2 SPITSBERGEN 



Christian era, and it is evident that the ice is not 

 eternal. The fossils declare that the climate round 

 the North Pole has varied greatly, and must in 

 comparatively recent ages have been comfortably 

 warm, so genial indeed that some people would have 

 us believe that men came from there in their last dis- 

 tribution. Not, however, with such migrants from 

 the far north do we concern ourselves, but with those 

 who have endeavoured to get there in historical times 

 by different lines of approach, as we follow the circle 

 round from east to west and note the record of each 

 section by itself. 



Who was the first to sail to the northern seas we 

 know not. Suffice it for us that in 875 Ingolf the 

 jarl, from Norway, refusing to live under the sway of 

 Harold Haarfager, sighted Mount Oraefa. As he 

 neared the coast, overboard went the carved wood ; 

 and where the wood drifted ashore he founded Reik- 

 javik. But he was not the first in Iceland, for the 

 Irish monastery had been there for years when he 

 arrived, though the monks retired to their old country 

 when they found the Norsemen had come to stay. 



Then the Icelander Gunnbiorn, driven westward in 

 a gale, sighted the strange land he called White Shirt 

 from its snowfields, which Eric the Red, following a 

 long time afterwards, more happily renamed. " What 

 shall we call the land ? " he was asked. " Call it Green 

 Land," replied Eric. " But it is not always green ! " 

 " It matters not : give it a good name and people will 

 come to it ! " 



Then the Norsemen worked further south. In 986 

 Bjarni sighted what we now call America, and in 1000 



