PROF. NORDENSKIOLD, EXPEDITION TO GREENLAND. 415 



extending completely across Greenland,* indicates that it is only 

 within the last few centuries that this fjord has been converted 

 into an ice-Qord, and that accordingly the same phenomenon, 

 though on a larger scale, has taken place here as in the northern 

 harbour of Bell Sound, 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 moderate-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), &c., &c. 

 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 gi-ave was to take with him or her to the other world). A 

 Greenlander gave to Dr. Oberg a pair of blinkers, or, more in- 

 telligibly speaking, snow-spectacles, made of wood found in a 

 grave. The proprietor would seem to have suflered from weak 

 eyes, and to have been afraid of the reflection 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 has 

 come from the original Northmen colonists, or from the mer- 

 chants and whalers of modern times. This assumption appears 

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

 met with in Greenland, as in all other lands which 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, 

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

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



* The views we got of the land inwards from a high mountain near Kaja 

 showed clearly, however, that the often repeated story of a strait passing 

 completely across Greenland has arisen from a misunderstanding of the Green- 

 landers' accounts of the long narrow fjord. We received from the Green- 

 landers at Auleitsivikfjord a similar account of the southern arm of that 

 fjord ; but on questioning them more closely, it appeared that they only meant 

 that the distance to the extremity of the fjord was, according to their notions, 

 immensely great. Krantz (in the middle of the last century) speaks of the 

 fjord as quite full of ice. It was then long before Giesecke's time, when, 

 according to Brown, " this inlet was quite open for boats" (Quart, Journ. 

 Geol. Soc, xxvi. p. 684). 



