20 DANIEL BRUUN. 
Landndmabök! is another work where one can derive accounts of 
Greenland’s eldest population, it is to be found in different manuscripts. 
Finally aceounts resembling these are to be found in the little Saga 
of Eric in the Flateyjarbok (book of Flatey) also in Eric the Red’s Saga. 
About Erie the Red’s voyage of discovery is related as follows: 
“Eric sailed from Snæfellsness, discovered the country (1.е. : east coast 
of Greenland) and came by sea to that place, which he named Midjökull 
(i.e. Middle glacier); it is now called Bläserkr (a place on the south 
east coast of Greenland). He travelled south along the country to in- 
vestigate whether or not the land was inhabitable”. (Flateyjarbök). 
On this journey he evidently rounded Cape Farewell following 
the edge of the ice, and he now sought to land as soon as possible. 
When one approaches Cape Farewell on the way to Greenland, one 
usually meets floating ice from the polar sea which drifts with the 
polar-stream along the east coast of Greenland, to continue round the 
south point of the country and part of the way up the west coast. 
Olten a damp fog announces the approach of ice, a few stray blocks 
come drifting with seals on them — ice-blocks continue to come, big 
and little, until one suddenly discoveres that one is surrounded by the 
floating polar-ice, this powerful ice, the thickness of which is from 10— 
15 metres, comes from the arctic ocean, which during the winter has 
covered the surface of the.sea, and perhaps floated about for years. 
In the early spring when the polar ice is frozen hard up in the arctic 
ocean, there is not much “Polar-ice” to be seen on Greenland’s southern 
coasts, these colossal ice-masses which have hemmed in the arctic ocean, 
begin their drifting when spring and summer set in. The waters between 
Spitsbergen and Greenland form a broard passage through which the 
ice river flows. 
When the ice stream has passed through this territory the waters 
broaden out. The ice is no longer so compressed as it has been up to 
now. Ships can reach the coast between 70° and 75° n. Lat.; the ice 
stream floats on to be compressed again between Iceland and Green- 
land in the straits of Denmark, together with a north going warmer cur- 
rent coming from the Atlantic ocean, Irminger current, which flows 
along the west coast of Iceland forcing the polar-stream’s ice-masses 
against the east coast of Greenland, where the stream of ice floats on 
in compact masses, blocking the coast. Only at one place — at Ang- 
magssalik (66° n. Lat.) where a few hundred Eskimoes live, and where 
Denmark now has a commercial station and a mission, the ice disperses, 
on account of the issueing streams from some big fiords together with 
the curving of the land, allowing steamers to reach the coast in 
August and September; otherwise the ice lies compact in a broad 
7 “Landnämabék” means: book containing the story of the colonization, or 
the “taking of land” (Landnäm). 
