THE EAST COAST OF GREENLAND
Drift-ice
The sagas give us scanty information about the east coast of Greenland—commonly called, in Iceland, the uninhabited regions (“ubygder”) of Greenland. The drift-ice renders this coast inaccessible by sea for the greater part of the year, and it was only very rarely that any one landed there, and then in most cases through an accident. As a rule sailors tried as far as possible to keep clear of the East Greenland ice, and did not come inshore until they were well past Hvarf, as appears from the ancient sailing-directions for this voyage. The “King’s Mirror” (circa 1250) also shows us clearly enough that the old Norsemen had a shrewd understanding of the ice conditions off these uninhabited regions. It says:
“Now in that same sea [i.e., the Greenland sea] there are yet many more marvels, even though they cannot be accounted for witchcraft (‘skrimslum’). So soon as the greater part of the sea has been traversed, there is found such a mass of ice as I know not the like of anywhere else in the world. This ice [i.e., the ice-floes] is some of it as flat as if it had frozen on the sea itself, four or five cubits thick, and lies so far from land [i.e., from the east coast of Greenland] that men may have four or five days’ journey across the ice [to land]. But this ice lies off the land rather to the north-east (‘landnorðr’) or north than to the south, south-west, or west; and therefore any one wishing to make the land should sail round it [i.e., round Cape Farewell] in a south-westerly and westerly direction, until he is past the danger of [encountering] all this ice, and then sail thence to land. But it has constantly happened that men have tried to make the land too soon, and so have been involved in these ice-floes; and some have perished in them; but others again have got out, and we have seen some of these and heard their tales and reports. But one course was adopted by all who have found themselves involved in this ice-drift [‘ísavök’ or ‘ísaválkit’], that is, they have taken their small boats and drawn them up on to the ice with them, and have thus made for land, but their ship and all their other goods have been left behind and lost; and some of them have passed four or five days on the ice before they reached land, and some even longer. These ice-floes are strange in their nature; sometimes they lie as still as might be expected, separated by creeks or large fjords; but sometimes they move with as great rapidity as a ship with a fair wind, and when once they are under way they travel against the wind as often as with it. There are indeed some masses of ice in that sea of another shape, which the Greenlanders call ‘falljökla.’ Their appearance is that of a high mountain rising out of the sea, and they do not unite themselves to other masses of ice, but keep apart.”
This striking description of the ice in the polar current shows that sailors were sometimes wrecked in it, and reached land on the east coast of Greenland.
The story of Snæbjörn Hólmsteinsson and his companions, who may have reached East Greenland (?), has been given above ([p. 264]).
Thorgils Orrabeinsfostre
An early voyage,[251] which is said to have been made along this coast, is described in the “Floamanna-saga.” The Icelandic chief, Thorgils Orrabeinsfostre, is said to have left Iceland about the year 1001, with his wife, children, friends and thralls—some thirty persons in all—and his cattle, to join his friend, Eric the Red, who had invited him to Greenland. During the autumn they were wrecked on the east coast; and it was not till four years later, during which time they lived by whaling, sealing and fishing, and after adventures of many kinds, that Thorgils arrived at the Eastern Settlement. 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. The narrative of Thorgils’ expedition may therefore have a historical kernel [cf. Nansen, 1890, p. 253; Engl. ed. i. 275]; and moreover it gives a graphic description of the difficulties and dangers that shipwrecked voyagers have to overcome in arctic waters; but at the same time it is gratuitously full of superstitions and dreams and the like, besides other improbabilities: such as the incident of the travellers suffering such extremities of thirst that they were ready to drink sea-water (with urine) to preserve their lives,[252] while rowing along a coast with ice and snow on every hand, where there cannot have been any lack of drinking water. Thorgils, or the man to whom in the first place the narrative may be due, may have been wrecked in the autumn on the east coast of Greenland, near Angmagsalik, or a little to the south of it, and may then have had a hard struggle before he reached Cape Farewell along the shore, inside the ice; but that it should have taken four years is improbable; I have myself in the same way rowed in a boat the greater part of the same distance along this coast in twelve days. It is hardly possible that the voyagers should have lost their ship much to the north of Angmagsalik, as the ice lies off the coast there usually the whole year round; nor is it credible that they should have arrived far north near Scoresby Sound, north of 70° N. lat., where the approach is easier; for they had no business to be there, if they were making for the Eastern Settlement.
In the Icelandic Annals there are frequent mentions of voyagers to Greenland being shipwrecked, and most of these cases doubtless occurred off East Greenland. In the sagas there are many narratives of such wrecks, or of people who have come to grief on this coast.
“Lik-Lodin”