IN NORTHERN MISTS 



We have yet a third, later and more detailed variant in the 

 so-called " Gripla," given in Vol. I, p. 288. 



The belief in this land connection with Greenland may have 

 originated, or at any rate have been considerably strengthened 

 by the discovery of countries such as Novaya Zemlya, Svalbard, 

 (Spitzbergen?), and the northern uninhabited parts of the 

 east coast of Greenland ^ (cf. above, pp. 165 f.). In addition 

 to this, those sailing the Polar Sea came across pack-ice 

 wherever they went in a northerly direction, closing in the 

 sea and making it like a gulf, and it must therefore have been 

 natural to believe in a continuous coast which connected 

 the countries behind the ice, and which held this fast. The 

 belief in a land connection seems to have been so ingrained 

 that it can scarcely have rested on nothing but theoretical 

 speculations, but must rather have been supported by tangible 

 proofs of this kind. 



It was to be expected that the countries on the north of 

 Hafsbotn should become fairy-lands in popular belief, Jotun- 

 heimr and Risaland, inhabited by giants. Even Saxo 

 (beginning of the thirteenth century) says that to the north 

 of Norway 



"lies a land, the name and position of which are unknown, without human 

 civilization, but rich in people of monstrous strangeness. It is separated from 

 Norway, which lies opposite, by a mighty arm of the sea. As the navigation 

 there is very unsafe, few of those who have ventured thither have had a for- 

 tunate return." 



As it can hardly be the Christian settlements in Greenland 

 that Saxo refers to as a land without human civilization, 

 we must doubtless suppose that his land in the North is a 

 confusion of the eastern uninhabited tracts of Greenland 

 with Jotunheimr, as in Icelandic ideas. For Adam of 



the northern regions is not due to Nikulas. The hypothesis put forward by 

 Storm in Gronl. Hist. Mind., iii. 219, that it was Abbot Nikolas of Thingeyre, 

 appears less probable. 



1 If the old fishermen of the Polar Sea landed on any of these countries 

 (Novaya Zemlya, Spitzbergen), they would there have found reindeer, which 

 would again have strengthened their belief in the connection by land. 

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