In Northern Mists Volume I Part 8

It will be seen that Scandia would not be much larger than Thule: 20'

longer from west to east, and only 10' longer from north to south.

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Scandinavian North according to Ptolemy. The most northern people in Scandinavia, the Phinni, are omitted in this map, as in most MSS.]

The "Chaedini" must be the Norwegian "Heinir" or "Heinir," whose name is preserved in Heimork, Hedemarken [cf. Zeuss, 1837, p. 159; Much, 1893, p.

188; Mullenhoff, 1900, p. 497]. This is the first time that an undoubtedly Norwegian tribe is mentioned in known literature. "Phinni" (Finns) is only found in one MS.; but as Jordanes (Ca.s.siodorus) says that Ptolemy mentions seven tribes in Scandia, it must have been found in ancient MSS. of his work, and it occurs here for the first time as the name of a people in Scandinavia. Ptolemy also mentions "Phinni" in another place as a people in Sarmatia near the Vistula (together with Gythones or Goths); but these must be connected with the "Fenni" of Tacitus, and doubtless also belong originally to Scandinavia. The "Gutae" must be the Gauter or Goter, unless they are the Guter of Gotland (?). The "Dauciones," it has been supposed, may possibly be the Danes, and the "Levoni" might perhaps be the Hilleviones mentioned by Pliny, whose name does not otherwise occur. Thus a knowledge of Scandinavia slowly dawns in history.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ptolemy's map of Europe, etc., compared with the true conditions (in dotted line)]

To the north of the known coasts and islands of Europe there lay, according to Ptolemy and Marinus, a great continuous ocean, which was a continuation of the Atlantic. On the extreme north-west was "the Hyperborean Ocean, which was also called the Congealed (pep????) or 'Cronius' or the Dead (?e????) Sea." North of Britain was the Deucaledonian Ocean, and east of Britain the Germanic Ocean as far as the eastern side of the Cimbrian Chersonese, that is, the North Sea and a part of the Baltic. This was joined by the Sarmatian Ocean, with the Venedian (i.e., Wendish) Gulf, from the mouths of the Vistula north-eastwards. The Baltic was still merely an open bay of the great Northern Ocean. But whether the latter extended farther to the east, round the north of the c.u.mene, making it into an island, was unknown. Ptolemy and Marinus therefore put the northern boundary of the known continent at the lat.i.tude of Thule, and made this continent extend into the unknown on the north-east and east; they thus furnish the latest development of the doctrine that the c.u.mene was not an island in the universal ocean, since they considered that guesses about the regions beyond the limits of the really known were inadmissible, and no one had reached any coast in those directions; for the Caspian Sea was closed and not connected with the Northern Ocean. In the same way the extent of Africa towards the south was uncertain, and they connected it possibly with south-eastern Asia, to the south of the Indian Ocean, which thus also became enclosed.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ptolemy's tribes in Denmark and South Sweden]

Ptolemy wrote at a time when the Roman Empire was at its height, and he had the advantage of being able, as a Greek, to combine the scientific lore of the older Greek literature with the ma.s.s of information which must inevitably have been collected from all parts of the world by the extensive administration of this gigantic empire. His work, like that of Marinus, was therefore a natural fruit which grew by the stream of time.

But the stream had just then reached a backwater; he belonged to a languis.h.i.+ng civilisation, and represents the last powerful shoot which Greek science put forth. Some thirteen centuries were to elapse before, by the changes of fate, his works at last made their mark in the development of the world's civilisation. In the centuries that succeeded him the Roman Empire went steadily backwards to its downfall, and literature degenerated rapidly; it sank into compilation and repet.i.tion of older writers, without spirit or originality. It is therefore not surprising that the literature of later antiquity gives us nothing new about the North, although communication therewith must certainly have increased.

[Sidenote: Solinus, 3rd century A.D.]

The geographical author of antiquity most widely read in the Middle Ages was C. Julius Solinus (third century A.D.), who for the most part repeated pa.s.sages from Pliny, with a marked predilection for the fabulous. All that is to be found in the MSS. of his works about Thule, the Orcades and the Hebudes, beyond what we read in Pliny, consists, in the opinion of Mommsen [1895, p. 219], of later additions by a copyist (perhaps an Irish monk) of between the seventh and ninth centuries, and as this has a certain interest for our country it will be dealt with later under this period.

[Sidenote: Avienus, circa 370 A.D.]

Rufus Festus Avienus lived in the latter half of the fourth century A.D.

and was proconsul in Africa in 366 and in Achaea in 372. His poem "Ora Maritima" is mainly a translation of older Greek authors and, as mentioned above (p. 37), is of interest from his having used an otherwise unknown authority of very early origin. His second descriptive poem is a free translation of Dionysius Periegetes.

[Sidenote: Macrobius, Orosius, Capella, etc.]

Amongst other authors who in this period of literary degeneration compiled geographical descriptions may be named: Ammia.n.u.s Marcellinus (second half of the fourth century) in his historical works, Macrobius[126] (circa 400 A.D.), the Spaniard Paulus Orosius, whose widely read historical work (circa 418 A.D.) has a geographical chapter, Marcia.n.u.s of Heraclea (beginning of the fifth century), Julius Honorius (beginning of the fifth century), Marcia.n.u.s Capella (about 470 A.D.), Priscia.n.u.s Caesariensis (about 500 A.D.) and others.

Their statements about the northern regions are repet.i.tions of older authors and contain nothing new.

[Sidenote: Itineraries]

Much of the geographical knowledge of that time was included in the already mentioned (p. 116) "Itineraries," which were probably ill.u.s.trated with maps of the routes. Partial copies of one of them are preserved in the so-called "Tabula Peutingeriana" [cf. K. Miller, vi. 1898, pp. 90 ff.], which came to be of importance in the Middle Ages.

Thus at the close of antiquity the lands and seas of the North still lie in the mists of the unknown. Many indications point to constant communication with the North, and now and again vague pieces of information have reached the learned world. Occasionally, indeed, the clouds lift a little, and we get a glimpse of great countries, a whole new world in the North, but then they sink again and the vision fades like a dream of fairyland. It seems as though no one felt scientifically impelled to make an effort to clear up these obscure questions.

Then followed restless times, with roving warlike tribes in Central Europe. The peaceful trading communication between the Mediterranean and the northern coasts was broken off, and with it the fresh stream of information which had begun to flow in from the North. And for a long time men chewed the cud of the knowledge that had been collected in remote antiquity. But Greek literature was more and more forgotten, and it was especially the later Roman authors they lived on.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of the World from a ninth-century MS. (in the Strasburg Library)]

CHAPTER IV

THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES

Thus it came about that the geographical knowledge of later antiquity shows nothing but a gradual decline from the heights which the Greeks had early reached, and from which they had surveyed the earth, the universe and their problems with an intellectual superiority that inclines one to doubt the progress of mankind. The early Middle Ages show an even greater decline. Rome, in spite of all, had formed a sort of scientific centre, which was lost to Western Europe by the fall of the Roman Empire. To this must be added the introduction of Christianity, which, for a time at any rate, gave mankind new values in life, whereby the old ones came into disrepute. Knowledge of distant lands, or of the still more distant heavens, was looked upon as something like folly and madness. For all knowledge was to be found in the Bible, and it was especially commendable to reconcile all profane learning therewith. When, for instance, Isaiah says of the Lord that He "sitteth upon the circle of the earth" (i.e., the round disc of the earth), and "stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in" [xl. 22], and that He "spread forth the earth" [xlii. 5, xliv. 24], and when in the Book of Job [xxvi. 10] it is said that "He has compa.s.sed the waters with bounds, where light borders on darkness," such statements did not agree with the doctrine of the spherical form of the earth; this was therefore regarded with disfavour by the Church; the circular disc surrounded by Ocean, which was the idea of the childhood of Greece, was more suitable, and according to Ezekiel [v. 5-6] Jerusalem lay in the centre of this disc. It was inevitable that knowledge of the earth and of its farthest limits should be still more crippled in such an age, and this is especially true of knowledge of the North.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cosmas's Map of the World. The surface of the earth is rectangular and surrounded by ocean, which forms four bays: the Mediterranean on the west (with the Black Sea), the Caspian above on the right, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf below on the right. The Nile (below), the Euphrates and the Tigris flow from the outer world under the ocean to the earth's surface]

Those writers who in the early part of the Middle Ages occupied themselves with such worldly things as geography, confined themselves mostly to repeating, and in part further confusing, what Pliny and later Latin authors had said on the subject. The most widely read and most frequently copied were Solinus and Capella, also Macrobius and Orosius. This was the intellectual food which replaced the science of the Greeks. Truly the course of the human race has its alternations of heights and depths!

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cosmas's representation of the Universe, with the mountain in the north behind which the Sun goes at night. The Creator is shown above]

But even if the migrations had for a time interrupted peaceful trading intercourse with the North, they were also the means of new facts becoming known, and it was inevitable that in the long run these migrations, and subsequent contact with the northern peoples, should leave their mark on the science of geography. The knowledge of the North shown in the literature of the early Middle Ages is thus to be compared with two streams, often quite independent of one another; the one has its source in cla.s.sical learning and becomes ever thinner and more turbid; the other is the fresh stream of new information from the North, which we find in a Ca.s.siodorus or a Procopius. Sometimes these two streams flow together, as in an Adam of Bremen, and they may then form a mixture of like and unlike, in which it is often hopeless to find one's way.

[Sidenote: Cosmas Indicopleustes, 6th century]

It is true that some were found, even in the early Middle Ages, who maintained the doctrine of the earth's spherical form, whereas early Christian authors, such as Lactantius (ob. 330) and Severia.n.u.s (ob. 407), had a.s.serted that it was a disc; the latter also thought that the heaven was divided into two storeys, an upper and a lower, with the visible heaven as a division; the earth formed the floor of this celestial house.

One ancient notion (in Empedocles, Leucippus, Democritus) was that this disc of the earth stood on a slant, increasing in height towards the north, which was partly covered by high mountains, the Rhipaean and Hyperborean ranges (as in Ptolemy's map). These childish ideas took their most remarkable shape in the "Christian Topography," in twelve books, of the Alexandrine monk, Cosmas Indicopleustes (sixth century). In his younger days he had travelled much as a merchant and seen many wonderful things, amongst others the wheel-ruts left by the Children of Israel during their wanderings in the wilderness. The Jews' tabernacle, he thought, was constructed on the same plan and in the same proportions as the world. Consequently the earth's disc had to be made four-cornered, with straight sides, and twice as long as it was broad. The ocean on the west formed a right angle with the ocean on the south. On the north was a high mountain; behind it the sun was hidden in its course during the night.[127] As the sun in winter traverses the sky in a lower orbit, it appears to us as though it receded behind the mountain near its foot, and it stays away longer than in summer, when it is higher. The whole vault of heaven was like a four-cornered box with a vaulted lid, which was divided by the firmament into two storeys. In the lower one were the earth, the sea, the sun, moon and stars; in the upper one the waters of the sky. The stars were carried round in circles by angels, whom G.o.d at the creation appointed to this heavy task. It was impossible for the earth to revolve, simply because its axle must be supported by something, and of what kind of material could it be made? He had nothing else worth mentioning to say about the North. But notions such as these had their influence on the earliest mediaeval maps.

[Sidenote: Ca.s.siodorus, 468-570 A.D.]

The first mediaeval author who, so far as we know, definitely gave new information of value about the countries and peoples of the North, was the Roman senator and historian Ca.s.siodorus (born at Scylaceum, it is supposed about 468), who was an eminent statesman under Theodoric, King of the Goths (493-526). After the victories of Belisarius in Italy, Ca.s.siodorus retired into a monastery in southern Italy (Bruttium), which he himself had founded, and died there, perhaps 100 years old (about 570). He wrote several valuable works, amongst them, probably by order of Theodoric, one in twelve books on "The Origin and Deeds of the Goths," which was perhaps completed about 534. This work has unfortunately been lost, and we only know it through the Goth Jordanes, who has made excerpts from it. There is reason to believe [cf. Mommsen, 1882, Promium, p. x.x.xvii.] that Ca.s.siodorus's knowledge of Gothic was defective, and that he has borrowed his information about the North, especially Scandinavia, from a contemporary, or perhaps somewhat older writer, Ablabius, who is referred to in Jordanes' book as "the distinguished author of a very trustworthy history of the Goths," but who is otherwise unknown. Through the Norwegian king Rodulf and his men (see below, under Jordanes), or other Northerners who visited Theodoric, and who were "mightier than all the Germans in courage and size of body," first-hand information was brought concerning the countries of the North, which Ablabius, who certainly knew Gothic, may have written down, and from him Ca.s.siodorus has thus derived his statements, which again are taken from him by Jordanes. In addition to various cla.s.sical authors, some Latin and some Greek, of whom Jordanes mentions many more than he has made use of, it is probable that Ca.s.siodorus has also drawn upon the maps of Roman itineraries [cf.

Mommsen, 1882, Promium, p. x.x.xi.], and perhaps also Greek maps.

[Sidenote: Jordanes, circa 552]

The Gothic monk (or priest) Jordanes lived in the sixth century, and wrote about 551 or 552 a book on "The Origin and Deeds of the Goths" ("De origine actibusque Getarum"), which for the most part is certainly a poor repet.i.tion of the substance of Ca.s.siodorus's great work on the same subject; and in fact he tells us this himself, with the modest addition that "his breath is too weak to fill the trumpet of such a man's mighty speech." It is true that Jordanes a.s.serts in his preface that he has only had the loan of the work to read for three days, for which reason he cannot give the words but only the sense, and thereto, he says, he has added what was suitable "from certain histories in the Greek [which he did not understand] and Latin tongues," and he has mixed it with his own words. But this is only said to hide his lack of originality; for the book evidently contains long literal excerpts from the work of Ca.s.siodorus, while Jordanes' Latin becomes markedly worse when he tries to walk alone.

Not even the preface to the work is original; this is copied from Rufinus's translation of Origines' commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.

Of the uttermost ocean we read in Jordanes:

"Not only has no one undertaken to describe the impenetrable uttermost bounds of the ocean, but it has not even been vouchsafed to any one to explore them, since it has been experienced that on account of the resistance of the seaweed and because the winds cease to blow there, the ocean is impenetrable and is known to none but Him who created it." This conception has a striking resemblance to Avienus's "Ora Maritima" (see above, pp. 37-40), and may very probably be derived from it.

Of the western ocean he says, amongst other things:

"But it has also other islands farther out in the midst of its waves, which are called the Balearic Isles, and another Mevania; likewise the Orcades, thirty-three in number, and yet not all of them are cultivated [inhabited]. It has also in its most western part another island, called Thyle, of which the Mantuan [i.e., Virgil] says: 'May the uttermost Thule be subject to thee.' This immense ocean has also in its arctic, that is to say, northern, part, a great island called Scandza, concerning which our narrative with G.o.d's help shall begin; for the nation [the Goths] of whose origin you inquired, burst forth like a swarm of bees from the lap of this island, and came to the land of Europe."

After having spoken of Ptolemy's (also Mela's) mention of this island, which according to his version of the former had the shape of "a citron leaf, with curved edges and very long in proportion to its breadth" (this cannot be found in Ptolemy), and lay opposite the three mouths of the Vistula, he continues:

"This [island] consequently has on its east the greatest inland sea in the world, from which the River Vagi discharges itself, as from a belly, profusely into the Ocean.[128] On the western side it [the island of Scandza] is surrounded by an immense ocean and on the north it is bounded by the before-mentioned unnavigable enormous ocean, from which an arm extends to form the Germanic Ocean ('Germanic.u.m mare'), by widening out a bay. There are said to be many more islands in it, but they are small,[129] and when the wolves on account of the severe cold cross over after the sea is frozen, they are reported to lose their eyes, so that the country is not only inhospitable to men but cruel to animals. But in the island of Scandza, of which we are speaking, although there are many different peoples, Ptolemy nevertheless only gives the names of seven of them. But the honey-making swarms of bees are nowhere found on account of the too severe cold. In its northern part live the people Adogit, who, it is said, in the middle of the summer have continuous light for forty days and nights, and likewise at the time of the winter solstice do not see the light for the same number of days and nights; sorrow thus alternating with joy, so are they unlike others in benevolence and injury; and why? Because on the longer days they see the sun return to the east along the edge of the axis [i.e., the edge of the pole, that is to say, along the northern horizon], but on the shorter days it is not thus seen with them, but in another way, because it pa.s.ses through the southern signs, and when the sun appears to us to rise from the deep, with them it goes along the horizon. But there are other people there, and they are called Screrefennae, who do not seek a subsistence in corn, but live on the flesh of wild beasts and the eggs of birds,[130] and such an enormous number of eggs [lit., sp.a.w.n] is laid in the marshes that it serves both for the increase of their kind [i.e., of the birds] and for a plentiful supply for the people."

[Sidenote: Screrefennae or Skridfinns]

The "Screrefennae" of Jordanes (in other MSS. "Crefenne," "Rerefennae,"

etc.) are certainly a corruption of the same word as Procopius's "Scrithifini" (Skridfinns), and were a non-Germanic race inhabiting the northern regions (see later). The mention of these people, together with their neighbours the "Adogit," who had the midnight sun and a winter night of forty days (cf. also Procopius), shows without a doubt that Jordanes', or rather Ca.s.siodorus's, authority had received fresh information from the most northern part of Scandinavia, possibly through the Norwegian king Rodulf and his men.

[Sidenote: Adogit]

The mysterious name "Adogit" is somewhat doubtful. P. A. Munch [1852, p.

93], and later also Mullenhoff [ii., 1887, p. 41], thought that it might be a corruption of Halogi ("Haleygir," or Helgelanders) in northern Norway. Sophus Bugge [1907] does not regard this interpretation as possible, as this name cannot have had such a form at that time; he (and, as he informs us, Gustav Storm also independently) thinks that "adogit" is corrupted from "adogii," i.e., "andogii," meaning inhabitants of And or Ando in Vesterlen.[131] The termination -ogii he takes to be a mediaeval way of writing what was p.r.o.nounced -oji, i.e., islanders.[132] But it should be remembered how much the name "Screrefennae" has been corrupted, and that it is very possible that other names may have been so equally.

[Sidenote: Impossibility of forty days' daylight in summer and night in winter]