Polar Explorers for Kids

Historic Expeditions to the Arctic and Antarctica with 21 Activities

By Maxine Snowden

Chicago Review Press Incorporated

Copyright © 2004 Chicago Review Press
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-55652-500-1

Contents

Introduction,
Part I The Arctic Arctic Exploration Time Line,
1 Erik the Red Reaches Greenland, 981 or 982,
2 John Davis Dances with Inuit and Explores the Davis Straits and Labrador, 1585–1587,
3 Henry Hudson Ventures Northwest and Northeast in Search of a Passage, 1607–1610,
4 William Parry Explores Lancaster Sound and Beyond, 1819–1820, 1821–1823, 1824–1825, and 1827,
5 John Franklin Leads Arctic Exploration's Biggest Disaster, 1845–1847,
6 Fridtjof Nansen Travels "Farthest North," 1893–1896, and Roald Amundsen Discovers the Northwest Passage, 1903–1906,
7 Robert Peary and Fredrick Cook Race to the North Pole, 1908 and 1909,
8 Gretel Ehrlich Explores Greenland's Nature and Its Native Peoples, 1993–2000,
Part II The Antarctic Antarctic Exploration Time Line,
9 Captain James Cook's Three Voyages to Antarctica's Edge, 1768–1775,
10 James Clark Ross Explores Antarctica by Ship, 1839–1843,
11 Robert Scott and Roald Amundsen Race to the South Pole, 1910–1912,
12 Ernest Shackleton Attempts to Cross Antarctica, 1914–1916,
13 Admiral Richard E. Byrd Is First to Fly Over the South Pole, 1929,
14 Scientist Bill Green Studies Antarctic Lakes, 1980–1994,
Epilogue,
Selected Answers,
Glossary,
Web Sites,
Bibliography,
Photo Credits,
Index,

CHAPTER 1

Erik the Red Reaches Greenland, 981 or 982

You might think that the first person to lay claim to land in the majestic Arctic would be a gallant hero — a nobleman in search of glory for his king, maybe, or a scientist on a quest for discovery and knowledge. That is not the case, however. The person credited with first settling territory in the Arctic was actually a bloodthirsty killer who discovered Greenland, a part of the Arctic, while running for his life.

Erik the Red was a Viking. The Vikings were an aggressive group of Scandinavian explorers and warriors who plundered the coasts of Europe in the eighth to tenth centuries. Even by Viking standards, Erik the Red was considered a particularly nasty person, and he was exiled from his native country of Norway after committing murders, according to the Graenlendinga Saga, a medieval Icelandic chronicle. Upon his exile, Erik settled in Iceland with his father, Thorvald. But his taste for blood didn't stop. He murdered two more men in Iceland, which earned him a three-year sentence of outlawry. In the 900s Iceland had no prisons; the punishment for murder was banishment from "civilized" society. Those who were outlawed were forced to surrender their farms and most of their other possessions and run away to far-off places, where they tried to hide until their sentence was up (according to the law, anyone who could find them during the years of their sentence could kill them). Some outlaws left Iceland only to sneak back into mainland Scandinavia. Some hid out in caves or secluded sheds on small, uninhabited islands, but the long winters took most of their lives. Erik the Red decided to find a new country instead.

The year was either 981 or 982 — historians are not sure of the date. After his sentence, Erik the Red quickly found a temporary hiding place on Oxen Island, a very small island in one of Iceland's west-coast bays. He chose this place because the dangerous tidal whirlpools that surround it can swallow a small boat, and he thought that they would protect him from those seeking revenge. Here, with a few allies, he gathered supplies, readied a sturdy boat, and made plans to head off to uncharted territory.

As far back as the early 800s, the Vikings were masters of shipbuilding, and they used their boats to conduct pirate raids upon coastal farms, towns, and churches all over the northern world and as far away as Russia and Turkey. The knörrs, or boats, they built were made of wood. The planks of the knörrs were caulked and treated with animal hair or wool, which was heated until it was almost like tar, then smeared onto the wood to seal it. The keel (the main structural part of a boat, which extends down into the water from the boat's bottom) of a Viking ship was not only long, but was made of one piece of wood so that it was especially strong. This made the ship easier to steer, as did the steerboard, a rudder that extended out from the right side of the ship. (The modern word starboard comes from this word.) The Vikings' boats had sails, but they were also outfitted with oars to use as a backup. The ships were about 76 feet long and about 17 feet across at the widest point. They required only six feet of water in order to float, making it easy to approach close to shore. Each boat carried a crew of about 35 people on warfaring voyages, but the ships carried more people on journeys of exploration such as Erik the Red's. A Viking ship could also carry 30 tons of cargo. Every night a tent was strung up over much of the boat so that people could sleep under a shelter.

Viking explorers such as Erik the Red had no maps of their routes, no charts of ocean depth or ocean currents, and no compasses to aid them on their journeys. Yet the Vikings navigated all over the northern world and beyond.

How did Erik the Red navigate his way without getting lost or going in circles? He used several subtle techniques. To avoid getting lost on the trackless ocean, he always tried to sail in a straight line. On clear days, the Vikings used the sun to accomplish this. In the northernmost part of the world, mid-May through mid-August has always been the favorite time to undertake explorations, because during this summer season it never gets dark. For this reason, the region is called "the Land of the Midnight Sun." Icelanders used this to their advantage on journeys. They also knew where the sun was positioned in the sky at noon in their homeland, and they used that knowledge to steer their ships, keeping the sun at that same height and adjusting their course every day at noon.

On cloudy days the Vikings looked for land-dwelling birds to guide them to shore. If there were any such birds in the vicinity of the boat (the Vikings knew which birds lived on shore and which lived out on the open ocean), the Vikings could follow them to land as they flew home each evening. This method has its limits, however; it only works relatively close to land, and it does not work at all in the spring and fall migration seasons, when shorebirds do not fly back and forth to land daily. But the Vikings were natural observers of their environments, and they knew that on cloudy days they could also look for iceblink, a faint yellowish or greenish haze that appears on the underside of clouds in the far distance. A yellowish haze was the reflection up onto the clouds of a vast area of snow or ice; a greenish haze was the reflection of land. Spotting iceblink requires keen attention, but once the greenish haze was seen, the Vikings could steer toward it.

At night, Erik the Red used the North Star to navigate, again using the principle of staying on a straight route over the open ocean. This is the only star in the northern hemisphere that does not appear to move from our vantage point on Earth: all the other stars in the constellations...