As has already been said, the Norwegians (cf. Historia Norwegiæ and the "King's Mirror") and Icelanders (cf. the mediæval Icelandic geography) thought that "land extended from Bjarmeland to the uninhabited parts in the north, and as far as the beginning of Greenland," that is, round the whole of the north of Hafsbotn. From several legendary sagas of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we can see that Svalbard was in fact reckoned among these uninhabited parts in the north, which were reached by sailing past Hálogaland and Finmark, and northward over Dumbshav (see map, p. 34).
Thus, in Samson Fagre's Saga [of about 1350] we read in the thirteenth chapter, "On the situation of the northern lands":
"Risaland lies east and north of the Baltic, and to the north-east of it lies the land that is called Jotunheimar, and there dwell trolls and evil spirits, but from thence until it meets the uninhabited parts of Greenland goes the land that is called Svalbard; there dwell various peoples." [Grönl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 524.]
The outcome of what has been advanced above will be briefly: there can be no doubt, from the sober statement in the Icelandic Annals and in the Landnáma, that the land of Svalbard really was discovered, even though the date need not be accurate; and it may further be regarded as probable that this land was Spitzbergen.
It may be supposed that it was discovered accidentally by a ship on the way between Iceland and Norway, as stated in the Historia Norwegiæ, being driven by storms to the north of Hafsbotn; but the mention of the country in the Landnámabók may indicate that the voyage was made more than once, and that knowledge of the country cannot in any case have been limited to an accidental discovery of this sort. It is more probable that the Norwegians and Icelanders carried on seal- and walrus-hunting northwards along the edge of the ice in the Polar Sea, and in that case it was unavoidable that they should arrive at Svalbard or Spitzbergen. And when it was once discovered they must often have resorted to it; for the valuable walrus was at that time very plentiful there.
[Sidenote: The Russians' arctic sealing a continuation of the Norwegians']
As we nowhere find mention of these sealing expeditions of the Norwegians in the Polar Sea, except in Ottar's narrative, it may be difficult to show certain evidence of their having taken place; but the Russians' seal-hunting in the Polar Sea, of which we hear as early as the sixteenth century, can in my opinion scarcely be explained in any other way than as a continuation in the main of the Norwegians' sealing. When the English, and later the Dutch, came to the Murman coast and the coasts eastwards as far as the Pechora, Vaigach and Novaya Zemlya, they found fleets of Russian smacks engaged in fishing and walrus-hunting; most of them were from the Murman coast, some from the White Sea, and a few from the Pechora. Stephen Burrough thus found in June 1556 no less than thirty smacks in the Kola fjord, which had come sailing down the river, on their way to fishing- and sealing-grounds to the east. These smacks sailed well with the wind free, could also be rowed with twenty oars, and had each a crew of twenty-four men.