This striking description of the ice in the polar current shows that sailors were sometimes wrecked in it, and reached land on the east coast of Greenland.
The story of Snæbjörn Hólmsteinsson and his companions, who may have reached East Greenland (?), has been given above (p. 264).
An early voyage,[251] which is said to have been made along this coast, is described in the "Floamanna-saga." The Icelandic chief, Thorgils Orrabeinsfostre, is said to have left Iceland about the year 1001, with his wife, children, friends and thralls--some thirty persons in all--and his cattle, to join his friend, Eric the Red, who had invited him to Greenland. During the autumn they were wrecked on the east coast; and it was not till four years later, during which time they lived by whaling, sealing and fishing, and after adventures of many kinds, that Thorgils arrived at the Eastern Settlement. The saga is of late date, perhaps about 1400; it is full of marvels and not very credible. But the description of the country, with glaciers coming down to the sea, and ice lying off the shore for the greater part of the year, cannot have been invented without some knowledge of the east coast of Greenland; for the inhabited west coast is entirely different. The narrative of Thorgils' expedition may therefore have a historical kernel [cf. Nansen, 1890, p. 253; Engl. ed. i. 275]; and moreover it gives a graphic description of the difficulties and dangers that shipwrecked voyagers have to overcome in arctic waters; but at the same time it is gratuitously full of superstitions and dreams and the like, besides other improbabilities: such as the incident of the travellers suffering such extremities of thirst that they were ready to drink sea-water (with urine) to preserve their lives,[252] while rowing along a coast with ice and snow on every hand, where there cannot have been any lack of drinking water. Thorgils, or the man to whom in the first place the narrative may be due, may have been wrecked in the autumn on the east coast of Greenland, near Angmagsalik, or a little to the south of it, and may then have had a hard struggle before he reached Cape Farewell along the shore, inside the ice; but that it should have taken four years is improbable; I have myself in the same way rowed in a boat the greater part of the same distance along this coast in twelve days. It is hardly possible that the voyagers should have lost their ship much to the north of Angmagsalik, as the ice lies off the coast there usually the whole year round; nor is it credible that they should have arrived far north near Scoresby Sound, north of 70° N. lat., where the approach is easier; for they had no business to be there, if they were making for the Eastern Settlement.