In Northern Mists Volume I Part 30

[160] The "Ost-sae" is the southern and western part of the Baltic with the Cattegat and a part of the Skagerak, as distinguished from the sea to the west of Jutland (the land of the South Danes), which is "the arm of the sea which lies round the country of Britain." The sea west of Norway he also calls the "West-sae." As the Ost-sae is called an arm of the sea, it might be urged that King Alfred therefore regarded Scandinavia as a peninsula; but we see that he also calls the sea round Britain, which he knew better, an arm of the sea.

[161] In another pa.s.sage somewhat later he says that "no men [i.e., Nors.e.m.e.n, Norwegian chiefs] lived to the north of him." This may have been somewhere about Malangen or Senjen, which archaeological remains show to have formed the approximate northern boundary of fixed Norwegian habitation at that time. Norwegians may have lived here and there farther north to about Loppen [cf. A. Bugge, 1908, pp. 407 ff.]; but Ottar doubtless means that no n.o.bles or people of importance lived to the north of him.

[162] It may be explained that the Lapps are called "Finns," both in Old Norse and modern Norwegian. As it is not absolutely certain to what race these ancient "Finns" belonged, it has been thought best to retain Ottar's name for them here.

[163] It is clear Ottar reckoned north and south according to the direction of the land, and not according to the meridian; this is a common habit among coast-dwellers who live on a coast that lies approximately north and south. Ottar's north is consequently nearly north-east.

[164] This would be, according to the number of days' sail given, about midway between Malangen and the North Cape, that is, about Loppen.

[165] That is to say, made a bay of the sea into the land. Ottar has now reached the North Cape.

[166] This was at the entrance to the White Sea, near Sviatoi Nos, or a little farther south-east. If Ottar took as much as six days on the voyage from Malangen to the North Cape, but only four from the North Cape to the entrance to the White Sea, which is nearly double the distance, this may possibly be explained by his sailing the first part within the skerries, among islands, thus making the distance longer and stopping oftener, while on the latter part of the voyage, where there are no islands, he may have sailed much faster with open sea and a favourable wind, and have had less temptation to stop.

[167] The most reasonable way of reading this last much-contested statement is to take "of them" as referring to the walruses, which were seven cubits long, and to understand the sentence about the Norwegian whales, which are larger, as an inserted parenthesis [cf. j.a.petus Steenstrup, 1889]; for it is impossible that six men could kill sixty large whales in two days, and the sobriety of Ottar's narrative makes it very improbable that he made boasts of this sort. King Alfred evidently did not grasp the essential difference between walrus and whale. Another explanation might be that these sixty were a school of a smaller species of whale, which were caught by nets in a fjord, so that King Alfred has only confused their size with that of the larger whales of which he had also heard Ottar speak. An attempt has been made to save the sense by proposing that instead of "with six others" we should read "with six harpoons" ("syx asum") or "with six s.h.i.+ps" ("syx asc.u.m"); but even if such an emendation were permissible, it does not make the statement more credible. What should Ottar do with sixty large whales, even if he could catch them? It must have been the blubber and the flesh that he wanted, but he and his men could not deal with that quant.i.ty of blubber and flesh in weeks, to say nothing of two days. Even a large whaling station at the present time, with machinery and a large staff of workmen, would have all it could do to deal with sixty large whales ("forty-eight" or "fifty"

cubits long) before they became putrid, if they were all caught in two days.

[168] Cf. G. Storm, 1894, p. 95. S. E. Lonborg's reasons [1897, p. 37] for rejecting Storm's view and maintaining the Dvina as the river in question have little weight. Lonborg examines the statements of direction, south, north, etc., as though King Alfred and Ottar had had a map and a modern compa.s.s before them during the description. He has not remarked that Ottar has merely confined himself to the chief points of the compa.s.s, north, east, and south, and that he has not even halved them; how otherwise should we explain, for instance, that he sailed "due north along the coast" from Senjen to the North Cape? This course is no less incorrect than his sailing due south, for example, from Sviatoi Nos to the Varzuga.

To one sailing along a coast, especially if it is unknown, the circ.u.mstance that one is following the land is far more important than the alterations of course that one makes owing to the sinuosities of the coast. The statement that they had the uninhabited land to starboard all the way is consequently not to be got over.

[169] His own words, that he did not know whether the land (at Sviatoi Nos) turned towards the south, or whether the sea made a bay into the land, show also that Ottar cannot have sailed across the White Sea and discovered the land on the other side.

[170] Alfred's word "Beormas" is perhaps linguistically of the same origin as "Perm" or "Perem," which the Russians, at any rate in later times, apply to another Finno-Ugrian people, the Permians, of Kama in north Russia [cf. Storm, 1894, p. 96].

[171] "Rosmal" comes from Old Norse "rosm-hvalr"--horse-whale, of the same meaning therefore as "hval-ross."

[172] Sciringesheal had a king's house and a well-known temple; it may have been situated on the Viksfjord, east of Larvik, where the name Kaupang (i.e., "kjopstad" == market town) still preserves its memory [cf.

Munch, 1852, pp. 377, 380]. Possibly the name may be connected with the Germanic tribe of "Skirer," who are mentioned on the sh.o.r.es of the Baltic, near the Ruger (or Ryger). Connected with Sciringesheal was a kingdom in South Jutland, with the port of "Sliesthorp" (mentioned by Einhard about 804), "Sliaswic" [Ansgarii Vita, c. 24] or "Slesvik," also called "Heidaby." It is possible that Sciringesheal may have been originally founded by Skirer who had immigrated from South Jutland (?). Another hypothesis has been put forward by S. A. Sorensen, who thinks that Sciringesheal may be a translation into Norse of "baptisterium" ("skira"

== to baptize); and that the place was situated near Sandefjord. In that case we should look for a church rather than a heathen temple, and we should have to suppose that attempts had been made to introduce Christianity even before Ottar's time.

[173] Dr. Ingram, in 1807, and Rask [1815, p. 48] propose to read "Isaland" (i.e., Iceland, which was discovered by the Nors.e.m.e.n just at this time), but this does not improve the sense. Besides which, the form "Isaland" for Iceland is not known, and it would mean the land of "ices"

and not of ice. That the true Ireland should be intended would seem to betray greater geographical ignorance than we are disposed to attribute to Ottar or Alfred. Alfred himself mentions "Ibernia" or "Igbernia" (i.e., Ireland) as lying west of Britain, and says that "we call it Scotland." He does not use the name Ireland elsewhere; but here he is quoting Ottar, and the latter may possibly have meant Scotland (?) [cf. Langebek, Porthan and Forster], which was colonised by Irishmen, although it would then be difficult to understand the reference which follows to islands lying "between Iraland and this country" (i.e., Britain). Meanwhile it must be remembered that it was not unusual at that time to place Ireland to the north of Britain (cf. later Adam of Bremen), and there may here be a confusion of this sort. The simplest supposition would be to take "Iraland" for Shetland; but it is difficult to understand how the islands could have received such a designation.

[174] So far as I can discover this is the first time this name for Norway occurs in literature. Lonborg [1897, p. 142] is consequently incorrect in saying that the name "Norvegia" first occurs in the eleventh century.

[175] Einhard calls it "Sinlendi," and it was a part of South Jutland or Sleswick [cf. Munch, 1852, p. 378].

[176] "Denemearc" is mentioned by Alfred for the first time in literature.

[177] Professor Alf Torp has kindly given me a [Norwegian] translation of the poem.

[178] It may be of interest in this connection to remind the reader that Plutarch ["De facie in orbe Lunae," 941] mentions that the island of Ogygia lay five days' sail west of Britain, and that upon one of the islands in the north-west lay Cronos imprisoned (cf. above, p. 156), for which reason the sea was called Cronium. According to the statements of the barbarians "the great continent [i.e., that which lies beyond the ocean, cf. above, p. 16] by which the great ocean is enclosed in a circle" lies nearer to these islands, "but from Ogygia it is about five thousand stadia when one travels with rowing-boats; for the sea is heavy to pa.s.s through, and muddy on account of the many currents; but the great land sends out the streams and they stir up the mud, and the sea is heavy and earthy, for which reason it is held to be curdled." These are similar conceptions to those we have already found in Aristotle's Meteorologica (cf. above, p. 41), and Plutarch is also inclined to place this sluggish sea towards the north-west. Moreover, it seems as though the ancients imagined the stiffened sea (usually in connection with darkness) everywhere on the outer limits of the world. Curtius (of the time of Augustus) in a speech makes Alexander's soldiers (when they try to force him to turn back) use such expressions as that this leads to nowhere, all was covered with darkness and a motionless sea, and dying Nature disappears. Similar conceptions of a curdled and stinking sea and an ocean of darkness near the outer limits of the world are also found in Arabic literature [cf.

Edrisi, 1154 A.D.].

[179] On maps the name possibly appears earlier. On an English map of the world (Cottoniana), possibly of the close of the tenth century (992-994), there is an "Island" (see p. 183); but the possibility is not excluded that the existing copy of this map may be later, and may have taken some names from Adam of Bremen [cf. K. Miller, iii. 1895, p. 37].

[180] This name appears here for the first time in literature (cf.

"Balcia" in Pliny, pp. 71, 99, above). It has also been sought to derive it from the Old Prussian (Lettish and Lithuanian) "baltas," white; it would then mean the white sea, and the name would be due to the sandy coasts of the south-east [cf. Schafarik, Slav. Alt., i. pp. 451 ff.].

[181] We may compare with this the tale of the Arab author Qazwini, of the thirteenth century [cf. G. Jacob, 1896, pp. 9, 37]: "The City of Women is a great city with a wide territory on an island in the western ocean.

At-Tarts.h.i.+ says: its inhabitants are women, over whom men have no authority. They ride horses, and themselves wage war. They show great bravery in conflict. They have also slaves. Every slave in turn visits his mistress at night, remains with her all night, rises at dawn, and goes out secretly at daybreak. If then one of them gives birth to a boy she kills him on the spot; but if a girl she lets her live. At-Tarts.h.i.+ says: the City of Women is a fact of which there is no doubt." This, as we see, is an adaptation of the Greek legend of the Amazons, and of the Scythian women who had children by their slaves [cf. Herodotus, vi. 1]. As a similar story of the City of Women, "west of the Russians," is attributed to the Jew Ibrahim ibn Ja'qb (of the tenth century), which he says he had from the emperor Otto (the Great), it probably dates from the tenth century. Jacob thinks the legend here was due to the name of Magdeburg, which was translated "civitas virginum"; but as the women lived in an island in the ocean it is more probable that it may be derived from Kvaenland. Similar legends seem to have been common in the Middle Ages, and occur in many authors. (Cf. Paulus Warnefridi, above, p. 160). Isidore is said to have made Sweden the original home of the Amazons.

[182] Cf. Plutarch, Thes. 26; Strabo, xi. 504; and others.

[183] Adam's statement (immediately afterwards in the same section) that the land of the Alani or Wizzi was defended by an army of dogs, must be due to a similar misinterpretation of the name "Huns."

[184] This pa.s.sage is undoubtedly taken from Solinus, and we see how Magister Adam confuses together what he has heard and what he finds in cla.s.sical authors.

[185] It seems very probable, as Mr. F. Schiern [1873, s. 13] suggests, that this conception of even the n.o.blest men (n.o.bilissimi homines) being herdsmen may be due to a misunderstanding of the old Norse word "fehirir," which might mean herdsman, but was also the usual word for treasurer, especially the king's treasurer.

[186] This description refers, probably, to the Lapps and their magic arts.

[187] This must be another misunderstanding of tales about Kvaens, whom Adam took for women.

[188] These skin-clad hunters, who spoke a language unintelligible to the Norwegians, were certainly Lapps.

[189] It might be thought that "uri" was here a corruption for "lutrae"

(otters); but as "uri" is found in two pa.s.sages without making sense in its proper meaning, aurochs, it may also be supposed that it is here used as a name for walrus, as proposed by A. M. Hansen; and then the last sentence will be quite simple, that the white bear lives under water like the walrus. The confusion may have arisen through a belief that the tusks of the walrus were aurochs' horns. The horns in the picture of the "Urus"

on the Ebstorf map (1284) are very like walrus tusks. But it is striking that the common land bear is not mentioned, while the white bear is spoken of. As the latter seldom comes to Finmark, its mention points to the Norwegians having hunted it in the Polar Sea; if it be not due to the connection of Norway with Iceland and Greenland, but as these lands are mentioned separately this seems less probable.

[190] This idea may possibly be due on the one hand to the mist, which may have been regarded as brought about by heat; for in a scholium (possibly by Adam himself, or not much later) we read: "By Iceland is the Ice Sea, and it is boiling and shrouded in mist ('caligans')." On the other hand it may be due to statements about volcanoes and boiling springs which have been confused with it. The black colour and dryness of the ice may be due to confusion with lava or with floating pumice-stone in the sea, and statements about the lignite of Iceland ("surtarbrand") may also have given rise to this idea [cf. Baumgartner, 1902, p. 503]. Lonborg's suggestion [1897, p. 165] that it may be due to driftwood is less probable. Compare also the idea in the "Meregarto" (above, p. 181) of the ice as hard as crystal, which is heated. In two MSS. of Solinus, of which the oldest is of the twelfth century [cf. Mommsen's edition of Solinus, 1895, pp. x.x.xiv., x.x.xvii., 236; Lappenberg, 1838, pp. 887 f.], there is an addition about the northern islands in which we read of Iceland: "Yslande.

The sea-ice on this island ignites itself on collision, and when it is ignited it burns like wood. These people also are good Christians, but in winter they dare not leave their underground holes on account of the terrible cold. For if they go out they are smitten by such severe cold that they lose their colour like lepers and swell up. If by chance they blow their nose, it comes off and they throw it away with what they have blown out." This pa.s.sage cannot be derived from Adam of Bremen (nor has it any resemblance to the Meregarto); it may indicate that similar ideas of the ice of Iceland were current at that time. Saxo's remarkable allusion to this ice (in the introduction to his work) also shows that it was connected with much superst.i.tion.

[191] The woods consisted then as now solely of birch-trees, which were however larger at that time.

[192] In a scholium, possibly by Adam himself, there is this correction: "According to what others report, Halagland is the extreme part of Norway, which borders on the Skridfinns and is inaccessible by reason of the forbidding mountains and the harshness of the cold."

[193] This statement that the summer day and the winter night were of the same length cannot here, any more than in Jordanes and Procopius, be due to direct observation on the part of Northerners, but must be an echo of cla.s.sical astronomical speculations (cf. above, pp. 134, 144). It is strange, too, that while in Jordanes (and Procopius) the length of the summer day and winter night was forty days (among the "Adogit" in Halogaland), it is here given as fourteen days in Halogaland. Possibly the number fourteen may be due to a confusion or a copyist's error for forty.

[194] Probably Adam has taken this explanation from Bede [cf. Kohlmann, 1908, pp. 45 ff.].

[195] This pa.s.sage, from "Beyond this island," is not found in all the MSS., whence Lappenberg [1876, p. xvii.] thinks it is a later addition--but by Adam himself, as the style resembles his. To this latter reason it may be objected that when Adam mentions Harold Hardrde earlier in his work, he is disposed to disparage him, which is not the case here.

But since he does not disparage him either in his mention of the Baltic voyage (see p. 185), this is of little importance.

[196] While this sheet is in the press I happen to see that the same opinion has been advanced, almost in the same words, by Sven Lonborg [1897, p. 168].

[197] Adam's idea of Halogaland (Halagland) as an island may be due to its similarity of sound to the "Heiligland" (Heligoland) mentioned by him. As one of these lands was an island it must have been easy to suppose that the other was one also. The interpretation of the name as meaning holy may come from the same source. Heiligland was regarded as holy on account of the monastery established there. A corresponding name, "Eyin Helga," is applied in the sagas to two islands: Helgeo in Mjosen, and the well-known Iona in the Hebrides [Magnus Barfot's Saga, cap. 10]. The latter was holy on account of Columcille's church.

[198] See note 2, p. 197.

[199] Adam did not apparently know the name "Finn," he only mentions Finnedi and Scritefini. It might then seem natural that he should intermix the names Vinland and Finland, and believing that this Fin- or Vin- had something to do with Wine, he may have applied to this land Isidore's description of the Fortunate Isles, in a similar manner as he applied the Greek story about the Amazons to Kvaenland with the Cynocephali, etc.

[200] S. Bugge has since maintained the probability that the name "Skai"

is of Germanic origin.

[201] We shall not here enter into the difficult question of the blond short-skulls, as it has no bearing on our argument.

[202] It might, for instance, be supposed that the Ryger and Horder, who came from north-eastern Germania, were already mixed with short-skulled Slavs before their immigration to western Norway.

[203] Among the known brachycephalic peoples of Europe we have the Celts and the western Slavs, Poles, Czecks, etc. These are linguistically far apart, but it is a question whether the brachycephalic element in both is not originally the same. It must be borne in mind that, at the remote period of which we are now speaking, the linguistic difference between them was certainly small, and for that matter it is of little importance from which of them the first immigration into Scandinavia came.