CHAPTER XXIX 



Modern Vikings in the Arctic Seas 



THE reader will remember that the first of modern navigators 

 to venture upon the seas of ice were the daring Vikings, 

 or Sea-Kings, of Scandinavia. It is now more than a 

 thousand years ago since these fearless mariners, in their open 

 craft, reached and named Iceland, and a century later landed upon 

 Greenland's icy shores. They completed their work at that time by 

 discovering the continent of America, five hundred years in advance 

 of Columbus. 



In our own times descendants of the Vikings have turned their 

 prows to the same waters again and taken an active part in the work 

 of polar research. Two of these we have mentioned: Norden- 

 skiold, the first to achieve the Northeast Passage, and Nansen, 

 whose dash toward the Pole was marked by great brilliancy of 

 conception and measurable success. We have now to tell the story 

 of some other adventurers of the Scandinavian realm, who have 

 inscribed their names on fhe roll of Arctic heroes. 



Notable among these was Nyghus Erickson, who in 1906 with 

 two companions set out to explore the unknown portion of the east 

 Greenland coast, from Cape Bismarck on the south to Cape Bridg- 

 man in the far north. The northern and western part of Peary Land, 

 which lies north of Greenland, had been explored as far east as 

 Cape Bridgman, and the east coast of Greenland as far north as 

 Cape Bismarck, but between these two points lay a stretch of coast 

 hundreds of miles in length of which nothing was known south of 

 Independence Bay, which Peary had reached in his journey across 

 Greenland. The survey and mapping of this unknown region, so 



(402) 



