The mountains near Angmagsalik, east of Sermilik-fjord. Seen from the drift-ice in July 1888
Bláserkr
Thus, according to my view, the statements as to the glaciers on the east coast of Greenland are easily explained. It is a different matter when we come to the two names “Bláserkr” and “Hvítserkr,” which, in later times especially, were those most frequently used. They have often been confused and interchanged, and while “Bláserkr” is found in the oldest authorities, the name “Hvítserkr” becomes more and more common in later writers. More recent authors have frequently regarded them as standing in a certain opposition to each other, one meaning a dark glacier or summit, and the other a white one, which may indeed seem natural. But it is striking that, while “Bláserkr” alone is mentioned in the oldest authorities, such as the Landnáma (and the Saga of Eric the Red, in the Hauksbók), it soon disappears almost entirely from literature, and is replaced by “Hvítserkr,” which is first mentioned in MSS. of the fourteenth century and later; and in the fifteenth century MS. (A.M. 557, qv.) of the Saga of Eric the Red (as in other late extracts from the same saga) we find “Hvítserkr” instead of “Bláserkr.”[264] I have not found the two names used contemporaneously in any Icelandic MS.; it is either one or the other, and nowhere are both names found as designating two separate places on the coast of Greenland. It may therefore be somewhat rash to assume, as has been done hitherto, that they were two “mountains,” one of them lying a certain distance to the north on the east coast of Greenland, and the other near Cape Farewell. The view that they were mountains is not a new one. In Ivar Bárdsson’s description Hvítserk is called “a high mountain” near Hvarf; while Björn Jónsson of Skardsá says that it is a “fuglabiarg i landnordurhafi” (i.e., a fowling cliff in the Polar Sea).
The inland ice at “Miðjǫkull.” In the centre the mountain Kiatak, 64° 20′ N. lat.
Seen from the drift-ice in July 1888
From the meaning of the names—the dark (“blá”) sark and the white sark—we should be inclined to think that they were applied to snow-fields, or glaciers, like, for instance, such names as Snehætta and Lodalskåpa in Norway. But another possibility is that it was the form of the sark that was thought of, and that the names were applied to mountain summits; in a similar way “stakk” (stack, or gown) is used for peaks in Norway (cf. Lövstakken near Bergen); and in Shetland corresponding names are known for high cliffs on the sea: Blostakk (== Blástakkr), Grostakk (== Grástakkr), Kwitastakk (== Hvíti stakkr), Gronastakk and Gronistakk (== Grœni stakkr, cliffs with grass-grown tops), etc. [cf. J. Jakobsen, 1901, p. 151].
The mountains about Ingolf’s Fjeld, seen from a distance in June 1888
In the Landnámabók (both Hauksbók and Sturlubók) we read: “Eirekr sigldi vndan Snæfells nese. En hann kom utan at Midiokli þar sem Bláserkr heitir.” (Eric sailed from Snæfellsnes, and made the Mid-Glacier at a place called Blue-Sark.) In Eric the Red’s Saga this has been altered to “hann kom utan at jǫkli þeím er Bláserkr heitir.” (He made the glacier that is called Blue-Sark.) It is obvious that the Landnáma text is the more original, and thus two explanations are possible: either Bláserkr is a part of the glacier, or it is a dark mountain seen on this part of the coast. I cannot remember any place where the inland ice of this district, seen at a distance from the drift-ice, had a perceptibly darker colour; its effect is everywhere a brilliant white. On approaching an ice-glacier, as, for instance, the Colberger Heide (64° N. lat., cf. Nansen, 1890, p. 370; Engl. ed., i. 423), it may appear somewhat darker and of a bluish tinge; but this can never have been a recognisable landmark at any distance. One is therefore tempted to believe that Bláserkr was a black, bare mountain-peak. But the peaks that show up along the edge of the “Miðjǫkull” (between Sermilik and Cape Mösting) are all comparatively low; the mountain-summit Kiatak, near Umivik [see Nansen, 1890, pp. 370, 374, 444; Engl. ed., i. 423, 429, ii. 13], answers best as regards shape, and is conspicuous enough, but it is only 2450 feet high. It is possible that Bláserkr did not lie in Miðjǫkull itself, but was the lofty Ingolf’s Fjeld (7300 feet high), which is the first mountain one sees far out at sea, on approaching East Greenland from Iceland; and it is seen to the north in sailing past Cape Dan and in towards Miðjǫkull. It may then have been confused with the latter in later times. But this supposition is doubtful. The most natural way for the Icelanders when making for Greenland must in any case have been first to make the edge of the ice, west-north-west from Snæfellsnes, when they sighted Ingolf’s Fjeld (or Bláserkr ?); then they followed the ice west or west-south-west, and came straight in to Miðjǫkull, at about 65° N. lat., or the same latitude as Snæfellsnes. Here the edge of the ice turns southward, following the land, and the course has to be altered in order to sail past the southern glacier and round Hvarf. This agrees well with most descriptions of the voyage, and among them the most trustworthy. But the names have often been confused; Hvítserk and Bláserk especially have been interchanged;[265] and this is not surprising, since the men who wrote in Iceland in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries were themselves unacquainted with these waters.