Didrik Pining

[7] In Hanseatic records until 1468, he is mentioned as a privateer or naval captain in the service of Hamburg, charged with hunting down English merchant ships in the North Atlantic.

According to Larsen, the mission likely started off from Bergen, went on through to Iceland and Greenland, and eventually discovered Terra do Bacalhau, the "Land of Codfish", later presumed to be Newfoundland or Labrador.

[12] Regardless, no sources explicitly support that Pining and Pothorst had any connections with the journey by Corte-Real, nor that they reached North America (excluding Greenland).

Pining's orders further included investigating what formerly, in the 11th century, had been called the regiones finitimae (i.e. "the coasts opposite those still-remembered but obsolete settlements in Greenland").

[18] He also made state visits of homage to Bergen and Copenhagen, became knighted in Norway, and employed his personal coat of arms which featured a grappling hook.

[3][20] In a treaty concluded between John of Denmark and the Dutch in 1490, it is, however, expressly stated that Didrik Pining (and another admiral named Bartold Busch)[21] were to be excluded from the peace.

[18] In the Skibby Chronicle, Pining (and Pothorst) are mentioned among many pirates who "met with a miserable death, being either slain by their friends or hanged on the gallows or drowned in the waves of the sea,"[23] although this has been disputed by some modern historians.

[19] In a letter to Christian III of Denmark in 1551, the mayor of Kiel, Carsten Griep, sent the king two maps of the north Atlantic made during the expeditions of Pining and Pothorst, "who were sent out by your majesty's royal grandfather King Christian the First, at the request of his majesty of Portugal, with certain ships to explore new countries and islands in the north, have raised on the rock Wydthszerck, lying off Greenland and towards Sniefeldsiekel in Iceland on the sea, a great sea-mark on account of the Greenland pirates (presumably Inuit).

"[24][25] Olaus Magnus wrote in 1555 that Pining and Pothorst, due to their piracy, had "by the Nordic kings been excluded from all human contact and declared outlaws, as a result of their extremely violent robberies and numerous cruel acts against all sailors that they could catch, whether close or distant."

[27] Magnus added that in "1494", the pirates created a giant compass out of a considerable circular space at the top of the cliff, with rings and lines formed of lead, to make it easier for them to know in which direction they could seek a great plunder.