THE history of the exploration of the seas between Greenland and America begins in the year 982, when Erik the Red founded on the south-west coast of Greenland the Norwegian colonies which were abandoned about the end of the fourteenth century. To oceanographers, the interest of this episode lies in a suggestion by Otto Pettersson that such voyages could not have been made in the open ships of the Norsemen unless the ice conditions had been much more favourable than they are now, and that the colonies were eventually abandoned because the climate had become more severe. The second stage in the exploration was the series of attempts to find a Northwest Passage, which came to an end with the discovery of Baffin Bay in 1616, and the third brings us down to the present time and includes the whaling voyages, the Danish voyages of discovery along the Greenland coast, and modern Arctic exploration. The reports of the ice masters contained a great store of information as to the general set of the currents and the distribution of icebergs and sea ice, but little else of oceanographical value, and in particular they throw no light on the cause of the great variation from year to year in the amount of ice which drifts southwards to the trans-Atlantic traffic lanes.
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Publish date : 2024-09-07 13:00:00
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