416 Pt'of. WordensJiiold — Expedition to Greenland. 



with ice than now. The uniform agreement of the older maps 

 in placing here a strait, extending completely across Greenland, 

 indicates that it is only within the last few centmies that this 

 fjord has been converted into an ice-fjord, and that accordingly the 

 same phenomenon, though on a larger scale, has taken place here as 

 in the northern harbour of Belsound, Spitzbergen. Krantz mentions 

 a similar case with reference to the ice-fjord north of Fredrickshaab, 

 in South Greenland. 



At all the old house-sites in Greenland one meets with graves, 

 and such is the case here. The grave usually consists of a cairn, 

 built of moderately sized stones, in the middle of which an oblong- 

 excavation, about the length of a man, and covered with a large flat 

 stone, forms the chamber. In these we usually find the skeletons of 

 several persons, so that the grave has been a sort of family tomb. 

 Peculiar small chambers close beside the real grave-chamber form 

 store-rooms for the deceased's outfit for the next world. We find 

 here arrow-heads, scraps of" leather, bone, stone or iron knives, 

 water-ladles, bits of stone pans, lamps, pieces of flint, bows, models 

 of canoes, oblong smoked pieces of pebble-stones, small wooden 

 staves, according to the statement of the Greenlanders, dipped in 

 oil, and to be used as torches, etc., etc. In a similar grave-chamber 

 at Fortune Bay I found a number of glass beads, evidently of 

 European origin, beads of bone, flint-points, and some rusty nails 

 (these last probably the most costly among the valuables, which the 

 male or female potentate resting in the grave was to take with him 

 or her to the other world). A Greenlander gave to Dr. Oberg a pair 

 of blinkers, or, more intelligibly speaking, snow-spectacles, made of 

 wood, found in a grave. The proprietor would seem to have suf- 

 fered from weak eyes, and to have been afraid of the reflexion of 

 the light from the snow-fields in the abode of the blessed. 



It seems to be usually assumed, that whatever iron is met with 

 among the Greenlanders is either of meteoric origin, or else has 

 come from the original Northmen colonists, or from the Greenland 

 merchants and whalers of modem times. This assumption appears 

 to me erroneous. First, as regards meteoric iron, it is certainly met 

 with in Greenland, as in all other lands that have been but a short 

 time inhabited by man; in other countries it has been used up during 

 the period when iron was more valuable than gold. The meteoric 

 iron that has hitherto been found in Greenland is, however, gene- 

 rally too hot-short, cold-short, and brittle, to be otherwise than ex- 

 ceptionally used; and even if a piece of better quality should be met 

 with, I cannot see how the Greenlanders, with the tools they at 

 present possess, could possibly forge an arrow-point out of a piece of 

 iron weighing a couple of pounds. But, on the other hand, since the 

 time when ships first began to cross the Atlantic, a wreck may now 

 and then have been carried by the current on to the coast of Green- 

 land, sometimes far up Baflin's Bay. We were able to verify an 

 example of this. In fact, during our stay in North Greenland, a 

 fragment of a small schooner or brig drove on shore at Disko, 

 between Diskofjord and Mellanfjord. As soon as notice of the 



