p after troop made its way. To
what end? Was it to bring home the dead, as did Hermod when he
rode after Baldur? No! It was simply to satisfy man's thirst for
knowledge. Nowhere, in truth, has knowledge been purchased at greater
cost of privation and suffering. But the spirit of mankind will never
rest till every spot of these regions has been trodden by the foot
of man, till every enigma has been solved.

Minute by minute, degree by degree, we have stolen forward, with
painful effort. Slowly the day has approached; even now we are but in
its early dawn; darkness still broods over vast tracts around the Pole.

Our ancestors, the old Vikings, were the first Arctic voyagers. It has
been said that their expeditions to the frozen sea were of no moment,
as they have left no enduring marks behind them. This, however,
is scarcely correct. Just as surely as the whalers of our age, in
their persistent struggles with ice and sea, form our outposts of
investigation up in the north, so were the old Northmen, with Eric
the Red, Leif, and others at their head, the pioneers of the polar
expeditions of future generations.

It should be borne in mind that as they were the first ocean
navigators, so also were they the first to combat with the ice. Long
before other seafaring nations had ever ventured to do more than hug
the coast lines, our ancestors had traversed the open seas in all
directions, had discovered Iceland and Greenland, and had colonized
them. At a later period they discovered America, and did not shrink
from making a straight course over the Atlantic Ocean, from Greenland
to Norway. Many and many a bout must they have had with the ice along
the coasts of Greenland in their open barks, and many a life must
have been lost.

And that which impelled them to undertake these expeditions was not the
mere love of adventure, though that is, indeed, one of the essential
traits of our national character. It was rather the necessity of
discovering new countries for the many restless beings that could
find no room in Norway. Furthermore, they were stimulated by a real
interest for knowledge. Othar, who about 890 resided in England at
Alfred's Court, set out on an errand of geographical investigation;
or, as he says himself, "he felt an inspiration and a desire to learn,
to know, and to demonstrate how far the land stretched towards the
north, and if there were any regions inhabited by man northward beyond
the desert waste." He liv