STILL UNCONQUERED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 3, Issue 648, 28 September 1933, Page 2

STILL UNCONQUERED

FAM;OUS VIKING FOUNDRD COLONY OIsT ARCTIC SHORES. . SCIENTIFIC EXPLORATION. For a thousand years Greenland has been the threshold of northern exploration and new trails. Except in the case of Eric the Red and Hans Egede, and a few explorers driven by scientifie curiosity, the importance of Greenland has been due to financial ainbition. Now that nearly everything whieh may be known is known about Greenland, now that whalers and trading companies and gold seekers have left it to the Eskimos and a few hardy Danes, th^ tide, of commerce still seeks to utilise its unique position. It is the keyston^ of th'e north, and although men now have little curiosityf ahout its outlines and snow-domed interior, its meteqrology and its usefulness as an air 'hase still draw them to it and elmina their lives. For Greenland has never been subjugated. Men live there becqpse of their yearly contact with the outside world; once cut off they would be forced to resort to an .Esk-imo ciyili- ■ sation, and perhaps would vanish as did IEric's settlers hundreds of years ago. Mysterious Epic. The fqnnding of the Vikimg! settlements in Greenland and their eventual disappearance are a part of the mysterious epic of this Northern land. The Norsemen fou^d their way into ■Greenland as a natural consequenee of their settlement of Iceland. Tales of a land to the west reached Iceland, and when Eric the Red was driven out of Iceland hecause of his yiolence, he made his way to Greenland in 983, and, turning the southem cape, went ashore on the south-west coast. Despite Greenland's icy mountains the sh'ore line is not unpleasant in summer, and it is helieved that in Eric's time the seasons were mdlder than usual. He found groves of willow and birch trees in the f jords, and pasture for cattle and sheep, and he called the land Greenland. He built a homestead named Brattahild,- and resolv.ed to found a colony. Two years later a fleet of ships arrived with horses, cattle, sheep and other animals, and building materials. Yiking Settlement. The settlements of the Vikings can still he traced, for at one time there must have been 2000 people living • there. There were 12 churches in the East Bygd, as it was called, and four in the West Bygd. The settlers did not at first come in contact with the Eskimos, although there are reports of fights between them later. By th'e middle of the 14th century all communication with Eric's colony ended, and the Greenlanders of that early day disappeared, It was not until 400 years later that a Norwegian went b,ack to Greenlqnd, qnd he was a missdonary. In the meantime there had begun that surging north of the British , merchant adventurers, driven by the hope of a north-west passage to China and India and the insatiable curiosity of the time. Martin Frobisher was the first to push his wqy into the northern islands, finding his way on his first voyage to the strait which bears his name. On his second voyage he sighted Greenland and on his third voyage actually landed there and found Eskimos. He was the first European to set foot on- the island since the Norwegian settlement. From that on for many years seekers after the north-west passage •touched at 'Greenland and explored its , coast, writes Russel Owen in the New York Times. By the 18th century a good deal " was known of this strange eountry.. Nor>yegian Colony. Then came another dram^tic attempt to found a colony there. Hans Egede, a Norwegian priest, felt that it was his duty to find the lost Vikings, and he set sail in a little ship with crew, his wife and four children, 40 people altogether. He found the ruins of the churches. After a time he devoted himself to the conversion of the Eskimos, and so interested the Danish' Government in the land that a settlement was established at what is now Godthaab, the capital of Danish Greenland. For 10 years Hans Egede laboured with his natives, and then the settlers were ordered to return home. Egede chose to remain, 10 sailors staying with • him, j and a year's provisions heing left. I There was a change of heart on the ! part of the Government in 1733, and it was determined to retain the Greenland trade. Both the mdssion and the settlement were taken under the Danish protection, and since then the Danish influence in Greenland has been paramount. Recently Denmark ohtained jurisdiction even over the part of coast claimed by Norway. Penetrate Interior. Although the first serious attempt to penetrate the interior of Greenland was made by Nordenskjold in 1870 and 1883, it was not until two years ago thqt actual knowledge of the greatest mass of ice except Antarctica was gained. Then it was found by sounding operations that Greenland is actually a rim of mountains containing a bowl of ice 8800 feet thick in the centre, a mass which spills into the North Atlantic those icebergs which used to be the greatest menaces to northern navigation-. Nordenskjold penetrated some distance "into the interior, and so did Peary, later, the first to reach the North Pole, but it was left to Fridtjof Nansen , perhaps the greatest of northern explorers, to cross the inland ice for the first time. £Ie went ashore

on tfie east coast of Greenlanfl, near the southern end, in August, 1388, * and with five companlons, usipg sledges' and sMs, and sometimes sails, tjiey made their way across the qgp to Godthaab.' He found the greatest . elevation of ice to be about 9000 feet, and encountered stromgi winds, surface lakes and rivers, and even rain. Peary in 1893 and 1895 made two, journeys across the northern end of Greenland, and discovered Independence Bay. He was the first to use dogs on t/ie inland ice, killing them,as the load lightenea, so that they fprnished rfoo4 for the ^emajpder, Later he nsed this method of transport on his dash to the North Pole. Scientifie Exporation. _ With the attainment of the Pole by Peary and the first North-west Passage by Amundsen, there carpe a new phase inj the investigation of Greenland, one of pure scientifie examination and, exploration. The names of Rasmussen, • Kqch, Mikkel^on, who travepsed th'e inland ice, studied the Eskimos and charted northern outlines, are written large in tlie chronicle of this work, whieh still con'tinqes. Interest in Greenland's climate and the effect it has upon^the weather of ihe northern hemisphere qoincided with the deyelopment of the aeroplane to a point where itj was a. reliable instrunient of long-distance travel. Greenland's meteorology hecame important not only to scientists, hut to : those seeking a new north-east passage hy air to Europe. The flight of the United States Army pilots around the world showed that Greenland could he used as a hase, even though its foigs and winds, its scarce landing places, made it anything but desirable. Von Gronau, the German aviator, same across the Atlantic twice by that route, and once flew over th'e ice cap. He barely made the passage, but his success roused to action men who hegan to pick at the vast bowl of ice, to, dig into its dome, to soqnd itg depths with dynamite, to live on its cap for the winter, reading instruments, to sound the air above it with balloons — until little by little Greenland has shed some more of its mystery. Toll of Greenland. The notable expeditions of recent years were those led hy Alfred Wegener, the 'German professor who. eyolved the th'eory of drifting continents, and hy H. G. Watkins, the young Englishman, who souight meteorological knowledge. Both men lost their lives. Wegener died on the ice cap; Watkins was drowned. A -third expedition, that of the University of Michigan organised several years ago by Professor William H. Hohhs, is still at work in the heart of Greenland. The findings of these men form th'e background for the praetical surveying undtrtaken hy Lindbergh. There are suitable landing places on the snow of the ice cap, even lakes in summer time where a 'plane with pontoons might land, hut alongi the coasts the drifting ice and rocky beaches make landing diffieult. Mfich flying has been done there with small 'planes by men willing to take chances, and there have been nq serious mishaps, but Greenland as a base for a passenger air route is another matter, and there is great doubt as to its present feasibility. That it should even be contemplated or attempted is somewhat startling in view of Greenland's history. From the open iboats of Erid, to the I flying boat of von Gronau and the fast 'plane of Lindbergh marks more than the passage of 1000 years, but even so, Greenland is still the stormcrested and threatening block of rock-rimmed ice it has ever been. Not all man's ingenuity has yet completed its conquest.