North Greenland

“ The inhabitants of Greenland are supposed to have had their origin from the Esquimaux of Labrador, for they nearly resemble that people. They are short, and somewhat corpulent; and have broad faces, flat noses, thick lips, black hair, and a yellowish tawny complexion. The keenness of the wind and the glare of the snow, render them subject to painful disorders in the eyes: they are also afflicted with many diseases, which tend to render them short lived. They are a quiet, orderly, and good-humoured people; but of a cold, phlegmatic, and indolent disposition. ”

“ Yet a greater honor is his than ever fell to a discoverer: the simple natives of Greenland long reckoned the time from his coming among them. To them he was in their ice-bound home what Father Damien was to the stricken lepers in the South seas, and Dr. Grenfell is to the fishermen of Labrador.
Hans Poulsen Egede, the apostle of Greenland, was a Norwegian of Danish descent. He was born in the Northlands, in the parish of Trondenäs, on January 31, 1686. His grandfather and his father before him had been clergymen in Denmark, the former in the town of West Egede, whence the name. ”

“ This apparently quite arbitrary alteration may perhaps be due to a desire to bring the map as far as possible into agreement with the learned dogma of the continent [cf. Björnbo, 1910, pp. 141, ff.] ; but older conceptions of Greenland may also have contributed [Pg 278] towards it [cf. J. Fischer, 1902, pp. 87, ff.] . We have already seen that Adam of Bremen regarded Greenland as an island “farther out in the ocean opposite the mountains of Suedia” (see vol i. p. 194) , and in his additions to the copy of Ptolemy, Cardinal Filastre (before 1427) states that Greenland lay to the north of Norway ”

“ Greenland, like the eastern coast of the continent, was duly colonised, its two chief settlements being one just round Cape Farewell, the other further north on the same coast. In those days the island, or chain of islands beneath an ice-cap, as many think it is, would appear to have had a milder climate than it has now. The colonies throve, their population becoming numerous enough to require a series of seventeen bishops, the last one dying about 1540, to superintend their spiritual welfare. ”

“ Björnbo, 1910, p. 210] , where Greenland forms a peninsula (from a mass of land on the north) as on the Cantino map, but much broader still. On the south-eastern promontory of Greenland is here written: “C [auo] de mirame et lexame” (i.e., Cape “look at me but don’t touch me”) , which may be connected with the Portuguese voyage of 1500, when the explorers saw the coast but could not approach it on account of ice. Finally, I may mention the type of the Reinel map (see p. 321) , where Greenland in the form of a broad land has been transferred to the coast of America. ”

“ Such is the character of the glacier of Jacobshavn, in Disco Bay, North Greenland, which I have made the most strenuous efforts to ascend, and which is crowded with a perfect wilderness of icebergs for the space of nearly thirty miles, often being so tightly packed together as to be scarcely distinguishable from the surface of the glacier itself, even when one looks down upon the fiord from an elevation of a thousand feet. ”

“ GREENLAND AND THE EARLIER JOURNEYS OF NANSEN AND PEARY On the whole of the earth’s surface there is probably no more desolate and uninviting country than Greenland. Extending for a distance of over 1400 miles from north to south, and of some 900 miles from east to west at its broadest point, almost the whole of it is covered with a permanent ice-cap, which probably attains in places a depth of 3000 feet, and on which it is absolutely impossible for a human being to sustain life for long. ”

“ He believed that there were still settlements on the inaccessible east coast of Greenland where descendants of the old Northmen lived, cut off from all the world, sunk into ignorance and godlessness,—men and women who had once known the true light,—and his heart yearned to go to their rescue. ”

“ The said straits are so narrow, that men on both sides can shoot at once one and the same fish. The continent farthest to the North is all covered with ice; the islands only uncovered, where rein deer, and also geese and other wild birds, are found in great numbers.
[22] Historians disagree about the time of the first settlement of Greenland. The Icelanders (as we have mentioned) will have it to be in the year 982-3. But Pontanus, in his Danish History, refers it to the year 770 ”

“ We may, therefore, with confidence assert that this piece of wood was carried from the west coast of Alaska over to Greenland by a current the whole course of which we do not know, but which may be assumed to flow very near the North Pole, or at some place between it and Franz Josef Land.
“There are, moreover, still further proofs that such a current exists. As is well known, no trees grow in Greenland that can be used for making boats, sledges, or other appliances. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Before all the sailors could reach the shore some of them were seized by these frightful archers, who tore them limb from limb within sight of their companions. The Danish Chronicle adds, that this region is so rich that it is peopled only by devils.
Peyrere tells us, that one of the chapters in the Icelandic Chronicle describes the ancient route between Norway and Greenland, before the navigation was rendered impracticable by the{xliii} descent of accumulated mountains of ice from a more remote point of the North. ”

“ The observations of Warming and Nathorst on the flora of Greenland are also instructive in this connection. They show that on the south-east coast of Greenland, and thus exactly on the stretch of coast which, according to the displacement theory, still lay during Quaternary times just in front of Scandinavia and North Scotland, the European elements predominate, whilst on the whole of the remaining coast of Greenland, including North-east Greenland, the American influence prevails. ”

“ Although this striking beauty of the North, which it often is so chary of displaying, possesses a splendor of color equal to the gloriousness of tropical seas, it always impresses one with a steely hardness of quality suggestive of the steely hardness of the heart of the North. And it somehow seemed, curiously enough, as if all this wonderful glitter was a shimmering reflection from the ice-covered mountains of the Greenland interior, although the mountains themselves were still invisible. ”

“ The seas abound in fish, the whale and cod fisheries being of special importance. Seafowl are abundant in summer, and largely killed. The chief mineral product is cryolite, but graphite and miocene lignite coal are also found. Oil, eider down, furs, and cryolite are exported. For administrative purposes Greenland, or rather its coast, is divided into two inspectorates of North and South Greenland. ”

“ It has been stated as a fact that Greenland lies on the outermost edge of the earth toward the north; and I do not believe there is any land in the home-circle beyond Greenland, only the great ocean that runs around the earth. ”

“ Evidence of a similar kind has lately been adduced to prove that the west coast of Greenland is just now gradually subsiding for a space of more than 600 miles from north to south. “Ancient buildings on low, rocky islands, and on the shore of the mainland, have been gradually submerged, and experience has taught the aboriginal Greenlander never to build his hut near the water’s edge. ”

“ Greenland.—The exploration of Greenland has been continued, with few exceptions, by Danes who, besides throwing much light on problems in physical geography and Eskimo ethnography, have practically completed the map of the coasts.
In 1910 Knud Rasmussen founded the station of Thule in North Star Bay, Wolstenholme Sound, as a trading station and a base for researches. On April 6 1912, accompanied by P. Freuchen and two Eskimo, he set out with dog sledges from Inglefield Gulf to cross the inland ice in search of E. Mikkelsen, from whom nothing had been heard for three years. ”

“ 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 ”

“ The Greenlanders are constantly obliged to make voyages to the uninhabited regions in the northern land’s end or point, both for the sake of wood [i.e., driftwood] and sealing; it is called Greipar and Króksfjarðarheiðr; it is a [Pg 300] great and long sea voyage thither; [271] as the Skáld-Helga saga clearly bears witness, where it is said of it:
“‘Garpar kvomu i Greypar norðr. The men came to Greipar in the north, Grönlands er þar bryggju sporðr.’ [272] There is the bridge-spur (end) of Greenland. ”

“ The southward configuration and northward outspreading of North America are the same, but we cannot follow the northern portion to its boundary as we may that of Europe and Asia, both of which terminate in an Arctic Ocean. Greenland is remarkably like Scandinavia; Davis’s Strait, Baffin’s Bay, and Smith’s Sound corresponding with the Baltic and the Gulf of Bothnia. The deep fjords of Greenland, like those of Scandinavia, are on its western side, and the present condition of Greenland corresponds to that of Norway during the milder period of the last glacial epoch. ”

“ Let us now shortly trace all the coasts of the new continent. Cape Hold-with-Hope, lying in the 73d degree north latitude, is the most northern land we are acquainted with in New Greenland, and is not above 160 or 180 leagues distant from Cape North in Lapland. From this cape we may follow the coast of Greenland as far as the polar circle, where the ocean forms a broad strait between Iceland and Greenland. It is pretended that this country, adjacent to Iceland, is not the ancient Greenland which [29] the Danes formerly possessed as a province dependant on their kingdom ”

“ It is in itself a strange thing that the discovery of a country like North America, with conditions so much more favourable than Greenland and Iceland, should not have led to a permanent settlement. But there are many, and in my judgment sufficient, reasons which explain this. We must remember that such an outpost of civilisation as Greenland offered poor opportunities for the equipment of such settlements ”

“ So if all goes well we should soon be fast in a whale, or walrus, or up against a bear.
But we strike the ice rather far east, over two hundred miles from Greenland coast! Gisbert has tried before to get into Greenland to south and west of Jan Mayen; this time we hope to get in from farther north, about seventy-five degrees, and hope to strike Shannon Island or that neighbourhood. We have some slight hope of meeting Eskimos, and possibly musk oxen. Captain Trolle of the Danish navy was up here in 1906-1908, and charted the coast of North-East Greenland. ”

“ There are many glaciers in Iceland, but they are confined to the mountains. There are also glaciers upon some of the lands north of Hudson’s Bay; but, like those of Spitzbergen, they occupy a small space compared with the vast accumulations of Greenland. And from Greenland they discharge mostly on the Baffin’s Bay side. In a former chapter we have observed how the ocean current comes from the north along the eastern coast of Greenland, freighted with ice-fields (not bergs) , sometimes bearing trees from the Siberian forests. ”

“ Greenland, says Peyrere, like other countries, which are composed of plains and mountains, exhibits great diversities of soil, and though the close approximation to the farthest North, in many situations, destroys the process of vegetation, yet there appear to be localities, which are by no means destitute of fertility. There are pastures possessing excellent herbage; and amongst the animals, which contribute to the subsistence of man, or to other uses, we find [16] sheep, oxen, horses, rein deer, stags, and hares ”

“ This remained for the Nancy map of Claudius Clavus (Schwartz) , 1427191 (Fig. 16) . Greenland is, however, made distinctly continuous with Europe, being connected thereto by a long land bridge, far north of Iceland, in accordance with an hypothesis then prevailing. The second half of the same century saw this conception of Claudius Clavus greatly popularized. Divers maps192 appeared, some showing Greenland as a prodigiously elongated peninsula of Europe, having its tip in the correct location (Fig. 17) , while others ran up a perverse trapezoidal Greenland from the north coast of Norway. ”

“ Everything in Greenland is simple and great—white snow, blue ice, naked, black rocks and peaks, [3] and dark stormy sea. When I see the sun sink glowing into the waves, it recalls to me the Greenland sunsets, with the islets and rocks floating, as it were, on the burnished surface of the smooth, softly-heaving sea, while inland the peaks rise row on row, flushing in the evening light. And sometimes when I see the sæter-life [2] at home and watch the sæter-girls and the grazing cows, I think of the tent-life and the reindeer-herds on the Greenland fiords and uplands ”