In Northern Mists Volume I Part 15

We do not seem therefore to have any information or fact which is capable of disproving the unbroken connection between Ottar's Finns, along the coasts of Finmark and Ter, and the Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps of our time, although the latter at present consist to a large extent of impoverished Reindeer Lapps, especially in West Finmark. The original culture of the Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps and the distinction between it and that of the Reindeer Lapps who immigrated later have been preserved to recent times in their broader features. It is true that the Fis.h.i.+ng Lapp no longer keeps reindeer; he only has a poor cow or a few sheep to milk [cf. A. h.e.l.land, 1905, p.

147]; but amongst other descriptions we see from that of the Italian Francesco Negri of his travels in Norway in 1664-5 [L. Daae, 1888, p. 143]

that the Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps of Nordland and Finmark still kept reindeer in the latter part of the seventeenth century. He says of the Finns [i.e., Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps] in Finmark that

"they live either along the coast or in the forests of the interior.

They are, like their neighbours the Lapps, small in stature, and they resemble them in face, clothing, customs and language. The only way in which they differ from the Lapps is, that the latter are nomads, while the Finns of this part have fixed dwellings. They possess only a few reindeer and a little cattle. They are also called Sea Lapps, while the other nomads are called Mountain Lapps...."

[Sidenote: Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps and Reindeer Lapps]

This distinction between Finns (i.e., Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps) and Lapps (i.e., Reindeer Lapps) seems to have been common. Thus in the royal decree of September 27, 1726, both Finns and Lapps are mentioned, and in mediaeval maps of the fifteenth century, beginning with that of Claudius Clavus, of about 1426, we find on the Arctic Ocean in north-east Sweden "Findhlappi,"

and farther north "Wildhlappelandi," and in later Clavus maps [Nordenskiold, 1889, Pl. x.x.x.] we find to the north-east of Norway a "Finlappelanth," and farther north an extensive "Pillappelanth," sometimes also "Phillappelanth," besides a "Finlanth" in the east. Pillappelanth is the same as Claudius Clavus's "Wildlappenland."[211] This word may be thought to have arisen through a misunderstanding of the word "Fjeldlap"

(Mountain Lapp), which Clavus may have seen written as Viellappen and taken to mean Wild Lapp (he calls them "Wildlappmanni"). But, as Mr.

Qvigstad has pointed out to me, the name "Wild Lapps" for Mountain (Reindeer) Lapps is also found in Russian. Giles Fletcher (English Amba.s.sador to Russia in 1588) writes:[212]

"The Russe divideth the whole nation of the Lappes into two sortes.

The one they call 'Nowremanskoy Lapary,' that is, the Norvegian Lappes.... The other that have no religion at all but live as bruite and heathenish people, without G.o.d in the worlde they cal 'Dikoy Lapary,' or the wilde Lappes."

There is, however, a possibility that this Russian name may have come from the maps or in a literary way. In any case we have as early as the fifteenth century a distinction between Finnlapps (i.e., Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps) and Mountain Lapps or Wild Lapps, besides Finns in Finland; but this shows at the same time that they must have been nearly akin, since both are called Lapps.

Of great interest is Peder Clausson Friis's description of the Lapps, which is derived from the Helgelander, Judge Jon Simonsson (ob. 1575). He draws a distinction between "Sea Finns," who live on the fjords, and "Lappe-Finns" or "Mountain Finns," "who roam about the great mountains,"

"and both sorts are also called 'Gann-Finns' on account of the magic they use, which they call 'Gan.'" "The Finns [i.e., Lapps] are a thin and skinny folk, and yet much stronger than other men, as can be proved by their bows, which a Norse Man cannot draw half so far as the Finns can. They are very black and brown on their bodies, and are hasty and evil-tempered folk, as though they had the nature of bears."

"The Sea Finns dwell always on Fjords, where there is sufficient fir and spruce, so that they may have firing and timber to build s.h.i.+ps of, and they live in small houses or huts, of which the half is in the ground, albeit some have fine houses and rooms.... They also row out to fish like other Northern sailors, and sell their fish to the merchants, who come there, for they do not sail to Bergen, and they are not fond of going where there are many people, nor do people wish to have them there, and they apply themselves greatly to shooting seal and porpoise, that they may get their oil, for every Finn must have a quart of oil to drink at every meal...."

"They keep many tame reindeer, from which they have milk, b.u.t.ter, and cheese ... they also keep goats, but no sheep.

"They shoot both elks and stags and hinds, but for the most part reindeer, which are there in abundance; and when one of them will shoot reindeer, he holds his bow and arrow between the horns of a tame reindeer, and shoots thus one after another, for it is a foolish beast that cannot take care of itself."

"The Finns are remarkably good archers, but only with handbows, for which they have good sharp arrows, for they are themselves smiths, and they shoot so keenly with the same bows that they can shoot with them great bears and reindeer and what they will. Moreover they can shoot so straight that it is a marvel, and they hold it a shame at any time to miss their mark, and they accustom themselves to it from childhood, so that the young Finn may not have his breakfast until he has shot three times in succession through a hole made by an auger.

"They are called Gann-Finns for the witchcraft they use, which they call 'Gann,' and thence the sea or great fjord which is between Russia and Finmark, and stretches to Karelestrand, is called Gandvig.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Skridfinn Archer (from Olaus Magnus)]

"They are small people and are very hairy on their bodies, and have a bear's nature...."

"The Sea Finns can for the most part speak the Norse language, but not very well.... And they have also their own language which they use among themselves and with the Lapps, which Norse Men cannot understand, and it is said that they have more languages than one; of their languages they have however another to use among themselves which some[213] can understand, so it is certain that they have nine languages, all of which they use among themselves."[214]

"Of the Mountain Finns the same is to be understood as has now been noted of the Sea Finns; the others [i.e., the former] are small, hairy folk and evil, they have no houses and do not dwell in any place, but move from one place to another, where they may find some game to shoot.[215] They do not eat bread, nor do the Sea Finns either.... And he [the Mountain Finn] has tame reindeer and a sledge, which is like a low boat with a keel upon it...."

From this description it appears with all desirable clearness that, on the one hand, there was no noticeable external difference in the sixteenth century between the small Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps and the small Reindeer Lapps, and on the other there was no essential difference between the Lapps of that time and the Finns described by Ottar--we even find the decoy reindeer still used in the sixteenth century; further, that the Lapps were unusually skilful hunters and archers, for which they were also praised by earlier authorities (we read in many places of Finn-bows, Finn-arrows, etc. Some thought that the man who at the battle of Svolder shot and hit Einar Tambarskelve's bow so that it broke, was a Lapp). We see too that the Reindeer Lapp was not exclusively a reindeer nomad, but practised hunting to such an extent that he moved about for the sake of game, and it even looks as if this was his chief means of livelihood, which is therefore mentioned first. That the reindeer-keeping mentioned by Ottar should have been so essentially different from that of the present day, as A. M. Hansen a.s.serts, is difficult to see. That the decoy reindeer which Ottar tells us were used for catching wild reindeer, and which were so valuable, are no longer to be found in our day is a matter of course, simply because the wild reindeer in northern Scandinavia has practically disappeared from the districts frequented by the Lapps with their tame reindeer. Furthermore, with the introduction of firearms decoy reindeer became less necessary for getting within range of the wild ones; but we see that they were still used in the sixteenth century, when the Lapps continued to shoot with the bow. So long as there was abundance of game, before the introduction of the rifle, the Reindeer Lapp also lived, as we have seen, to a large extent by hunting; but then he was not able to look after large herds of reindeer. It is therefore probable that a herd of 600 deer, as mentioned by Ottar, must then have been regarded as const.i.tuting wealth, although to the Reindeer Lapps of the present day, who live exclusively by keeping reindeer, it would be nothing very great.[216]

Those of the modern Lapps whose manner of life most reminds us of Ottar's "Finns" are perhaps the so-called Skolte-Lapps on the south side of the Varanger Fjord. h.e.l.land [1905, p. 157] says of them: "They have few reindeer and keep them not so much for their flesh and milk as for transport. Their princ.i.p.al means of subsistence is salmon and trout fis.h.i.+ng in the river, and a little sea-fis.h.i.+ng in the fjord on Norwegian ground. They are also hunters."

We must suppose that the "Finns" who according to Ottar, or to Alfred's version of him, paid tribute in walrus-hide ropes, etc., lived by the sea and engaged in sealing and walrus-hunting, and in any case they cannot have kept reindeer except as a subsidiary means of subsistence, like the Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But Alfred's expressions do not exclude the possibility of there having been amongst the "Finns" some who were reindeer nomads like the Reindeer Lapps of our time. That they already existed at that time and somewhat later seems to result from the statements in the sagas of the sheriffs of Halogaland (e.g., Thorulf Kveldulfsson), who in order to collect the "Finn" tribute travelled into the interior and up into the mountains. It cannot have been only wandering hunters who paid this tribute, and they must certainly also have had herds of reindeer.

[Sidenote: Decline of hunting]

That the Lapps have degenerated greatly as hunters and sealers in the last few centuries, and that the Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps no longer enjoy anything like the same prosperity as they did in Ottar's time, and even as late as the seventeenth century, is easily explained. For on the one hand the game both in the sea and on land has decreased to such an extent that it can no longer support any one, and on the other it is a well-known fact that a people originally of hunters loses its skill in the chase to a considerable extent through closer contact with European civilisation, while at the same time it becomes impoverished. How this comes about may be accurately observed among the Eskimo of Greenland in our time. So long as the Lapps were heathens, as in Peder Clausson Friis's time, and were still without firearms and, what is perhaps equally important, without fire-water, and not burdened with schooling and book-learning, they retained their old hunting culture and their hereditary skill in sealing and hunting; but with the new culture and its claims, the new objects, demands and temptations of life, their old accomplishments suffered more or less; nor were they any longer held in such high esteem that the Lapp child had to shoot three times running through an auger-hole before he might have his breakfast. And just as the Eskimo of the west coast of Greenland have been obliged to take more and more to fis.h.i.+ng and bird-catching, which were looked down upon by the old harpooners, so have our Fis.h.i.+ng Lapps become more and more exclusively fishermen.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Snaefells Glacier in Iceland]

CHAPTER VII

THE VOYAGES OF THE NORs.e.m.e.n: DISCOVERY OF ICELAND AND GREENLAND

s.h.i.+PBUILDING

The discovery of the Faroes and Iceland by the Celts and the Irish monks, and their settlement there, give evidence of a high degree of intrepidity; since their fragile boats were not adapted to long voyages in the open sea, to say nothing of carrying cargoes and keeping up any regular communication. Nor did they, in fact, make any further progress; and neither the Irish nor the Celts of the British Isles as a whole ever became a seafaring people. It was the Scandinavians, and especially the Norwegians, who were the pioneers at sea; who developed an improved style of s.h.i.+pbuilding, and who, with their comparatively good and seaworthy craft, were soon to traverse all the northern waters and open up a prospect into a new world, whereby the geographical ideas of the times should undergo a complete transformation. It has been a.s.serted that the Phnicians in their day ventured out into the open ocean far from land; but this lacks proof and is improbable. The Norwegians are the first people in history who definitely abandoned the coast-sailing universally practised before their time, and who took navigation away from the coasts and out on to the ocean. From them other people have since learnt.

First they crossed the North Sea and sailed constantly to Shetland, the Orkneys, North Britain and Ireland; then to the Faroes, Iceland and Greenland, and at last they steered straight across the Atlantic itself, and thereby discovered North America. We do not know how early the pa.s.sage of the North Sea originated; but probably, as we have seen, it was before the time of Pytheas and much earlier than usually supposed. J. E. Sars [1877, i. (2nd ed.), p. 191] concluded on other grounds that it was at a very remote period, and long before the Viking age.

[Sidenote: The First Viking Expeditions]

[Sidenote: Earliest navigation of the Scandinavians]

The beginning of the more important Viking expeditions is usually referred to the end of the eighth century, or, indeed, to a particular year, 793.

But we may conclude from historical sources[217] that as early as the sixth century Viking voyages certainly took place over the North Sea from Denmark to the land of the Franks, and doubtless also to southern Britain,[218] and perhaps by the beginning of the seventh century the Norwegians had established themselves in Shetland and even plundered the Hebrides and the north-west of Ireland (in 612).[219] We know further from historical sources that as early as the third century and until the close of the fifth century the roving Eruli sailed from Scandinavia, sometimes in company with Saxon pirates, over the seas of Western Europe, ravaging the coasts of Gaul and Spain, and indeed penetrating in 455 into the Mediterranean as far as Lucca in Italy.[220] From these historical facts we are able to conclude that long before that time there had been intercommunication by sea between the countries of Northern Europe.

Scandinavia, and especially Norway, was in those days very spa.r.s.ely inhabited, and all development of culture that was not due to direct influence from without must have taken place with extreme slowness at such an early period of history, even where intercourse was more active than in the North. As we are not acquainted with any other European people who at that time possessed anything like the necessary skill in navigation to have been the instructors of the Scandinavians, we are forced to suppose that it was after centuries of gradual training and development in seamans.h.i.+p that the latter attained the superiority at sea which they held at the beginning of the Viking age, when they took large fleets over the North Sea and the Arctic Ocean as though these were their home waters.

When we further consider how, since that time, the type of s.h.i.+ps, rigging and sails has persisted almost without a change for eleven hundred years, to the ten-oared and eight-oared boats of our own day--which until a few years ago were the almost universal form of boat in the whole of northern Norway--it will appear improbable that the type of s.h.i.+p and the corresponding skill in seamans.h.i.+p required a much shorter time for their development.[221]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rock-carvings in Bohuslen]

[Sidenote: The s.h.i.+ps of the rock-carvings]

The first literary mention of the Scandinavians' boats occurs in Tacitus, who speaks of the fleets and rowing-boats without sails of the Suiones (see above, p. 110). But long before that time we find s.h.i.+ps commonly represented on the rock-carvings which are especially frequent in Bohuslen and in the districts east of Christiania Fjord. If these were naturalistic representations they would give us valuable information about the form and size of the s.h.i.+ps of those remote times. But the distinct and characteristic features which are common to all these pictures of s.h.i.+ps, from Bohuslen to as far north as Beitstaden, show them to be conventional figures, and we cannot therefore draw any certain conclusions from them with regard to the appearance of the s.h.i.+ps.

Dr. Andr. M. Hansen [1908], with his usual imaginativeness, has pointed out the resemblance between the rock-carvings and the vase-paintings of the Dipylon period in Attica, and thinks there is a direct connection between them. It appears highly probable that the style of the rock-carvings is not a wholly native northern art, but is due more or less to influence from the countries of the Mediterranean or the East, in the same way as we have seen that the burial customs (dolmens, chambered barrows, etc.) came from these. Dr. Hansen has, however, exaggerated the resemblance between the Dipylon art and the rock-carvings; many of the resemblances are clearly due to the fact that the same subjects are represented (e.g., spear-throwing, fighting with raised weapons, rowers, hors.e.m.e.n, chariots, etc.); it may also be mentioned that such signs as the wheel or the solar symbol (the eye) are common to wide regions of culture. On the other hand, there are differences in other important features; thus, the mode of representing human beings is not the same, as a.s.serted by Hansen; the characteristic "Egyptian" style of the men depicted in the Dipylon art, with broad, rectangular shoulders and narrow waists, is just what one does not find in the rock-carvings, where on the contrary men are depicted in the more naturalistic style which one recognises among many other peoples in a savage state of culture. Hansen also lays stress upon resemblances to figures from Italy. But what most interests us here is the number of representations of s.h.i.+ps in the rock-carvings, which for the most part show a remarkable uniformity as regards their essential features, while they differ from all pictures of s.h.i.+ps, not only in the art of the Dipylon and of the Mediterranean generally, but also in that of Egypt and a.s.syria-Babylonia. The boats or s.h.i.+ps depicted in the rock-carvings are so strange-looking that doubts have been expressed whether they are boats or s.h.i.+ps at all, or whether it is not something else that is intended, sledges, for instance. There is no indication of the oars, which are so characteristic of all delineations of s.h.i.+ps in Greece, Italy, Egypt and a.s.syria; nor is there any certain indication of sails or rudders, which are also characteristic of southern art. Moreover, the lowest line, which should answer to the keel, is often separated at both ends from the upper line, which should be the top strake. On the other hand the numerous figures in the "boats" can with difficulty be regarded as anything but men, and most probably rowers, sometimes as many as fifty in number, besides the unmistakable figures of men standing, some of them armed; and it must be added that if these pictures represented nothing but sledges, it is inconceivable that there should never be any indication of draught animals. But one remarkable point about these numerous carvings is the typical form both of the prow and of the stern-post. With comparatively few exceptions the prow has two turned-up beaks, which are difficult to understand. It has been attempted to explain one of these as an imitation of the rams of Greek and Phnician wars.h.i.+ps; but in that case it ought to be directed forward and not bent up. The shape of the stern-post is also curious: for what one must regard as the keel of the s.h.i.+p has in all these representations a blunt after end, curiously like a sledge-runner; while the upper line of the s.h.i.+p, which should correspond to the top strake, is bent upward and frequently somewhat forward, in a more or less even curve, sometimes ending in a two- or three-leaved ornament, somewhat like the stern-post of Egyptian s.h.i.+ps (see p. 23). This mode of delineation became so uniformly fixed that besides occurring in almost all the rock-carvings it appears again in an even more carefully executed form in the knives of the later Bronze Age. Such a type of s.h.i.+p, with a keel ending bluntly aft, is not known in ancient times in Europe, either in the Mediterranean or in the North.[222]

Egyptian, a.s.syro-Phnician, Greek and Roman representations of s.h.i.+ps (see pp. 7, 23, 35, 48, 241, 242), all show a keel which bends up to form a continuously curved stern-post; and both the Nydam boat from Sleswick (p. 110) and the Norwegian Viking s.h.i.+ps that have been discovered agree in having a similar turned-up stern-post, which forms a continuous curve from the keel itself (pp. 246, 247); it is the same with delineations of the later Iron Age (p. 243). Even Tacitus expressly says that the s.h.i.+ps of the Suiones were alike fore and aft.

The only similar stern-posts to be found are possibly the abruptly ending ones of the s.h.i.+p and boats on the grave-stone from Novilara in Italy; but here the prows are quite unlike those of the rock-carvings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Rock-carving at Bjornstad in Skjeberg, Smlenene. The length of the s.h.i.+p is nearly fifteen feet (from a photograph by Professor G. Gustafson)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Bronze knife with representation of a s.h.i.+p, of the later Bronze Age. Denmark]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Carvings on a grave-stone at Novilara, Italy]

As therefore this representation of the s.h.i.+p's stern-post does not correspond to any known type of ancient boat or s.h.i.+p, as it is also difficult to understand how the people of the rock-carvings came to represent a boat with two upturned prows, and as further there is a striking similarity between the lowest line of the keel and a sledge-runner, one might be tempted to believe that by an a.s.sociation of ideas these delineations have become a combination of s.h.i.+p and sledge. These rock-carvings may originally have been connected with burials, and the s.h.i.+p, which was to bear the dead, may have been imagined as gliding on the water, on ice, or through the air, to the realms of the departed, and thus unconsciously the keel may have been given the form of a runner. It may be mentioned as a parallel that in the "kennings" of the far later poetry of the Skalds a s.h.i.+p is called, for instance, the "ski" of the sea, or, vice versa, a ski or sledge may be called the s.h.i.+p of the snow. The sledge was moreover the earliest form of contrivance for transport. In this connection there may also be a certain interest in the fact that in Egypt the mummies of royal personages were borne to the grave in funereal boats upon sledges. That the rock-carvings were originally a.s.sociated with burials may also be indicated by the fact that the carved stones of the Iron Age, which in a way took the place of the rock-carvings, frequently represent the dead in boats on their way to the underworld or the world beyond the grave (see ill.u.s.tration, p. 243). That s.h.i.+ps played a prominent part in connection with the dead appears also from the remarkable burial-places formed by stones set up in the form of a s.h.i.+p, the so-called s.h.i.+p-settings, in Sweden and the Baltic provinces, as well as in Denmark and North Germany. These belong to the early Iron Age. The usual burial in a s.h.i.+p covered by a mound, in the later Iron Age, is well known. We seem thus to be able to trace a certain continuity in these customs. A certain continuity even in the representation of s.h.i.+ps may also be indicated by the striking resemblance that exists between the two- or three-leaved, lily-like prow ornament on the rock-carvings, on the knives of the later Bronze Age, on the grave-stone of Novilara, and on such late representations as some of the s.h.i.+ps of the Bayeux tapestry. The upturned prows of the s.h.i.+ps of the rock-carvings also frequently end in spirals like the stern-post on the stone at Stenkyrka in Gotland (p. 243), and both prows and stern on other stones of the later Iron Age from Gotland.

[Ill.u.s.tration: s.h.i.+p from the Bayeux tapestry (eleventh century), and rock-carving]

All are agreed in referring the rock-carvings to the Bronze Age; but while O. Montelius, for example, puts certain of them as early as between 1450 and 1250 B.C., A. M. Hansen has sought to bring them down to as late as 500 B.C. In any case they belong to a period that is long anterior to the beginning of history in the North. From whence and by what route this art came it is difficult to say. Along the same line of coasts by which the megalithic graves, dolmens and chambered barrows made their way from the Mediterranean to the North (see p. 22) rock-carvings are also to be found scattered through North Africa, Italy (the Alps), Southern France, Spain, Portugal, Brittany, England, Ireland and Scotland. It may be reasonable to suppose that this practice of engraving figures on stone came first from Egypt at the close of the Stone Age; but the rock-carvings of the west coast of Europe and of the British Isles are distinct in their whole character from those of Scandinavia, and do not contain representations of s.h.i.+ps[223] and men, which are such prominent features of the latter; but common to both are the characteristic cup-markings, besides the wheel, or solar signs (with a cross), foot-soles, and also spirals. There may thus be a connection, but we must suppose that the rock-carvings underwent an independent development in Scandinavia (like the Bronze Age culture as a whole)--if it could not be explained by an eastern communication with the south through Russia, which however is not probable--and as the representation of s.h.i.+ps came to be so common, we must conclude it to be here connected with a people of strong seafaring tendencies. Since the s.h.i.+ps depicted on the rock-carvings cannot, so far as we know at present, have been direct imitations of delineations of s.h.i.+ps derived from abroad--even though they may be connected with forms of religion and burial customs that were more or less imported--we are, as yet at least, bound to believe that the people who made the rock-carvings had boats or s.h.i.+ps which furnished the models for their conventional representations.

And when we see that these people went to work to engrave on the rocks pictures of s.h.i.+ps which are fifteen feet in length, and have as many as fifty rowers,[224] we are bound to believe that in any case they were able to imagine s.h.i.+ps of this size. It is also remarkable that rock-carvings are most numerous precisely in those districts, Viken and Bohuslen, where we may expect that the seamans.h.i.+p of the Scandinavians first attained a higher degree of perfection if it was first imported from the south-east.

With this would also agree Professor Montelius's theory: that at a very much earlier time, about the close of the Stone Age, direct communication already existed between the west coast of Sweden and Britain, which he concludes from remarkable points of correspondence in stone cists with a hole at the end, and other features.