Re: Sailing round Greenland?

D. Patterson wrote a very long post, probably believing that its size would dissuade anyone for looking through it and just finding hot air.

Patterson has argued two things, that polynyas could expand to create open water round north Greenland navigable to wooden ships now or a millenium ago, and that the Norse probably did sail round north Greenland. The documentation he provides quite impressively disproves his first point, and he provides absolutely nothing to support his second one.

Otherwise Patterson roundly shows his probable lack of logical schooling in misrepresenting what others say and then arguing against the strawman he creates. Of course it may alternatively just be dishonesty on his part that leads him to do this.

To put the record straight, with regard to polynyas their main locations around Greenland are in the Baffin Sound (the North Water), in the Nares Strait, on the northeast coast ( Northeast Water) and along the east coast down to Scoresby Sound. I posted on their importance to the Thule last year, as I did on the umiak found by Knuth on Pearyland.

And I still found it very improbable that the Norse ever got much further north than the Kane Basin.



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