Introduction. 5 



swallowed in the vast abyss/' This w r as Ginnungagap, 

 the abyss at the world's end. How far he went, no one 

 knows, but at all events he deserves recognition as one 



o 



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 north-east or north, beyond the limits 

 of the land, than to the south and south-west or 



west . . . ." " 



"This ice is of a wonderful nature. It lies at times 

 quite still, as one would expect, with openings or large 



