and in the years 1892 — 1897 they became a serious danger to navi- 

 gation. 



Nine years afterwards there occurred a remarkable outburst 

 of drift ice from the Arctic Sea which will be in fresh memory in 

 the Scandinavian countries because it was followed by a general 

 failure of the fisheries of cod, herring etc. along our coasts from 

 Finmarken and Lofoten to the Skagerak and Gattegat. The greater 

 part of the Barentz Sea was covered with pack ice up to May, the 

 ice-border approaching to the Murman- and the Finmark-coasts 

 nearer than ever before. Herds of arctic seals visited these coasts 

 and some specimens of the arctic » white-fish » extended their wander- 

 ings to the Christiania fjord and even entered into the Baltic. 

 The position of the moons orbit was as shown in the following dia- 

 gram. 



Fig. 13. 



outbursts of ice from the polar seas. If this is so it seems worth 

 while to discuss the question: what happens at the epochs of maxima 

 of the tidegenerating force ruled by the constellation perihelion node- 

 apside akin to that which occurred at the beginning of the 15th 

 century (fig. 12)? 



Fig. 12. 



Nine years afterwards, in 1912, the last great ice-year of 

 the Labrador current, the situation was as figured in the following / 

 diagram (fig. 13). 



All these constellation are of the type which I have denoted 



as perihelion-apside which brings a secondary maximum of the tide- © 1 



generating force and — if we may judge from late experience — Fig. 14. 



III. 



Iceland and Greenland in Mediaeval time. 



A. Iceland. 



The earliest information we possess regarding the climate of 

 Iceland is derived from the record of the monk Dicuil of Ireland in 

 825. He describes a visit some 30 years earlier by some Irish eccle- 

 siastics to the Island of »Thyle » (Iceland). At that time, about 

 a century before its colonisation by the Norsemen, Iceland was 

 visited and inhabited by the Irish. The Sagas call them »Papar» 

 which indicates that they were monks or hermits and that before 

 the time of the »Landnama» or Viking-age intercourse was kept 

 up between these anachorets and the monastries of their mother- 

 country. Dicuil narrates the description of the island given by 

 his fellow-monks, who had been there from February to August, and 

 adds: ».... because of this I believe that those authors (Plinius, 

 Solinus a. o.) who have written that there is a frozen sea (mare 

 concretum) about Thyle have erred in as much as those who sailed 

 thither have been on that island in the natural season of severe 

 cold. . . . But after a days journey to the north of the island they found 

 a frozen sea (congelatum mare) » 



Like Nansen most geographers of our time take it for granted 

 that the climate of Iceland has not altered in historic time. In order 

 to reconcile Dicuil's description with this view, Nansen makes the 

 totally unwarranted supposition that Dicuil's »Thyle » was in reality 

 part of the Norwegian coast about the lat:s of Iceland, perhaps the 

 coast outside Romsdale. Nansen writes: »A11 the information pre- 

 served regarding »Thyle» fits in on the Norwegian coast, but on 

 no other country. » For my part, I own, I cannot see why Dicuils 

 description should pass for something else than what it claims to 

 be, i e. an account of a visit by some Irish monks to their fellow- 

 monks in Iceland, who, as is actually known, at that time lived 

 on the island as hermits or as missionaries among the Celtic settlers 

 there. As far as we know, no Irish hermits or anachorets settled 

 in Norway in the seventh or eight century. There was no induce- 

 ment then for the monks to sail to Norway and if we assume that 

 they were stormdriven thither it remains to be explained how, in 

 sailing a days journey from the coast off Romsdale, they could come 



upon a frozen sea, a problem that may offer difficulties to those 

 who with Nansen hold that the climate has not varied in historic 

 time. 



According to most of the Sagas, the island was discovered in 874 

 by Ingolf (Are Frode, Islendingbok 1120—1130): 



»Ingolf built (his house) in Reykiavik. Upon that time 

 Iceland was covered wjth woods from mountain to shore. Then 

 there were christian men which the Norsemen call Papar. ...» 



According to another version the island was first visited by 

 Gardar Svavarson, a man born in Sweden after whom the island 

 was called »Gardarsholm » (Tjodrik Munk:s Historia de antiquitate 

 regum Norwegiensium, about 1180, and Sturla's Landnamabok 

 about 1250) The text runs: »Gardar sailed round the land and 

 proved it to be an island. He spent a winter at Husavik in Skial- 

 fande and built a house there (in 864 according to Arngrim Jonsson) 

 In the spring when he was ready to sail a boat drifted from him .... 

 Gardar sailed to Norway and said much in praise of the land. After 

 him the land was called Gardarsholm and there was wood then 

 from mountain to shore. » There was snow on the mountains and 

 because of that Iceland was also called »Sn6landet» (snowland). 

 The name Iceland was given to it by a third viking, Floki Vilger- 

 darson. He sailed south of the island and landed at Vatsfjord on 

 the northwestern shore. »The spring was rather cold. Then Floki 

 went north on the mountain and saw a fjord which was full of sea-ice. 

 Therefore they called the land Iceland. » 



This is the only statement I can find from the Landnama-time 

 which speaks of the ice of the polar current having reached Iceland. 

 It is nowhere mentioned that the driftice hindered the norsemen in 

 their journeys to and from the island. Nowadays the drift-ice is the 

 cause of the bad years in Iceland when, as frequently happens, the 

 ice of the polar current blocks the coast. Its absence in old times 

 must have favoured the cultivation and farming in Iceland even 

 if the climate did not differ much from what it is now in iceless 

 years. 



