[4] One krone (crown) equals twenty-seven cents.
[5] Storthing, the legislative assembly (congress) of Norway.
[6] Folgefond, Jostedalsbræ, Svartisen, glaciers in Norway.
[7] Karasjok (pron. Karashok), one of the northernmost districts of Norway, chiefly inhabited by Lapps.
[8] Qvæn, the Norwegian name for a man of the race inhabiting the grand duchy of Finland. The Lapps are in Norway called Finns.
Chapter V.
Journey across Greenland.—Meeting Esquimaux.—Reaching the West Coast.—Return to Civilization and Home.
When Nansen and his companions, after their perilous adventures in the drift-ice, landed with flags flying on their boats on the east waste of Greenland, the first thing they did was to give vent to their feelings in a ringing hurrah—a sound which those wild and barren crags had never re-echoed before. Their joy, indeed, on feeling firm ground beneath their feet once more baffles description. In a word, they conducted themselves like a pack of schoolboys, singing, laughing, and playing all manner of pranks. The Lapps, however, did not partake in the general merriment, but took themselves off up the mountain-side, where they remained several hours.
But when their first ebullition of joy had somewhat subsided, Nansen himself followed the example of the Lapps, and clambered up the slope in order to get a good view over the landscape, leaving the others to prepare the banquet they determined to indulge in that evening on the sea-beach. And here he remained some little while, entranced with the wondrous beauty of the scene. The sea and the ice stretched far away to the east, shining like a belt of silver beneath him, while on the west the mountain-tops were bathed in a flood of hazy sunshine, and the inland ice, the “Sahara of the North,” extended in a level unbroken plain for miles and miles into the interior.