Far North · Modernised and illustrated edition
Northern Navigation
Modernized, illustrated English edition of Navigatio Septentrionalis by Jens Munk (1619-1620).
A veteran of Novaya Zemlya, the Dane Jens Munk sets sail in 1619 for Hudson Bay.
Read more ↓- about 130 pages
- Paperback
- English
- 17th century
Countries covered: Canada · Norway · United Kingdom · Faroe Islands · Greenland
About this book
On 9 May 1619, the Danish captain Jens Munk leaves Copenhagen on the king's orders with two ships, the Unicorn and the Lamprey. His mission: to search for the Northwest Passage.
By way of Norway, the Shetlands, the Faroes and the ice off southern Greenland, he reaches the entrance of Hudson Strait in July. There the real voyage begins: a cautious encounter with the people of the country, weeks of drifting among islets locked in the pack ice, snow as early as August, then the crossing into an immense inland sea.
In September, driven by storms, Munk leads his ships into the shelter of a river on the west coast of the bay and decides to winter there. A polar bear, an eclipse of the moon, a Christmas at the end of the world: winter closes in. Then, from November, sickness spreads through the crew, and the journal becomes the chronicle, day after day, of a struggle to survive.
Written in a sober, pious voice and published in Copenhagen in 1624, this logbook is one of the most gripping testimonies of Arctic exploration. It asks a question that haunts every page: what is left to a man when everything abandons him, except the will to write and to return home?
Product details
- Publisher
- Itinerarium Éditions
- Series
- Far North
- The author
- Jens Munk
- Date of the journey
- 1619-1620
- Modern edition by
- Hélène Garnier
- Language
- English
- Format
- Paperback, 6 × 9 in (15.2 × 22.9 cm)
- Pages
- about 130
The author
Jens Munk
Jens Munk was born in 1579 near Arendal, in what was then Danish Norway, and went to sea as a child. He became a naval captain and a trusted man of Christian IV, and in 1619-1620 he led the Danish expedition in search of the Northwest Passage, which wintered on the west coast of Hudson Bay. Only three men came back, and his journal, Navigatio Septentrionalis (Copenhagen, 1624), made his name. He remained a naval officer until his death in Copenhagen in June 1628.
All books by Jens Munk →The journey mapped
In the Same Place, Through the Centuries
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Luke Foxe, North-West Fox, or Fox from the North-West Passage (1635)
Twelve years after Munk, in 1631, Luke Foxe leaves London in the *Charles*, a small pinnace, passes by Orkney and enters Hudson Strait in June.
Read a free edition → -
Thomas James, The Strange and Dangerous Voyage of Captaine Thomas James (1633)
Leaving Bristol in May 1631 in the *Henrietta Maria*, Thomas James explores the south of Hudson Bay and chooses to winter on Charlton Island, at the head of the bay that now bears his name.
Read a free edition → -
Nicolas Jérémie, Relation du détroit et de la baie d'Hudson (1694-1714)
Born near Quebec, Nicolas Jérémie arrives at Hudson Bay in 1694 with Iberville as interpreter and clerk at Fort Bourbon, on the west coast.
Read a free edition → -
Henry Ellis, A Voyage to Hudson's-Bay, by the Dobbs Galley and California (1748)
In 1746 and 1747, two ships fitted out on the initiative of Arthur Dobbs, the *Dobbs Galley* and the *California*, resume the quest for the Northwest Passage along the western coast of Hudson Bay.
The modern editor
More in this series
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