Even in this period long before the Renaissance, however, remarkably accurate intelligence about the far north had been accrued, attested in a wide variety of literature and other historical records. Thereafter, interest in the subject declined, to be awakened after the Renaissance in what may be termed a "rediscovery" of the Arctic.
Interest in Western Europe
In the 7th and 8th centuries, European exploration of the Arctic began with the voyages of Irish monks, who handed down intriguing tales of journeys to far-off lands in leather vessels called coracles. Various accounts of expeditions by monks and fishermen to the Arctic Ocean from the 5th to 10th century are recorded, including many fanciful tales of a paradise of abundant fish and terrible oceans of ice. The most reliable reports come from the Irish monks, whose admittedly fragmentary information about the far north was used by the settlers of the Faroe Islands and Iceland.
The Vikings
In the 8th century, the torch of maritime exploration passed from the Irish monks to the Norse Vikings. Farmers in origin but possessed of extraordinary seafaring skills, the Vikings began their navigation career sailing along the coastlines of northern Europe in small boats. Later, as the Vikings honed their shipbuilding acumen, they gradually built bigger ships that extended their activity area, and began invading, plundering and wiping out rival tribes. In their heyday in the 10th century, the Vikings ruled a vast domain that stretched from the Caspian Sea to the Spanish coast.
Terrorizing Europe from their base on the rugged coast that is now Norway, the seafaring Vikings earned a reputation for brutality that was the stuff of legend for centuries afterward. But that harsh temperament enabled the Norsemen to cut a path across some pitiless and capricious seas. The Vikings reached the White Sea coast and settled southern Iceland, where their descendants still live today. In 984 one of the most famous Vikings in history, Erik the Red, led a party to Greenland, where they established a colony. His son, Leif Eriksson, is known to have reached the coast of North America, which he named Vinland; the ruins of one of his settlements can still be seen today in the Canadian province of Newfoundland. The Vikings were the first Europeans to encounter the Inuit and other original inhabitants of the Arctic, and the value of their contribution to the ultimate opening of the NSR is immeasurable. However, we cannot praise their contribution unreservedly. This is because the Vikings left few written records and virtually none of their precious nautical experience survives to the present day. Furthermore, they often exterminated the original inhabitants of these bitterly cold environments.
Whaling exploration
By the 14th century, a new contributor to the quest for the NSR took the stage. From their homes nestled on the broad arc of Biscay Bay, the Basques ventured further and further north in their search for whales, rediscovering the Newfoundland coast and whaling in the fog-bound seas off the Labrador coast. The Basques were soon followed by whalers from the Netherlands, then from England. After demand for whale meat fell, the whalers were able to revive their flagging industry by extracting large quantities of whale oil and baleen from their quarry. This led to intense competition among whalers as the hunters pressed ever northward in the search for new whaling grounds. Although this struggle pushed the whale to the brink of extinction, it also provided a rapid expansion in our knowledge of the Arctic Ocean.
As the foregoing discussion shows, deliberate efforts to navigate and explore the northern seas began with the search for whales.
