[Sidenote: Nordrsetur not beyond Baffin's Bay]
For many reasons it is unreasonable to look for "Greipar" and "Króksfjardarheidr" so far north as Smith Sound or Jones Sound (or Lancaster Sound), as, amongst others in recent times, Professor A. Bugge [1898] and Captain G. Isachsen [1907] have done:[283]
(1) In the first place this would assume that the Greenlanders on their Nordrsetu expeditions sailed right across the ice-blocked and difficult Baffin's Bay and Melville Bay every summer, and back again in the autumn, in their small clinker-built vessels, which were not suited for sailing among the ice. We are told indeed (see above, p. 299) that the franklins had large ships and vessels for this voyage; but this was written in Iceland by men who were not themselves acquainted with the conditions in Greenland, and the statement doubtless means no more than that these vessels, or rather boats, were large in comparison to the small boats (perhaps for the most part boats of hides) which they usually employed in their home fisheries. Timber for shipbuilding was not easy to obtain in Greenland. Drift-wood would not go very far in building boats, to say nothing of larger vessels, and they must have depended on an occasional cargo of timber from Norway, or perhaps what they could themselves fetch from Markland. They could hardly have got the material for building vessels suited for sailing through the ice of Baffin's Bay in this way. Moreover, we know from several sources that there was great scarcity of rivets and iron nails in Greenland; so that vessels were largely built with wooden nails. In 1189 a Greenlander, Asmund Kastanrasti, came with twelve others from Kross-eyjar in Greenland to Iceland "in a ship that was fastened together with wooden nails alone, save that it was also bound with thongs.... He had also been in Finnsbuðir." He did not sail from Iceland till the following year, and was then shipwrecked.[284] This ship must have been one of the largest and best they had in Greenland. It is therefore impossible that they should have been able to keep up any constant communication with the countries on the north side of Baffin's Bay.
(2) Then comes the question: what reason would they have had for exposing themselves to the many dangers involved in the long northward voyage through the ice? Their purpose may have been chiefly to kill seals and collect driftwood. But where there is much ice for the greater part of the year, the driftwood is prevented from being thrown up on shore; and it is the fact that in Baffin's Bay there is unusually little of it, so that the Eskimo of Cape York and Smith Sound are barely able to get enough wood for making weapons and implements. In addition to the ice the reason for this is that no current of importance bearing driftwood reaches the north of Baffin's Bay. Consequently, this again is conclusive proof that the Nordrsetur of the descriptions is not to be looked for there, nor was sealing particularly good; they had better sealing-grounds in the districts about Holstensborg, Egedes Minde and Disco Bay.[285]
