In Northern Mists Volume Ii Part 13

Werburg's Abbey at Chester, and died at a great age in 1363. Various reproductions of his map are known, but they display little sense of realistic representation. "Scandinavia" is placed in Asia on the Black Sea, together with the Amazons and Ma.s.sagetae, and to the north of it "Gothia" (Sweden ?). Islands in the ocean off the coast of northern Europe are called "Norwegia," "Islandia," "Witland" (or "Wineland," etc.), with "gens ydolatra," "Tile" (Thule) and "Dacia" (Denmark) with "gens bellicosa" somewhere near the North Pole. In spite of this representation on the map, the Polychronicon (cf. above, p. 31) contains various statements about the North, which may point to a certain communication with it, or may be echoes of Northern writers. Higden to a large extent copied an earlier work, the "Geographia Universalis," a sort of geographical lexicon by an unknown author of the thirteenth century,[164]

which is for the most part based on earlier writers, especially Isidore.

Both works are practically untouched by the knowledge of the North that had already appeared in King Alfred and in Adam of Bremen, and show how much ignorance could still prevail in learned quarters on many points connected with these regions. The "Geographia" speaks of "Gothia," or lower Scythia, as a province of Europe, but obviously confuses Sweden (the land of the Gotar) and Eastern Germania (the land of the Goths). Norway ("Norwegia") was very large, far in the north, almost surrounded by the ocean; it bordered on the land of the Goths (Gotar), and was separated from Gothia (Sweden) on the south and east by the river Albia (the Gota river). The inhabitants live by fis.h.i.+ng and hunting more than by bread; crops are few on account of the severity of the cold. There are many wild beasts, such as white bears, etc. There are springs that turn hides, wood, etc., into stone; there is midnight sun and corresponding winter darkness.

Corn, wine and oil are wanting, unless imported. The inhabitants are tall, powerful and handsome, and are great pirates. "Dacia"[165] was divided into many islands and provinces bordering on Germania. Its inhabitants were descended from the Goths (Gotar ? cf. Jordanes, vol. i. p. 135), were numerous and finely grown, wild and warlike, etc. "Svecia" (the land of the Svear) is also mentioned. That part of it which lay between the kingdoms of the Danes and of the Norwegians was called Gothia. Svecia had the Baltic Sea on the east and the British Ocean on the west, the mountains and people of Norway on the north, and the Danes on the south.

They had rich pastures, metals and silver mines. The people were very strong and warlike, they once ruled over the greater part of Asia and Europe.

"'Winlandia' is a country along the mountains of Norway on the east, extending on the sh.o.r.e of the ocean; it is not very fertile except in gra.s.s and forest; the people are barbarously savage and ugly, and practise magical arts, therefore they offer for sale and sell wind to those who sail along their coasts, or who are becalmed among them.

They make b.a.l.l.s of thread and tie various knots on them, and tell them to untie three or more knots of the ball, according to the strength of wind that is desired. By making magic with these [the knots] through their heathen practices, they set the demons in motion, and raise a greater or less wind, according as they loosen more or fewer knots in the thread, and sometimes they bring about such a wind that the unfortunate ones who place reliance on such things perish by a righteous judgment."

It is possible that the name "Winlandia" itself is a confusion of Finland (i.e., the land of the Finns [Lapps], Finmark) with Vinland (cf. above, p.

31); although the description of the country must refer to the former. It may be supposed that a misunderstanding of the name was the origin of the myth of selling wind being connected with it. The idea persisted, and the same myth is given so late as by Knud Leem [1767, p. 3] from an anonymous book of travels in northern Norway.

Of Iceland the "Geographia" says:

"'Yselandia' is the uttermost part of Europe beyond Norway on the north.... Its more distant parts are continually under ice by the sh.o.r.e of the ocean on the north, where the sea freezes to ice in the terrible cold. On the east it has Upper Scythia, on the south Norway, on the west the Hibernian Ocean.... It is called Yselandia as the land of ice, because it is said that there the mountains freeze together to the hardness of ice. Crystals are found there. In that region are also found many great and wild white bears, that break the ice in pieces with their claws and make large holes, through which they plunge down into the water and take fish under the ice. They draw them up through the said holes, and carry them to the sh.o.r.e, and live on them. The land is unfertile in crops except in a few places.... Therefore the people live for the most part on fish and hunting and meat. Sheep cannot live there on account of the cold, and therefore the inhabitants protect themselves against the cold and cover their bodies with the skins of the wild beasts they take in hunting.... The people are very stout, powerful, and very white ('alba')."

In Higden's Polychronicon Gothia is also spoken of as lower Scythia, but among the provinces of Asia, although it is said that it lies in Europe; it has on the north Dacia and the Northern Ocean. But the geographical confusion in this work is greater; as already mentioned (p. 31), the countries of the Scandinavians are described together with the Insulae Fortunatae, Wyntlandia, etc., as islands in the outer ocean. The disagreement between Higden's text and his map gives us an insight into how little weight was attached at that time to the relation between maps and reality; they are for the most part merely graphic schemes. Probably Higden's map was partly copied from an older one, and the desirability of bringing it into better agreement with his text did not occur to him.

[Sidenote: The Cottoniana map]

The so-called "Anglo-Saxon mappamundi" or "Cottoniana" (reproduced vol. i.

pp. 180, 183), which is in the British Museum, occupies a position of its own among early mediaeval maps. Its age is uncertain; it may at the earliest date from the close of the tenth century, but possibly it is as late as the twelfth [cf. K. Miller, iii., 1895, p. 31]. It exhibits no agreement with the text of Priscian (Latin translation of Dionysius Periegetes, see vol. i. p. 114), to which it is appended. Many of the names might rather be derived from Orosius, there is also great resemblance to Mela (cf. vol. i. pp. 85, ff.), and in some ways to the mediaeval maps already mentioned, although the representation of the North is different. Probably an older, perhaps Roman (?) map formed the basis of it. Name-forms like Island, Norweci[166] (Norwegia), Sleswic, Sclavi, may remind us of Adam of Bremen, but they may also be older. This map is doubtless less formal than the p.r.o.nounced wheel-map type, but it does not bear a much greater resemblance to reality, although the form of Britain, for instance, may show an effort in that direction. The peninsula which has been given the name of Norweci (Norway) has most resemblance to Jutland, and the name seems to have been misplaced. No doubt it ought rather to have been attached to the long island lying to the north, which has been given the names Scridefinnas and Island. The representation has great resemblance to Edrisi's map (cf. p. 203), where Denmark forms a similar peninsula, and Norway a similar long island, with two smaller islands to the east of Denmark, which is also alike. The "Orcades Insule"

are given a wide extension on the Cottoniana map, and Tyle (Thule) lies to the north-west of Britain, as it should do according to Orosius. This map does not therefore indicate, any more than the others, any particular increase of knowledge of the North, and compared with King Alfred's work it is still far behind in the dark ages.

[Sidenote: Macrobius's zone-maps]

The zone-maps, already alluded to, which are derived from Macrobius (cf.

vol. i. p. 123), gave a formal representation of the earth of a peculiar kind, which was common throughout the whole of the Middle Ages; they may be regarded as mathematical geography more than anything else. The earth is divided in purely formal fas.h.i.+on into five zones, two of which are habitable: our temperate zone and the unknown temperate zone of the antipodes (in the southern hemisphere); and three uninhabitable: the torrid zone with the equatorial ocean, and the two frigid zones, north and south. These conceptions also reached the North at an early time, and are mentioned in the "King's Mirror," amongst other works, although its author thought that the inhabited part of Greenland really lay in the frigid zone. A zone-map from Iceland is also known of the thirteenth century.

Another of the fourteenth century and a kind of wheel-map of the twelfth century, but with geographical names only without coast-lines, are also found in Icelandic MSS., besides a small wheel- and T-map.[167] Otherwise it is not known that maps were drawn in the North during the Middle Ages.

A purely formal wheel- and T-map is known from Lund before 1159 [see Bjornbo, 1909, p. 189]. Another Danish wheel-map of the sixteenth century is known [see Bjornbo, 1909, p. 192], and Bjornbo reproduces [1909, pp.

193, ff.] two wheel-maps of 1486 from Lubeck, belonging to Professor Wieser, where the lands and islands of the North are drawn as round discs (with names) in the outer universal ocean.

THE ARAB GEOGRAPHERS OF THE MIDDLE AGES

[Sidenote: The Arabs' many connections]

If we turn now from the intellectual darkness of Christian Western Europe in the early Middle Ages to contemporary Arabic literature, it is as though we entered a new world; not least is this shown in geographical science, where the authors follow quite different methods. Through their contact with the intellectual world of Greece in the Orient, the Arabs kept alive the Greek tradition; they had translations in their own language of Euclid, Archimedes, Aristotle, the now lost work of Marinus of Tyre, and others, and of special importance to their geographical knowledge was their acquaintance with Ptolemy's astronomy and geography, which had been forgotten in Europe, and which first became known there through the Arabs (cf. vol. i. p. 116). They were also acquainted with Greek cartography. To this education in Greek views and interests was added the fact that they had better opportunities than any other nation of collecting geographical knowledge; through their extensive conquests and through their trade they reached China on the east--where for a considerable time their merchants had fixed colonies, first in Canton (in the eighth century), and later, in the ninth century, even in Khanfu (near Shanghai)[168]--and the western coasts of Europe and Africa on the west, the Sudan and Somaliland (and even Madagascar) on the south, and North Russia on the north. In spite of the religious fanaticism which in the seventh century made them an irresistible nation of conquerors, they had civilisation enough to remember that "the ink of science is worth more than the blood of martyrs," and there flourished among them a remarkably copious literature, with an endless variety of works, from the ninth century through the whole of the Middle Ages.

[Sidenote: The Arabs' sense for geography]

Although the Arabs never attained the Greeks' capacity for scientific thinking, their literature nevertheless reveals an intellectual refinement which, with the dark Middle Ages of Europe as a background, has an almost dazzling effect. The Arab geographers have a special gift for collecting concrete information about countries and conditions, about peoples' habits and customs, and in this they may serve as models; on the other hand sober criticism is not their strong side, and they had a p.r.o.nounced taste for the marvellous; if cla.s.sical writers, and still more the learned men of the European Middle Ages, had blended together trustworthy information and fabulous myth more or less uncritically, the Arabs did so to an even greater degree, and we often find in them a truly oriental splendour in the mythical; thus it must not surprise us to hear of whales two hundred fathoms long and snakes that swallow elephants in the same author (Ibn Khorda?bah) who says that the earth is round like a sphere, and that all bodies are stable on its surface because the air attracts their lighter parts [thus we have the buoyancy of the air], while the earth attracts towards its centre their heavy parts in the same way as the magnet influences iron [a perfectly clear description of gravitation].

Chiefly on account of the language the new fund of geographical knowledge, which, together with much that is mythical, is contained in the rich literature of the Arabs, did not attain any great importance in mediaeval Europe; on the other hand the Arabs exercised more influence through the geographical myths and tales which they brought orally from the East to Europe, and, as we have seen, the world of Irish myth, amongst others, was influenced thereby.

[Sidenote: The Arabs' connection with the North]

The ideas of the Arabs about the North are, in most cases, very hazy.

Putting aside the partly mythical conceptions that they had derived from the Greeks (especially Ptolemy), they obtained their information about it chiefly in two ways: (1) by their commercial intercourse in the east with Russia--chiefly over the Caspian Sea with the towns of Itil and Bulgar[169] on the Volga--they received information about the districts in the north of Russia, and also about the Scandinavians, commonly called Rus, sometimes also Warank. (2) Through their possessions in the western Mediterranean, especially in Spain, they came in contact with the northern peoples of Western Europe, the Scandinavian Vikings ("Ma?us") in particular, and in that way acquired information.

"Ma?us"[170] means in the west the same northern people, the Scandinavians, whom in the east the Arabs called Rus or Warangs, which word they may have got from the Greek "Varangoi" (???a????) and the Russian "Varyag."

All that the Arab authors of the _oldest_ period have about the North, and that is not taken from the Greeks, they got through their commercial connections with Russia; but it is not until the ninth century and later that anything worth mentioning appears, and even in the tenth and eleventh centuries their ideas on the subject are very much tinged with myth.

Professor Alexander Seippel in his work "Rerum Normannicarum fontes Arabici" [1896], printed in Arabic, has collected the most important statements about the North in mediaeval Arabic literature, and has been good enough to translate parts of these, which I give in the following pages. I have also made some additions from other sources. In an earlier chapter (pp. 143, ff.) several Arabic authors have already been quoted on the connection with Northern Russia.

The imperfection of Arabic script and its common omission of vowels easily give rise to all kinds of corruptions and misunderstandings; this is especially fatal to the reproduction of foreign words and geographical names, which explains the great uncertainty that prevails in their interpretation.

[Sidenote: Ibn Khorda?bah, A.D. 885]

In the oldest Arab writers, of the ninth century and later, there is little or no knowledge of the North. We are only told in some of their works that furs come from there, and that the ocean in the north is entirely unknown. Abu'l-Qasim Ibn Khorda?bah (ob. 912), a Persian by descent and the Caliph's postmaster in Media, thus relates in his "book of routes and provinces" (completed about 885):[171]

"As concerns the sea that is behind [i.e., to the north of] the Slavs, and whereon the town of Tulia [i.e., Thule] lies, no s.h.i.+p travels upon it, nor any boat, nor does anything come from thence. In like manner none travels upon the sea wherein lie the Fortunate Isles, and from thence nothing comes, and it is also in the west." "The Russians,[172]

who belong to the race of the Slavs [i.e., Slavs and Germans], travel from the farthest regions of the land of the Slavs to the sh.o.r.e of the Mediterranean (Sea of Rum), and there sell skins of beaver and fox, as well as swords" (?).

The Russian merchants also descended the Volga to the Caspian Sea, and their goods were sometimes carried on camels to Bagdad.[173]

[Sidenote: Ibn al-Faqih, 900 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Ibn al-Bahlul, 910 A.D.]

[Sidenote: Qodama]

There was no great change in knowledge of the North in the succeeding centuries. Ibn al-Faqih, about 900 A.D., has nothing to say about the North. He mentions in the seventh climate women who "cut off one of their b.r.e.a.s.t.s and burn it at an early age so that it may not grow big,"[174] and he says that Tulia (Thule) is an island in the seventh sea between Rumia (Rome) and Kharizm (Khwarizm in Turkestan), "and there no s.h.i.+p ever puts in." Ibn al-Bahlul, about 910 A.D., gives information after Ptolemy about the lat.i.tudes of the northern regions and mentions two islands of Amazons, one with men and one with women, in the extreme northern ocean [Seippel, 1896]. Qodama Ibn ?afar (ob. 948 or 949 A.D.) says of the encircling ocean (the Ocea.n.u.s of the Greeks) in which the British Isles lie that

"it is impossible to penetrate very far into this ocean, the s.h.i.+ps cannot get any farther there; no one knows the real state of this ocean." [Cf. De Goeje in Ibn Khordadhbeh, 1889, p. 174.]

[Sidenote: Ibn Ruste, 912 A.D.]

Abu 'Ali Ahmad Ibn Ruste, about 912 A.D., says of the Russians ("Rus,"

that is, Scandinavians, usually Swedes) that they live on an island, which is surrounded by a sea, is three days' journey (about seventy-five miles) long, and is covered with forest and bogs; it is unhealthy and saturated to such a degree that the soil quakes where one sets foot on it. They come in s.h.i.+ps to the land of the Slavs and attack them, etc. They have neither fixed property, nor towns, nor agriculture; their only means of support is the trade in sable, squirrel and other skins, which they sell to any one who will buy them. They are tall, of handsome appearance, and courageous, etc.[175] Probably there is here a confusion of various statements; the ideas about the unhealthy bog-lands are doubtless connected with northern Russia, and the trade in sables can scarcely be referred to the Swedes on the Baltic.[176]

[Sidenote: Al-Mas'udi, before 950 A.D.]

The well-known historian, traveller and geographer, Abu'l Hasan 'Ali al-Mas'udi (ob. 956), in his book (allegorically ent.i.tled "Gold-was.h.i.+ngs and Diamond-mines") repeats certain Arab astronomers who say

"that at the end of the inhabited world in the north there is a great sea, of which part lies under the north pole, and that in the vicinity of it there is a town [or land] which is called Tulia, beyond which no inhabited country is found." He mentions two rivers in Siberia: "the black and the white Irtish; both are considerable, and they surpa.s.s in length the Tigris and Euphrates; the distance between their two mouths is about ten days. On their banks the Turkish tribes Kaimak and Ghuzz have their camps winter and summer."

He also states that the black fox's skin, which is the most valuable of all, comes from the country of the Burtasians (a Finnish people in Russia, Mordvins ?), and is only found there and in the neighbouring districts. Skins of red and white foxes are mentioned from the same locality, and he gives an account of the extensive trade in furs, whereby these skins are brought to the land of the Franks and Andalusia [i.e., Spain], and also to North Africa, "so that many think they come from Andalusia and the parts of the land of the Franks and of the Slavs that border upon it."[177] He also has a statement to the effect that before the year 300 of the Hegira [i.e., 912 A.D.] s.h.i.+ps with thousands of men had landed in Spain and ravaged the country.

"The inhabitants a.s.serted that these enemies were heathens, who made an inroad every two hundred years, and penetrated into the Mediterranean by another strait than that whereon the copper lighthouse stands [i.e., the Straits of Gibraltar]. But I believe (though Allah alone knows the truth) that they come by a strait [ca.n.a.l] which is connected with Maeotis [the Sea of Azov] and Pontus [the Black Sea], and that they are Russians [i.e., Scandinavians] ...

for these are the only people who sail on these seas which are connected with the ocean."[178]

This is evidently the ancient belief that the Black Sea was connected through Maeotis with the Baltic.

[Sidenote: Al-Biruni, 1030 A.D.]

The celebrated astronomer and mathematician, Abu-r-Raihan Muhammad al-Biruni (973-1038, wrote in 1030),[179] a Persian by birth, is of interest to us as the first Arabic author who uses the name "Warank"[180]

for Scandinavian, and mentions the Varangians' Sea or Baltic.

In his text-book of the elements of astronomy he says that from "the Encircling Ocean" [the Ocea.n.u.s of the Greeks], out into which one never sails, but only along the coast, "there proceeds a great bay to the north of the Slavs, extending to the vicinity of the land of the Mohammedan Bulgarians [on the Volga]. It is known by the name of the Varangians' Sea ('Ba?r Warank'), and they [the Varangians] are a people[181] on its coast. Then it bends to the east in rear of them, and between its sh.o.r.e and the uttermost lands of the Turks [i.e., in East Asia] there are countries and mountains unknown, desert, untrodden."