Danish Arctic Expeditions, 1605 to 1620 ~ Jens Munk

By C.C.A. Gosch (Editor).

Hakluyt Society. London. 1897. Hakluyt Publications: First Series Nos. 96 & 97 (matching and complete set). First Edition — Rare.

Vol. I - The Danish Expeditions to Greenland in 1605, 1606, and 1607: To Which is Added Captain James Hall’s Voyage to Greenland in 1612.

8vo, [cxvii], 205pp, appendices, index. 7 fold out maps, 3 maps in text, 2 illustrations. Spine a bit faded as is normal with this color binding combined with age, but gilt on spines and covers still bright, small stain on spine of volume I, still a very good set. Internally complete and in very good + condition.

Vol. II The Expedition of Captain Jens Munk to Hudson’s Bay.

8vo, [cxviii], 187pp. 5 fold out maps & one in text index. Spine a bit faded as with Vol. I, but gilt on spines and covers still bright, internally complete and in very good + condition.

An account of the disastrous voyage of Captain Jens Munk who departed Copenhagen in May 1619 in two ships, the Unicorn and the Lamprey, and with a crew of sixty-four men in search of the Northwest Passage. Wintering took place on the shore of Hudson’s Bay near the present town of Churchill, Manitoba. The journey lasted 16 months, and on September 21, 1620, Munk arrived back in Norway with only two crew members still alive (barely). “The fearful mortality which had beset the crew was probably a combination of scurvy and trichinosis, made even more ghastly by exposure. The Danes had been totally unprepared for the rigors of a Canadian winter.” WA Kenyon, The Journals of Jens Munk 1619 — 1620.