Arctic exploration

The story of the first few centuries of Arctic exploration can, of course, never be written. The early Norsemen, to whom must go the credit for most of the first discoveries, were a piratical race, and their many voyages were conducted, for the most part, in a strictly business-like spirit. Occasionally one of them would happen on a new country by accident, just as Naddod the Viking happened upon Iceland in 861 by being driven there by a gale while on his way to the Faroe Islands. Occasionally a curious adventurer would follow in the footsteps of one of these early discoverers, but no serious attempt was made to widen the field of knowledge thus opened up, unless the Norsemen saw their way to entering upon commercial relations with the natives, to the great disadvantage of the latter.