50 Arctic and Antarctic Exploration [part i 
a south wind with thick weather, and they let the ship 
go before the wind. The storm ceased and it again 
became light and they saw many islands, and different 
kinds of game, both seals and whales, and great numbers 
of bears. They came right into the bay, and the whole 
coast came in sight, as well as the south coast with 
glaciers, and south of them there were also glaciers as 
far as they could see. There were signs that Skrsel- 
lingers had, in bygone times, lived in these places ; but 
they could not land because of the bears. They sailed 
back for three days and found relics of Skrsellingers. 
Then they came to some islands south of Snaefell. 
They sailed thence south to Kroksfjord, a long day's 
rowing. On Jacob's mass day 1 it froze at night, but 
the sun shone both day and night, and was not higher 
at noon than in the south, so that if a man lay across 
a six-oared boat, stretched out under the gunwale, the 
shadow from the side nearest the sun fell on his face, but 
at midnight the sun was as high as it is at home in the 
settlement when it is in the N.W. They then sailed home 
to Gardar." 
The day of the summer solstice is implied as the time 
of this observation. Proceeding upon this assumption 
Professor Rafn 2 calculated that, in the 13th century, on 
the 25th of July, the sun's declination was 17 0 54' N., and 
the inclination of the ecliptic 23 0 32'- Gardar was in 
6o° 55' N. At the summer solstice, the height of the 
sun there, when in the N.W., was 3 0 40', equivalent to 
the midnight altitude of the sun on St James's day 
(July 25th) in latitude 75 0 46', which is the latitude of 
Cape York. 
The Norse explorers, starting from Kroksfjord (Wol- 
stenholme Sound) sailed into the north water of Baffin's 
Bay. They then went northwards from about 76 0 for 
three doeg, 108 miles each doeg. This brought them 
some distance up Smith Sound, beyond 8o°. They saw 
many islands and glaciers and then returned southward 
for three doeg, coming to some islands, possibly the 
Cary Islands. Thence a long day's pull brought them 
to Kroksfjord. Seven hundred years afterwards, a lofty 
1 July 25th. 
2 Antiq. Amer. xxxix. 
