ed in the northernmost part of Helgeland,
probably at Bjarkoei, and sailed round the North Cape and eastward,
even to the White Sea.

Adam of Bremen relates of Harald Hardrade, "the experienced king of
the Northmen," that he undertook a voyage out into the sea towards
the north and "explored the expanse of the northern ocean with his
ships, but darkness spread over the verge where the world falls away,
and he put about barely in time to escape being swallowed in the
vast abyss." This was Ginnungagap, the abyss at the world's end. How
far he went no one knows, but at all events he deserves recognition
as one of the first of the polar navigators that were animated by
pure love of knowledge. Naturally, these Northmen were not free from
the superstitious ideas about the polar regions prevalent in their
times. There, indeed, they placed their Ginnungagap, their Nivlheim,
Helheim, and later on Trollebotn; but even these mythical and poetical
ideas contained so large a kernel of observation that our fathers may
be said to have possessed a remarkably clear conception of the true
nature of things. How soberly and correctly they observed may best
be seen a couple of hundred years later in Kongespeilet ("The Mirror
of Kings"), the most scientific treatise of our ancient literature,
where it is said that "as soon as one has traversed the greater
part of the wild sea, one comes upon such a huge quantity of ice
that nowhere in the whole world has the like been known. Some of the
ice is so flat that it looks as if it were frozen on the sea itself;
it is from 8 to 10 feet thick, and extends so far out into the sea
that it would take a journey of four or more days to reach the land
over it. But this ice lies more to the northeast or north, beyond
the limits of the land, than to the south and southwest or west....

"This ice is of a wonderful nature. It lies at times quite still, as
one would expect, with openings or large fjords in it; but sometimes
its movement is so strong and rapid as to equal that of a ship running
before the wind, and it drifts against the wind as often as with it."

This is a conception all the more remarkable when viewed in the light
of the crude ideas entertained by the rest of the world at that period
with regard to foreign climes.

The strength of our people now dwindled away, and centuries elapsed
before explorers once more sought the northern seas. Then it was
other nations, especially the Dutch and the