44 THE "SHOOTING OUT" OF ICEBERGS. 



and then the pent-up feelings of our stolid fur-clad oarsmen find 

 vent in lusty huzzahs ! Yet, when viewed out of danger, this noble 

 assemblage of ice palaces, hundreds in number being seen at such 

 times from the end of Jakobshavn Kirke, was a magnificent sight ; 

 and the voyager might well indulge in some poetic frenzy at the view. 

 The noonday heat had melted their sides ; and the rays of the red 

 evening sun glancing askance among them would conjure up fairy 

 visions of castles of silver and cathedrals of gold floating in a sea of 

 summer sunlight. Here was the Walhalla of the sturdy Vikings, 

 here the city of the sun-god Freyr, Alfheim, with its elfin caves, 

 and Glitner, with its walls of gold and roofs of silver, Gimle, more 

 brilliant than the sun, Gladsheim, the home of the happy, and there, 

 piercing the clouds, was Himlenberg, the celestial mount, where the 

 bridge of the gods touches heaven. 1 Suddenly there is a swaying, a 

 moving of the water, and our fairy palace falls in pieces, or with an 

 echo like a prolonged thunder-peal, it capsizes, sending the waves 

 in breakers up to our very feet. Some of these icebergs are of 

 enormous size. Hayes calculated that one stranded in Baffin Bay, in 

 water nearly half a mile in depth contained about 27,000,000,000 cu- 

 bical feet of ice, and must have weighed not less than 2,000,000,000 

 tons. 



It is most probable that the cause of this " shooting out " of 

 bergs from the ice-fjord of Jakobshavn is due to the force gene- 

 rated by the detachment of a fresh berg from the glacier at the 

 extremity of the fjord. Occasionally, at the time of this " shooting 

 out," the waters of Jakobshavn harbour (a little fjord, the locality 

 of a now extinct glacier) will rise and fall with such tremendous 

 force as to snap a ship's cable. Actually the cable of the 'Mari- 

 anne,' a brig of 200 tons, was so broken in 1866. This wave is well- 

 known to the Greenland Danes, under the name of the ' kaaneel.' 2 

 Various theories are afloat about it and its cause, which is 

 not very well known; but as it only happens when the ice is 

 " shooting out " in great quantities, it is most likely caused by the 

 displacement of the volume of water confined in the inlet ; and 

 this wave is also felt outside ; but its force is lost in the open 

 sea. It is also exhibited at Omenak and other harbours, when the 

 ice is shooting out of the ice-fjords in their vicinities ; but these 

 harbours being situated at a greater distance from the scene of 

 action, it is not so much felt as at Jakobshavn, close to the ice- 

 fjord. From November to June, the fjords being frozen, there is 

 no " shooting out " of bergs but in July, and more especially in 



1 Hayes, op. c. p. 24. 2 I spell the word phonetically. 



