212 POLAR PROBLEMS 



In 982 Eric the Red began the exploration of West Greenland, and in 

 985 or 986 he began the colonization which eventually amounted to 

 sixteen churches, two monasteries, 280 farms, a republic politically 

 independent but dominated ecclesiastically by Rome and subject to 

 its bookkeeping and other records. This colony maintained itself 

 certainly for four hundred years, and newer researches are beginning 

 to make it seem as if it lasted into the post-Columbian era of revived 

 exploration.^ 



The further course of history continued the advance of knowledge 

 and the retreat of the lifeless polar regions, although the tragic death 

 of most of the earlier post-Columbian explorers who tried to winter 

 in the Arctic at first seemed to confirm the old view that human 

 life, at any rate, could not flourish there. Willoughby in 1554 lost 

 his entire expedition of 66 in an unintentional wintering on the Kola 

 Peninsula. Barents, wintering intentionally in 1597 on Novaya 

 Zemlya, lost his own life, and several of his companions died with 

 him. But gradually it developed that Arctic wintering did not make 

 death inevitable, nor even necessarily probable. 



What destroyed the early explorers seems to have been chiefly 

 their own imagination, with its direct and indirect results. The 

 pioneers were not literally frightened to death, but their fears probably 

 affected their digestion and their mental processes directly. It kept 

 them indoors, too, with many evil results. It was believed the winter 

 "darkness" would produce melancholia, and this belief it was rather 

 than the absence of the sun that did produce the expected mental 

 gloom."* And so on with things that make for suffering, disaster, 

 and death. 



When the winterings gradually became safer and safer, it was at 

 first by superior housing, better hygiene, and devices for entertain- 

 ment, such as the local publication of newspapers and magazines, the 

 writing and acting of plays, careful indulgence in supervised games, 

 teaching by the officers and learning by the men, and other mitigants 

 of a winter life that was not very different from hibernation. 



In this stage of Arctic exploration the cold months were endured 

 that work might be accomplished in the warmer spring. But gradually 

 the winter, too, began to be a working season. Many deserve smaller 

 shares of the credit which M'Clintock gets in large part for having 

 broken away from the fear of cold to do active sledging as soon as the 

 spring daylight allowed, paying no attention to the thermometer. To 

 apportion the credit properly for this development would require a 

 special and extensive study, but I would suggest here that Kennedy 

 and other little-heralded captains of the Franklin search made their 



' See especially Meddelelser om Cr0nland, \o\. 67. 



^ See Vilhjalmur Stefansson: The Friendly Arctic, New York. ig2i, pp 22-24. 



