In Northern Mists Volume Ii Part 12

He also draws my attention to the fact that "the Finnish 'norsu' (in the older language also 'nursa'), 'elephant,' seems to be connected with 'mursu,' which is easily explained by the a.n.a.logous use of walrus-tusks and elephant-tusks."

Professor Olaf Broch also considers my a.s.sumption probable, and has submitted the question of the etymology of the Russian "morsh" to Professor Berneker, who may doubtless be regarded as the first authority in questions of this kind. He replies that a "wild"

etymologist might connect the word with a series of words in Slavic languages which express various movements; but the Russian word, being so definitely localised, must doubtless be derived from the North-Finnish linguistic region. Whether the Finnish "mursu," Lappish "mora," "mora," can be referred to a metathesis of Old Norse rosmhvalr, Danish rosmer, etc., Professor Berneker is unable to determine. "But with loan-words all sorts of anomalies take place, and no rules can be laid down."

If we compare these various utterances of such eminent authorities, it appears to me that there are paramount reasons for regarding the Russian-Finnish name for walrus as of Norse origin. But in that case it also becomes probable that the Norwegians were the pioneers in walrus-hunting along the coasts of the Polar Sea, and that both the Finnish peoples and the Russians learned from them.

It will doubtless be difficult to find a natural explanation of the peoples on the northern coasts of Russia having from the first developed their arctic sea-hunting with large craft, unless we suppose that they learned it from the Norwegians, and that it is thus a continuation of the methods of the latter. It should also be remembered that the Kola peninsula as far as the White Sea itself was reckoned a tributary country of Norway (cf. p. 135), and that the name of the Murman coast means simply the Norwegians' coast. None of the peoples on the north coast of Russia can have been a seafaring people very far back, as is shown by their boats and appliances; and it is difficult to believe that they should have been able to develop independently a system of navigation on a coast presenting such unfavourable conditions; no doubt they could have done so with small boats, originally river-boats,[159] but not with larger craft; this they must most probably have learned from their nearest seafaring neighbours, the Norwegians, who were masters at sea.

It is remarkable that already as early as in Adam of Bremen white bears (polar bears) are mentioned as occurring in Norway (cf. vol. i. pp. 191, f.). That this might be due to the connection with Iceland and Greenland, even at that time, is perhaps possible, but not very probable, as these countries are mentioned separately by Adam. The white bears in Norway may rather point to a connection with the Polar Sea and to the Norwegians having practised sealing there.

[Sidenote: Mention of white bears in Norway]

It is perhaps due to the same connection of the Norwegians with the Polar Sea that we find on the Italian Dalorto's map of 1325 (see next chapter) and on several later maps the statement that there are white bears in northern Norway. Probably polar bears' skins were brought to the south from Norway as an article of commerce and the Norwegians may have obtained the skins partly by their own hunting in the Polar Sea, partly by the trade with Greenland, and partly, no doubt, by that with the peoples on the north coast of Russia. The Arab Ibn Sa'id (thirteenth century) mentions white bears in the northern islands, amongst them the island of white falcons (i.e., Iceland). "These bears' skins are soft, and they are brought to the Egyptian lands as gifts." In the "Geographia Universalis" of the thirteenth century (see next chapter) the white bears in Iceland are described. It was a common idea in southern Europe in the Middle Ages that Greenland, and sometimes also Iceland (cf. Fra Mauro's map), lay to the north of Norway, or they were made continuous with it, and even a part of it.

The Venetian Querini, who was wrecked on Rost Island and travelled south through Norway in 1432, says that he saw a perfectly white bear's skin at the foot of the Metropolitan's chair in St. Olaf's Church at Trondhjem.[160] As Greenland was under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Trondhjem, this skin may have been a gift from pious Greenlanders, as perhaps were also the Eskimo hide-canoes mentioned by Claudius Clavus (cf. p. 85). In Norse literature polar bears are always connected with Icelanders or Greenlanders, who sometimes brought them alive as gifts to kings.

[Sidenote: Decline of the Norwegians' sea-hunting]

We may thus conclude from what has been advanced above that the hunting of whales, seals, and particularly walrus was of great importance to the Norwegians in ancient times, and for the sake of the last they certainly made extended expeditions in the Arctic Ocean. It may therefore be difficult to understand how it came about that this sea-hunting declined to such an extent in more recent times that we hear nothing about the Norwegians' hunting in the Polar Sea, while in the sixteenth century fleets from the northern coasts of Russia were engaged in fis.h.i.+ng and walrus-hunting; and Peder Clausson Friis is able to say of whaling in Norway (about 1613):

"In old time many expedients or methods were used in these lands [i.e., Norway] for catching whales ... but on account of men's unskilfulness they have fallen out of use, so that they now have no means of hunting the whale unless he drifts ash.o.r.e to them."

This seems to show that the Norwegians' whaling in open sea had really gone out of practice, for otherwise this author must have known of it; on the other hand, whale-hunting in the fjords, which were closed by nets, has continued to our time. Walrus-hunting (as well as sealing) appears to have been still carried on in Finmark in Peder Clausson Friis's time.

His description of the animal and its hunting is in part accompanied by stories similar to those in Olaus Magnus and Albertus Magnus (see p. 163), and he mentions the great strength of walrus-hide ropes, and their use "for clappers in hanging bells, item for sh.o.r.e-ropes and other ropes, and for the screws on the quay at Bergen, with which the dried fish is screwed into barrels, and for such other uses as no hawser or cable can so well serve for." This shows that these ropes must have been widely employed and that there must have been considerable hunting of walrus. According to an order of Christian IV., dated from Bergenhus Castle, July 6, 1622, fifteen walrus-hides were to be bought yearly for the King's service,[161] and from K.

Leem's description it seems that walrus was still hunted in Finmark in his time (1767). He says too [1767, p. 302] that "even the Sea-Lapps of the Varanger-Fiord formerly practised whaling, using for that purpose appliances invented and made by themselves." To this is added in a note by Gunnerus: "The same thing may also be said in our time of the Lapps in Schjerv-island and of a few peasants in Nordland, especially in Ofoten."

But in none of these accounts is there any hint that the Norwegians carried on their hunting beyond the limits of the country, as Ottar did in the ninth century.

The decline of this productive hunting may have come about through the concurrence of many circ.u.mstances. Hostile relations with the Karelians and Russians on the east may have had some influence on it; as the latter in increasing numbers took up the same hunting in their smacks, the eastward waters may have become unsafe for the Norwegians, who, though superior in seamans.h.i.+p, were inferior in numbers. But a more important factor was the rapid growth of the fisheries on the home coasts in Finmark after the fourteenth century, which may have claimed all available hands, leaving none over for fis.h.i.+ng in more distant waters. Besides which the influence of the Hanseatic League no doubt contributed; then, as later, they learned to prefer the valuable trade in dried fish to fitting out vessels for the more uncertain and dangerous hunting in the Polar Sea, which they knew nothing about. Finally came the royal edict of April 1562, which enforced Bergen's monopoly in the trade with Finmark, whereby the dead hand was laid upon this part of the country, as formerly upon Greenland. In those days a corresponding displacement of the arctic fisheries must have taken place from Norway to north Russia, as in the last century again a displacement took place in the contrary direction, when the Russian hunting in the Arctic Ocean and Spitzbergen ceased and the Norwegians again became the only hunters in these waters.

[Sidenote: Decline of Norwegian navigation]

It was a concatenation of unfortunate accidents that produced the gradual decline of the voyages of the Norwegians and of their unrestricted command of all northern waters from the White Sea, and probably also Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen, over all the northern islands, Shetland, the Orkneys (to some extent the Hebrides, Man and Ireland), the Faroes, Iceland, and as far as Greenland, and probably also for a time the north-east coast of America. Unfavourable political conditions had a great deal to do with this, not the least of them being the long union with Denmark, with the removal of the seat of government to Copenhagen, which was extremely unfavourable to the interests of Norwegian commerce. To this was added the growing power of the Hanseatic League in Norway, the effect of which was as demoralising to all activity in the country as it was paralysing to our navigation. But not the least destructive were the royal monopolies of trade with the so-called tributary countries of the kingdom; like all State monopolies, they laid their dead hand upon all private enterprise.

In this way the Norwegian command of northern waters received its death-blow; while the mercantile fleets of other nations, especially the English, came to the fore, to a large extent by making use of Norwegian seamans.h.i.+p and enterprise; thus the English seaport of Bristol seems to have had many Norwegians among its citizens, who certainly found there better conditions to work under than at home.

The ma.s.s of knowledge the Norwegians had acquired about the northern regions, before their time entirely unknown, was to a great extent forgotten again; and at the close of the Middle Ages all that remained was the communication with Iceland and the knowledge of the neighbouring seas, besides the continuance of the connection between the White Sea and Norway; while the voyage to Greenland, to say nothing of America, was forgotten, at any rate by the ma.s.s of the people.

The development of humanity often proceeds with a strangely lavish waste of forces. How many needless plans and unsuccessful voyages, how much toil and how many human lives would not a knowledge of the Norwegians'

extensive discoveries have been able to save in succeeding ages? How very different, too, might have been the development of many things, if by the chances of an unlucky destiny the decline of Norwegian navigation had not come just at a time when maritime enterprise received such a powerful impetus among more southern nations, especially the Portuguese, then the Spaniards, later the French, the English and the Dutch. By their great discoveries it was these nations who introduced a new era in the history of navigation, and also in that of polar voyages. But if Norwegian seamans.h.i.+p had still been at its height at that time, then certainly the Scandinavians of Greenland would once more have sought the already discovered countries on the west and south-west, and the Greenland settlements might then have formed an important base for new undertakings, whereby a new period of prosperity for Norwegian navigation and Norwegian enterprise might have been introduced. This was not to be; it was only reserved for the Norwegians to be the people who showed the way to the other nations out from the coasts and over the great oceans.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XIII

THE NORTH IN MAPS AND GEOGRAPHICAL WORKS OF THE MIDDLE AGES

At the beginning of the Middle Ages and down to the fifteenth century the cartography of the Greeks, which had reached its summit in the work of Ptolemy, was entirely unknown in Europe; while the early Greek conceptions (those of the Ionian school) of the disc of the earth or "c.u.mene" as a circle (called by the Romans "orbis terrarum," the circle of the earth) round the Mediterranean--and externally surrounded by the universal ocean--had persisted through the late Latin authors, and probably also through Roman maps. At the same time Parmenides' doctrine of zones (cf.

vol. i. pp. 12, 123) remained prevalent owing to its enunciation by Macrobius, and maps exhibiting this doctrine were common until the sixteenth century. These two conceptions became the foundation of the learned view and representation of the world, and consequently also of the North, throughout the greater part of the Middle Ages. It was the age of speculation, not of observation. The Scandinavians were the first innovators in geography, by going straight to nature as it is, unfettered by dogmas. The Italian and Catalan sailors followed later with their portulans (sailing-books) and compa.s.s-charts.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of the world from Albi in Languedoc, also called the Merovingian map (eighth century). The east is at the top, the Mediterranean in the middle, and the universal ocean outside, with its three bays: the Caspian Sea, the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea]

[Sidenote: Oldest mediaeval maps]

[Sidenote: The wheel-map type]

We find what is perhaps the oldest known Christian map of the world (cf.

vol. i. p. 126) in the "Christian Topography" of Cosmas Indicopleustes.[162] An attempt is made to combine the Roman cla.s.sical view of the world, as lands grouped round the Mediterranean, with Cosmas's pious conception of it as formed on the same rectangular plan as the Jews'

tabernacle. A map of the world of somewhat similar form is found in a MS.

(by Orosius and Julius Honorius) of the eighth century, preserved in the library at Albi in Languedoc. But these attempts must be regarded as accidental. Typical of that time were the so-called wheel- or T-maps, the shape of which was due especially to Isidore Hispaliensis (cf. vol. i. pp.

151, ff.). The circular Roman maps of the world seem already to have had a tendency to a tripart.i.tion of the world: Europe, Asia and Africa. Sall.u.s.t (in the "Bellum Jugurtinum") indicates something of the sort, and Orosius's geographical system seems to be founded upon a map of this kind. In St. Augustine we first find the division of the T-map clearly expressed. This dogmatic-schematic form was fixed by Isidore, according to whom the round disc of the earth surrounded by the outer ocean was to be compared to a wheel (or an O), divided into three by a T.[163] Mechanical map-forms after this prescription (cf. vol. i. pp. 125, 150) were common during the whole of the first part of the Middle Ages until the fourteenth century; indeed they circulated and exercised influence far into the sixteenth; but sometimes, in accordance with the four corners of the earth in the Bible, the maps were given a square form instead of a round. In spite of the fact that most authors, among them Isidore himself, expressly declare that the earth had the form of a globe, this does not seem to have been anything more than a purely theoretical doctrine, for in cartographical representations, through the whole of the Middle Ages to about the close of the fifteenth century, there is never any hint of projection, or of any difficulty in transferring the spherical surface of the earth to a plane, which had been so clearly present to the minds of the Greeks.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Beatus map, from Osma, 1203. The east is at the top]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Northern Europe on Heinrich of Mainz's map, at Cambridge (1110)]

[Sidenote: The Beatus map]

[Sidenote: Sall.u.s.t-maps]

The wheel-maps were, as we have said, from the first purely formal; but by degrees an attempt was made to bring into the scheme real geographical information, although the endeavour to approach reality in the representation is scarcely to be traced. To this type of map belongs the so-called Beatus map, which the Spanish monk Beatus (ob. 798) added to his commentary on the Apocalypse, and which was reproduced in very varying forms, ten of which have been preserved. The original map, which is not known, was probably round, but in the reproductions the circle of the earth is sometimes more or less round (as in the ill.u.s.tration, p. 184), sometimes oblong (cf. vol. i. p. 199), and sometimes four-sided with rounded corners [cf. K. Miller, ii., 1895]. Jerusalem was frequently placed in the centre of the wheel-maps, Paradise (often with Adam and Eve at the time of the Fall, or with the four rivers of Paradise) in the extreme east of Asia, which is at the top of the map, and the Mediterranean (Mare magnum), which forms the stem of the T, pointing down (cf. vol. i. p. 150). The cross-stroke of the T was formed by the rivers Tanais (with the Black Sea) and Nile. In the band of ocean surrounding the disc of the earth the oceanic islands were distributed more or less according to taste, and as there happened to be room. Thus in the version of the Beatus map here given, from Osma in Spain (of 1203), Scandinavia appears as an island ("Scada insula") by the North Pole, as in the Ravenna geographer (cf. the map, vol. i. p. 152), and the "Orcades" (the Orkneys) and "Gorgades" (the fabulous islands of the Greeks to the west of Africa) are placed on the north-east of Asia. The so-called Sall.u.s.t-maps, drawn up from Sall.u.s.t's description of the world in the Bellum Jugurtinum [cf. K.

Miller, iii., 1895, pp. 110, ff.], were another type of very formal wheel-maps that were still current in the fourteenth century.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Northern Europe on the Hereford map (circa 1280)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Northern part of the Psalter map (thirteenth century)]

[Sidenote: The North on known wheel-maps of the Middle Ages]

But by degrees many changes were introduced into the strict scheme. The outer coast-line of the continents was in parts indented by bays and prolonged into peninsulas, and the islands were given a less formal shape.

Such attempts appear, for instance, in Heinrich of Mainz's map, which is taken to have been drawn in 1110 [cf. K. Miller, iii., 1895, p. 22], and the closely related "Hereford map" of about 1280 by Richard de Holdingham [cf. K. Miller, iv., 1896; Jomard, 1855]. Some resemblance to these maps is shown by the "Psalter" map in London, of the second half of the thirteenth century, and the closely related "Ebstorf" map of 1284 [cf. K.

Miller, iii. pp. 37, ff.; iv. p. 3; v.]; and it is quite possible that they may all be derived from the same original source; there is in particular a great resemblance in their representation of Britain and Ireland. On the first three of these maps Scandinavia or Norway ("Noreya"

or "Norwegia") forms a peninsula with gulfs on the north and south sides.

On Heinrich's map there is beyond this an island or peninsula, called "Ganzmir," a name which occurs again on the Hereford map (cf. vol. i. p.

157); Miller explains it as a corruption of Canzia, Scanzia (Scandinavia).

On the "Lambert" map in the Ghent codex of before 1125 [cf. K. Miller, iii., 1895, p. 45], "Scanzia," also with the name "Norwegia," is represented as a peninsula with narrow gulfs running up into the continent on each side. "Island" (or "Ysland") appears on Heinrich's and the Hereford maps as an island near Norway. On the Ebstorf map "Scandinavia insula" and "Norwegia" are also shown as islands. Many fabulous countries, such as "Iperboria" (the land of the Hyperboreans), "Arumphei" (on the Psalter map, i.e., the land of the Aremphaeans, cf. vol. i. p. 88), etc., appear as peninsulas or islands in the northern regions on several of these maps; on the other hand, neither Greenland nor Wineland occurs on any of them.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Northern Europe on the Lambert map at Ghent (before 1125)]

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ranulph Higden's map of the world, in London (fourteenth century)]

[Sidenote: Higden's work and the Geographia Universalis]

Ranulph Higden's map of the world, which accompanied his already mentioned work, "Polychronicon" (of the first part of the fourteenth century), is more fettered by the scheme of the wheel-maps in the form of the outer coast-line and of the islands. He took his vows in 1299, was a monk of St.