After leaving Denmark in May, Munk was in position to see the western shore of Davis Strait in early July. However, ice and fog prevented him from approaching land. When the weather cleared, he sailed into Frobisher Bay, thinking it was the Hudson Strait. He followed the shore of the strait between ice and land, and at a place he called ‘Rinsund,’ according to his journal, he anchored and went ashore to talk to the natives and to shoot reindeer. After leaving Rinsund, Munk was caught in the ice for six days before getting to a small cove he called ‘Haresund,’ the modern location of which is not precisely known. By mid-August, he was sailing again towards Hudson Bay. Unfortunately, the English pilots on the ship miscalculated the route, which meant the expedition didn’t get to the ‘Big Sea’ (Hudson Bay) until September of 1619. By that time, the approaching winter made further progress impossible. It was also too late to make a return voyage to Denmark, so Munk and his crew were forced to overwinter in the Unicorn along the frozen shores of the bay.
Munk’s account of the bay is the first to treat the inland sea as a whole, and his map is the first on which the whole of the bay is depicted. While wintering at what is now the town of Churchill, Man., Munk recorded a number of scientific observations and opinions. He wrote about the migrations of birds and an eclipse of the moon, and described the icebergs he had seen in the straits he had navigated.
But the Danes were totally unprepared for the full, unmitigated fury of an Arctic winter. Their clothes were insufficient for the cold, their food supply ran short, and malnutrition and illness ravaged their bodies. Munk’s diary became a litany of the dead and dying as man after man succumbed to scurvy, trichinosis (from eating tainted meat) and exposure.
By mid-February, only seven men remained healthy enough to fetch wood and water and complete everyday shipboard tasks.
“When Laurids Bergen, one of the seamen died on 5 February, I sent an urgent message to the surgeon requesting in God’s name that he assist us with whatever medicine or good advice he might have to offer. Because he himself was very ill and weak at the time, I suggested that he might like to tell me what medicine or remedy would be used for the benefit of the crew. And again he replied, as he had earlier, that without the assistance of God he was helpless.”
Passages such as the one above are interspersed with more hopeful notes about catching ptarmigan and the occasional hare to eat, but even these are tempered by Munk’s dismay that most of the surviving men “could not eat the meat because their mouths were so swollen and inflamed with scurvy.”
On June 4, 1620, believing himself to be the only expedition member still living, Munk, in a weakened, malnourished state and demoralized from the deaths of his crew, wrote something of a last will and testament:
“In as much as I no longer have any hope of living in this world I request for the sake of God if any Christian people should happen to come upon this place that they bury my poor body in the ground, along with the others who may be found here, receiving their reward from God in Heaven. And further that this my journal may be forwarded to my gracious Lord King (every word found herein is altogether truthful) in order that my poor wife and children may obtain some benefit from my great distress and miserable death. Herewith farewell to all the world and my soul into the hands of the Almighty.”
Imagine Munk’s surprise when, four days later, he opened his eyes, realized he was still alive, ventured outside into the spring sunshine, and found he was not alone. “To my astonishment, I saw two men who were still on shore. I thought they too had died long ago.”