210 DESCRIPTION OF GREEXLAXD. 



of a duck. It Avas seen holding fish in its hand and eating 

 them : this i:>hantom always preceded some terrible storm. 

 If it plunges in the water with its face towards the sailors it 

 is a sign they will not be shipwrecked, but if it turns its 

 back to them they are lost. The third monster has been 

 called liafgierdingucr , which was not, properly speaking, a 

 monster, but three large heads or mountains of water which 

 the tempest brought up ; and when the vessels unfortunately 

 find themselves surrounded by the triangle formed by these 

 mountains they nearly all perish, and few escape. This 

 so-called monster was engendered by the sea currents and 

 contrary and impetuous winds, which overtake vessels and 

 swallow them up. 



This book states, also, that in this sea there are large 

 masses of ice standing up like statues, of singular shape. It 

 advises those who wish to go to Greenland to go towards 

 the south-west before landing in the country, on account of 

 the quantity of ice Avhich on this sea floats much before it, even 

 in the summer. It advises, also, those who arc in any peril in 

 tliis ice, to do what others have done in similar encounters, 

 which is, to put their sloops on the thickest part of this ice, 

 with as much food as they have, and to wait there until the 

 ice carries them to land ; or, supposing it begins to melt, to 

 try and save' themselves in their sloops. 



Here finishes the history of ancient Greenland ; and the 

 history of Denmark quotes precisely the year 1348, in which 

 a terrible pestilence, called the black pestilence, carried off a 

 great part of the people of the north. It killed the principal 

 sailors and merchants in Norway and Denmark, who com- 

 posed the companies of Greenland in the two kingdoms. It 

 has also been remarked, that from this time the voyages and 

 commerce with Greenland were interrupted and began to 

 fall ofif. However, M. Vormius assures me, that he read 

 in an old Danish manuscript, that about the year of grace 

 1484, in the reign of king John, there still were in the town 



