ICEBERG GIVES UP ITS DEAD.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XII, Issue 245, 29 September 1922, Page 2

ICEBERG GIVES UP ITS DEAD.

VIKING IN COLD STORAGE. Drifting for ten centuries through the uncharted seas north of the Arctic circle, traversing many thousand miles of snow and silence, perhaps pushed hy the ever-grinding ice-floes to the North Pole itself, the body of a Viking a thousand years old has been returned at last to civilisation. Encased from head to heed in a frozen winding sheet that preserved it IBore perfectly than any Egyptian mummy, the Viking’s body was discovered by Danish doctors standing upright in a huge iceberg up on the east coast of Greenland (says Popular Science Siftings). It towered liefore their amazed eyes like an incredible phantom—seven feet tall dad in rude ancient armour, gripping spear and shield, head crowned with the winged helmet of Norse royalty, the whole dimly visible within the transparent tomb of ice. Men with axes chopped away this natural casket. Then the Viking stood as unmarred by time as though he had died but •ycstei*day. He was not dried or shrunken. The skin was white and firm. The hair of the head and the bushy moustache was long and red and silkv. The iceberg had kept him imperishable for posterity. The body is being taken to Copenhagen. There scientists will endeavour to perpetuate the process of preservation by the injection of chemicals. If they are successful the body of the Viking in the Copenhagen museum will be the most remarkable relic on earth. will come to stare at the Norseman who lived and loved and fought a thousand years ago. , The Viking, with his royal winged helmet, mav be no less a celebrity than Lief Ericksen. “Erik the Red.” famed'in saga and rune as a dauntless voyager, believed by many historians who base their assumption on authentic findings) to have oven landed on the shores of America 400 years before Columbus steered the Santa Maria into harbour at San Salvador.