ABSTRACT
TO stop ice forming in the very long, freezing nights and becoming packed against piles that must be driven, the sticky oil from the blubber of sea beasts is poured over the water. This floats on the surface and inhibits freezing, as I adequately demonstrated above in Ch. 23 of the book about warfare on ice.1 On these piles, also, sunk like this in the water and driven into the bottom, wooden houses are built of great beams, with planks of fir or pine wood laid upon them, and these are covered with the bark or thin, round stems of poplar or birch.
