I- * 
ch. vi] The Norsemen in Greenland 49 
name for the most northern district was Nordsetur. The 
fisheries were carried on with great activity. It is 
certain that, later, there was a station at a place now 
called Kingiktorsuak in 72 0 55' N., for the following 
runic inscription was found there in 1834 '• — 
ERLING SIGVASSON AND BJARNE TORT ARSON AND EINDRID 
ODSSON ON THE SEVENTH DAY BEFORE THE DAY OF VICTORY 1 
ERECTED THESE STONES MCXXXV. 
Thence these gallant explorers, or others, pushed 
still further north through the ice floes, and formed 
a station which was probably in what is now called 
Wolstenholme Sound, a little north of Cape York. It 
was called Kroksfjordar Heidi or "The heights of the 
winding fjord." 
Thirty years after the bold adventurers Erling, 
Bjarni, and Eindrid had set up their stones in 72 0 55' N., 
an Arctic expedition started from Kroksfjord, of which 
an account is given by a priest in Greenland named 
Hallder, in a letter to his friend Arnold, who had also 
been in Greenland but was then, in 1266, court chaplain 
to Magnus Lagaboeter, King of Norway. The notice of 
the letter in the Hauk book is so important with reference 
to the Arctic discoveries of the Norsemen, that we must 
consider it verbatim . 
" This account was written by Priest Hallder from 
Greenland to the Priest Arnold who was then King 
Magnus Lagaboeter 's chaplain. He was in the ship that 
brought Bishop Olaf to Greenland 2 , and they suffered 
shipwreck off Iceland, and found in the sea some planks 
which had been hewn with small adzes, and among them 
there was one in which tools still remained. This summer 
came people who had travelled further north than any 
one until that time of whom accounts had been reported. 
They found no signs but of Skrsellings who had once 
resided at the Kroksfjord, and the people thought it 
might be the shortest way. Therefore the priests sent 
a ship north of the farthest inhabitable district that had 
yet been reached. They sailed away from Kroksfjord, 
and they were out of sight of land. Then there came 
1 A Norse festival which fails on April 28th. 
2 In 1246. 
