An early image and an early map

An early image of Tasersuak Kingua (Qinguadalen)

As part of the end of expedition activities around base camp, a couple of us explored nearby archaeological sites - a number of church sites were marked on the map we were using. Some simple findings were written up in the expedition reports although much of the pleasure was derived simply from locating the remains.

Back in St Andrews, under the guidance of a member of the Medieval History department, some work was then undertaken to try and find out more about these sites. This led to looking at copies of Meddelelser om Gronland ('Communications on Greenland') held in the University library. Meddelelser om Gronland, published since 1879, contains various early items relating to the area. One of these contained an image that was copied and reinked for inclusion in our expedition report.

Today it is possible to browse some early editions of Meddelelser om Gronland. Various libraries have carried out basic ocr digitisation and it has also been included within the Internet Archive project. This latter source gives good access to further images of work by Th. Groth, for example, http://archive.org/stream/meddelelseromgrn694denm#page/n5/mode/2up

Th. Groth was an artist who accompanied Gustav Frederik Holm, the famous Danish explorer and naval officer, on various expeditions to Greenland in which many medieval Norse sites were mapped and Inuit communities discovered. In 1883, the objective was to explore the east coast from Cape Farewell and as far north as possible. The image appeared in an 1894 edition of Meddelelser om Gronland. The map extract is from the same volume and is derived from surveys from earlier expeditions by Holm in 1880 and 1881.

(ref: Encyclopedia Arctica 15: Biographies; Gustav Frederick Holm

http://collections.dartmouth.edu/arctica-beta/html/EA15-36.html)