[Sidenote: Hunting expeditions of the Norwegians eastward and northward in the Polar Sea]
Norse-Icelandic literature does not tell us that the Norwegians in their voyages to Bjarmeland went any farther east than "Gandvik" (the White Sea) and the Dvina. But it is to be noted that the sagas as a rule only mention the expeditions of chiefs, with warlike exploits, fighting and slaughter of one kind or another; while peaceful trading voyages, which were certainly numerous, are not spoken of, nor walrus-hunting and hunting expeditions in general, since such occupations were not usually followed by chiefs. We cannot therefore expect to find anything in the sagas about countries or waters where there were no people, and where only hunting was carried on.
From Ottar, however, who was not a saga-writer, we learn that walrus-hunting was practised, and doubtless very perseveringly, in the ninth century (vol. i. p. 176), and that even at that time he went in pursuit of it as far as the White Sea. It is thus extremely improbable that such hardy hunters should have stopped there, and not continued to move eastward, where there was such valuable prey to be secured. We must suppose that at least they reached the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, where there were walrus and seal in abundance. That such was the case is just as probable as the reverse is improbable, and as it is improbable that expeditions of this kind should have found mention in the sagas. That the Norwegians knew Novaya Zemlya may perhaps be concluded from the mediæval Icelandic geography (cf. vol. i. p. 313; vol. ii. p. 1), according to which the land extended northward from Bjarmeland round the north of Hafsbotn (the Polar Sea) as far as Greenland, making the latter continuous with Europe (cf. the map, p. 2). The knowledge that the west coast of Novaya Zemlya extended northwards into the unknown may have given rise to such an idea. It was general in Scandinavia and Iceland in the latter part of the Middle Ages, whilst Adam of Bremen speaks of Greenland as an island, like Iceland and other islands in the northern ocean. The discovery of "Svalbard" (Spitzbergen ?) in 1194 may, as we shall see directly, have lent support to the belief in this connection by land.