Introduction. 3 



Hermocl 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 forwards, 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 tha their expeditions to 

 the frozen sea were of no moment, as they have left no 



j 



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 

 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 colonised 



B 2 



