed down upon the land with great force and rapidity, the rocks are worn away until they are as smooth and polished as the surface of a table,—a fact which may at any time be observed by looking down through the clear water. ”

“ The saga is of late date, perhaps about 1400; it is full of marvels and not very credible. But the description of the country, with glaciers coming down to the sea, and ice lying off the shore for the greater part of the year, cannot have been invented without some knowledge of the east coast of Greenland; for the inhabited west coast is entirely different. ”

“ As far as can be learned, the interior of Greenland has a surface of tall hills and deep gulches, with an elevated range rather on the eastern side, running from north to south. Hence, if the climate of the interior of Greenland were mild, this extended range would serve as a watershed diverting streams to the sea on both sides. ”

“ The outline forming the sea-coast of Greenland is in general high, rugged, and barren; close to the water's edge it rises into tremendous precipices and lofty mountains, covered with inaccessible cliffs, which may be seen from the sea at a distance of more than 60 miles. ”

“ I must not forget here to mention the wonderful harmony and correspondence which is observed in Greenland between fountains and the main sea, viz. that at spring tides, in new and full moon, when the strongest ebbing is at sea, the hidden fountains or springs of fresh water break out on shore, and discover themselves, often in places where you never would expect to meet with any such; especially in winter, when the ground is covered with ice and snow ”