IN NORTHERN MISTS 



This idea of a connection between labor (friction) and force 

 (motion), and this explanation of the possible origin of volcanoes 

 are surprising in the thirteenth century, and seem to bring the 

 author centuries in advance of his time ; we here have germs of 

 the theory of the conservation of energy. 



His statements about Greenland are remarkable for their 

 sober trustworthiness. He gives the first description of its 

 inland ice : 



But since you asked whether the land is thawed or not, or whether it is 

 covered with ice Uke the sea, you must 

 know that there are small portions of the 

 land which are thawed, but all the rest is 

 covered with ice, and the people do not 

 know whether the country is large or small, 

 since all the mountains and valleys are cov- 

 ered with ice, so that no one can find his 

 way in. But in reality it must be that there 

 is a way, either in those valleys that lie be- 

 tween the mountains, or along the shores, 

 so that animals can find a way, for other- 

 wise animals cannot come there from other 

 countries, unless they find a way through 

 the ice and find the land thawed. But men 

 have often tried to go up the country, upon 

 the highest mountains in various places, to 

 look around them, to see whether they 

 could find any part that was thawed and 

 habitable, but they have not found any 



such, except where people are now living, and that is but little along the shore 



itself." 



[From a Norwegian Ms. of 

 the Gulathings law (four- 

 teenth century)] 



This, as we see, is an extremely happy description of the 

 mighty ice-sheet. He also describes the climate of the country, 

 both the fine weather that often occurs in summer, and its usu- 

 ally inclement character, which causes so small a proportion of 

 the country to be habitable. 



" The land is cold, and the glacier [i.e., the great ice, or inland ice] has this 

 nature, that he sends out cold gusts which drive away the showers from his 

 face, and he usually keeps his head bare. But often his near neighbors have to 

 suffer for it, in that all other lands which lie in his neighborhood get much bad 

 weather from him, and all the cold blasts that he throws off fall upon them." 

 246 



