In Northern Mists Volume I Part 11

This description, written half a century before the Norwegians, according to common belief, came to Iceland, shows that the country was known to the Irish, at any rate before the close of the eighth century (thirty years before Dicuil wrote in 825), and how much earlier we cannot say. With the first-hand information he had received from people who had been there, Dicuil may have blended ideas which he had obtained from his literary studies. The sun hiding at night behind a little mound reminds us of the older ideas that it went behind a mountain in the north (cf. Cosmas Indicopleustes and the Ravenna geographer); but of course it may also be due to local observation. The idea that the frozen sea ("congelatum mare") had been found a day's sail north of this island is precisely the same as in the Latin and Greek authors, where, according to Pytheas, the stiffened sea ("concretum mare") or the sluggish sea ("pigrum") lay one day's sail beyond Thule (cf. p. 65). But this does not exclude the possibility of the Irish having come upon drift-ice north of Iceland; on the contrary, this is very probable.

Dicuil's statement of the Irish discovery of Iceland is confirmed by the Icelandic sagas. Are Frode (about 1130) relates that at the time the Norwegian settlers first came to Iceland,

"there were Christians here whom the Norwegians called 'papar'

[priests]; but they afterwards went away, because they would not be here together with heathens, and they left behind them Irish books, bells and croziers, from which it could be concluded that they were Irishmen." In the Landnamabok, which gives the same statement from Are, it is added that "they were found east in Papey and in Papyli. It is also mentioned in English books that at that time there was sailing between the countries" [i.e., between Iceland and Britain].

In many other pa.s.sages in the sagas we hear of them,[158] and the Norwegian author Tjodrik Monk (about 1180) has a similar statement. Many places in south Iceland, such as "Papafjorr" with "Papos," and the island of "Papey," still bear names derived from these first inhabitants. A former name was "Pappyli," which is now no longer used. But besides these place-names there are many others in Iceland which are either Celtic or must be connected with the Celts. Thus, among the first that are mentioned in the Landnamabok are "Minakseyrr" and "Vestmanna-eyjar." "Minak" is an Irish word for a dough of meal and b.u.t.ter, and Westmen were the Irish. It is true that in the Landnamabok [cf. F. Jonsson, 1900, pp. 7, 132, 265]

these names are placed in connection with the Irish thralls whom Hjorleif, the a.s.sociate of Ingolf, had brought with him, and who killed him; but, as the more particular circ.u.mstances of the tale show, it is probable that it is the place-names that are original, and that have given rise to the tale of the thralls, and not the reverse. A. Bugge [1905, pp. 359 ff.] gives a whole list of Icelandic place-names of Celtic origin, mostly derived from personal names;[159] he endeavours to explain them as due to Celtic influence, through Irish land-takers; but the most natural explanation is certainly here as with the Faroes, that there was a primitive Celtic population in Iceland, and not merely a few Irish monks, when the Norwegians arrived; and that from these Celts the Icelanders are in part descended, while they took their language from the ruling cla.s.s, the Norwegians, who also became superior in numbers. Future anthropological investigations of the modern Icelanders may be able to throw light on these questions. The original Celtic population may have been small and dispersed, but may nevertheless have made it easier for the Norwegians to settle there, as they did not come to a perfectly uncultivated country, and to subdue men takes less time than to subdue Nature. As to how, and how early, the Celts first came to Iceland, we know in the meantime nothing.

[Sidenote: Einhard, ninth century]

[Sidenote: Hraba.n.u.s Maurus]

[Sidenote: Rimbertus]

Einhard (beginning of the ninth century), the biographer of Charlemagne, speaks of the Baltic as a bay eastwards from the western ocean of unknown length and nowhere broader than 100,000 paces (about ninety miles), and mentions the peoples of those parts: "'Dani' and 'Sueones,' whom we call 'Nordmanni,'" live on the northern sh.o.r.e and on all the islands, while Slavs and Esthonians and other peoples dwell on the southern sh.o.r.e. The well-known German scholar, Hraba.n.u.s Maurus (circa 776-856), Archbishop of Mayence (847-856), bases his encyclopaedic work, "De Universo" (completed in 847), in twenty-two books, chiefly upon Isidore, from whom he makes large extracts, and has little to say about the North. Rimbertus (end of the ninth century), on the other hand, in his biography of Ansgarius, gives much information about Scandinavia and its people, while the nearly contemporary Bavarian geographer ("geographus Bawarus") describes the Slavonic peoples.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER V

THE AWAKENING OF MEDIaeVAL KNOWLEDGE OF THE NORTH

KING ALFRED, OTTAR, ADAM OF BREMEN

In the ninth century the increasingly frequent Viking raids, Charlemagne's wars and conquests in the North, and the labours of Christian missionaries, brought about an increase of intercourse, both warlike and peaceful, between southern Europe and the people of the Scandinavian North. The latter had gradually come to play a certain part on the world's stage, and their enterprises began to belong to history. Their countries were thereby more or less incorporated into the known world. Now for the first time the mists that had lain over the northern regions of Europe began to lift, to such an extent that the geographical knowledge of the Middle Ages became clearer, and reached farther than that of the Greeks a thousand years earlier.

[Sidenote: King Alfred, 849-901]

But while in the foregoing centuries the clouds had moved slowly, they were now rapidly dispelled from large tracts of the northern lands and seas. This was due in the first place to the voyages of the Scandinavians, especially of the Norwegians. By their sober accounts of what they had found they directed geographical science into new and fruitful channels, and freed it little by little from the dead weight of myths and superst.i.tions which it had carried with it through the ages from antiquity. We find the first decisive step in this direction in the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred the Great of England (849-circa 901 A.D.).

King Alfred had Orosius's Latin history done into Anglo-Saxon, and himself translated large portions of the work. By about 880 he was at peace with the Danish Vikings, to whom he had been obliged to cede the north-eastern half of England. He died about 901. His literary activity must no doubt have fallen within the period between these dates. Finding the geographical introduction to Orosius's work inadequate, especially as regards northern Europe, he added what he had learnt from other sources.

Thus, from information probably obtained from Germans, he gives a survey of Germany, which he makes extend northwards "to the sea which is called 'Cwen-sae.'" What is meant by this is not quite clear; it might be the Polar Sea or the White Sea; on the other hand, it may be the Baltic or the Gulf of Bothnia; for the text does not make it certain whether King Alfred regarded Scandinavia as a peninsula connected with the continent or not.

He speaks of countries and peoples on the "Ost-sae",[160] and he mentions amongst others the South Danes and North Danes both on the mainland (Jutland) and the islands--both peoples with the Ost-sae to the north of them--further the "Osti" (probably the Esthonians, who also had this arm of the sea, the Ost-sae, to the north), Wends and Burgundians (Bornholmers ?), who "have the same arm of the sea to the west of them, and the Sveones (Svear) to the north." "The Sveones have south of them the Esthonian ['Osti'] arm of the sea, and east of them the Sermende [Sarmatians ? or Russians ?]; and to the north, beyond the uninhabited tracts ['westenni'], is 'Cwen-land'; and north-west of them are the 'Scride-Finnas,' and to the west the Norwegians ('Normenn')."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of Northern Scandinavia and the White Sea]

[Sidenote: Ottar's voyage to the White Sea, ninth century]

King Alfred's most important contribution to geographical knowledge of the North is his remarkable account of what the Norwegian Ottar (or "Ohthere"

in the Anglo-Saxon text) told him about his voyage to the North. The brief and straightforward narrative of this sober traveller forms in its clearness and definiteness a refreshing contrast to the vague and confused ideas of earlier times about the unknown northern regions. We see at once that we are entering upon a new period.

"Ottar told his lord, Alfred the king, that he dwelt farthest north of all the Norwegians.[161] He said that he dwelt on the northern side of the land by the 'West-sae.' He said however that the land extends very far to the north from there; but that it is quite uninhabited ('weste'), except that in a few places the Finns[162] live, hunting in the winter and fishing in the sea in summer. He said that once he wished to find out how far the land extended due north, and whether any man lived north of the waste tracts. So he went due north[163]

along the coast; the whole way he had the uninhabited land to starboard and the open sea to port for three days. Then he was as far north as the whalers go.[164] Then he went on due north as far as he could sail in the next three days. There the land turned due east, or the sea turned into the land,[165] he did not know which; but he knew that there he waited for a west wind, or with a little north in it, and sailed thence eastward, following the coast as far as he could sail in five days. Then he had to wait for a due north wind, because the land there turned due south, or the sea into the land, he did not know which.[166] Then he sailed thence due south along the coast, as far as he could sail in five days. There lay a great river going up into the land, so they turned up into the river, because they dared not sail past it for fear of trouble, since all the country was inhabited on the other side of the river. He had not met with inhabited country before, since he left his own home; but all the way there was waste land to starboard, except for fishermen, fowlers and hunters, and they were all Finns, and there was always sea to port.

The land of the Beormas was well inhabited; but they [i.e., Ottar and his men] dared not land there; but the land of the Terfinnas was entirely waste, except where hunters or fishers or fowlers had their abode.

"The Beormas told him many stories both about their own country and the countries that were about it, but he knew not what was true, because he had not seen it himself. The Finns and the Beormas, as it seemed to him, spoke almost the same language. He went thither chiefly to explore the country, and for the sake of the walruses, for they have much valuable bone in their tusks--some such tusks he brought to the king--and their hide is very good for ships' ropes. This whale is much smaller than other whales, not more than seven cubits long; but in his own country is the best whaling, there they are forty-eight cubits, and the largest fifty cubits long; of them ('ara'), said he, he with six others ('syxa sum') had killed sixty in two days."[167]

Since King Alfred, as has been said, must have written between 880 and 901, Ottar may have made his voyage about 870 to 890. This remarkable man, who according to his own statement undertook his expedition princ.i.p.ally from desire of knowledge, is the second northern explorer of whom we have definite information in history. The first was the Greek Pytheas, who went about as far as the Arctic Circle. Some twelve hundred years later the Norwegian Ottar continues the exploration farther north along the coasts of Norway and sails right into the White Sea. He thereby determined the extent of Scandinavia on the north, and is the first known discoverer of the North Cape, the Polar Sea (or Barents Sea), and the White Sea; but he did not know whether the latter was a bay of the ocean or not. It is unlikely that Ottar was the first Norwegian to _discover_ the coasts along which he sailed. It is true that the expressions "that he wished to find out how far the land extended due north, or whether any man dwelt to the north of the uninhabited tracts," might be taken to mean that this was. .h.i.therto unknown to the Norwegians; but it should doubtless rather be understood as a general indication of the object of the voyage: this was of interest to King Alfred, but not whether it was absolutely the first voyage of discovery in those regions. The names Terfinnas and Beormas are given as something already known, and when Ottar reaches the latter he understands at once that he ought not to proceed farther, for fear of trouble; it may be supposed that he knew them by report as a warlike people. A. Bugge [1908, p. 409] quotes K. Rygh to the effect that the names of fjords in Finmark must be very ancient, e.g., those that end in "-angr." This termination is not found in Iceland, and would consequently be older than the Norwegian colonisation of that country; nor does "angr"

(== fjord) as an appellative occur in the Old Norse literary language. It may therefore be possible that these names are older than Ottar. Bugge also, from information given by Mr. Qvigstad, calls attention to the fact that the Lapps call Magaro "Makaravjo," and a place on Kvalo (near Hammerfest) "Rahkkeravjo." The latter part of these names must be the primary Germanic word "awjo" for island or land near the sh.o.r.e. According to this the Nors.e.m.e.n must have been as far north as this and have given names to these places, while this form of the word was still in use, and the Finns or Lapps have taken it from them.

The land of the Terfinnas, which was uninhabited, is the whole Kola peninsula. Its name was "Ter" (or "Turja"), whence the designation Ter-Finns. The common supposition that the river Ottar came to was the Dvina cannot be reconciled with Ottar's narrative given above, which expressly states that he followed the coast round the peninsula all the way, "and there was always open sea to port."[168] He cannot, therefore, have left the land and sailed straight across the White Sea; moreover he could not be aware that there was land on the other side of this wide bay of the ocean.[169] The river which "went up into the land" was consequently on the Kola peninsula, and formed the boundary between the unsettled land of the Terfinnas and that of the Beormas with fixed habitation. The river may have been the Varzuga, although it is also possible that Ottar sailed farther west along the southern coast of the Kola peninsula, without this alteration of course appearing in Alfred's description. He may then have gone as far as the Kandalaks.

What kind of people Ottar's Beormas[170] may have been is uncertain. We only hear that they lived in the country on the other side of the river, that their country was well settled (i.e., was permanently inhabited by an agricultural population ?), that they were able to communicate with Ottar, and that they spoke almost the same language as the Finns. The description may suit the East Karelians, whom we find, at any rate somewhat later, established on the south and west side of the White Sea, as far north as the Kandalaks, perhaps also as far as the Varzuga. If this is correct, we must suppose that Ottar's Finns and Terfinns spoke a Finno-Ugrian language, very like Karelian. As Ottar knew the Finns well, his statement about the language deserves consideration.

This view, that the Beormas were Karelians, agrees with Egil Skallagrimsson's Saga, which doubtless was put into writing much later, but which mentions Ottar's contemporary, Thorolf Kveldulfsson, and his expeditions among the Finns or Lapps to collect the Finnish or Lappish tribute (about 873 and 874). We read there: "East of Namdal lies Jemtland, and then Helsingland, and then Kvaenland, and then Finland, then Kirjalaland. But Finmark lies above all these countries." Kirjalaland is Karelia, which thus lies quite in the east upon the White Sea, and must be Ottar's Bjarmeland (Beormaland). On his Finnish expedition of 874 Thorolf came far to the east, and was then appealed to by the Kvaens for help against the Kirjals (Karelians), who were ravaging Kvaenland. He proceeded northward against them and overcame them; returned to Kvaenland, went thence up into Finmark, and came down from the mountains in Vefsen. This mention of the ravages of the Kirjals agrees with the impression of Ottar's Beormas, who were so warlike that he dared not pa.s.s by their country.

Ottar's account of himself was that

"he was a very rich man in all cla.s.ses of property of which their wealth [i.e., the wealth of those peoples] consists, that is, in wild beasts ('wildrum'). He had further, when he came to the king, six hundred tame, unsold animals. These animals they called reindeer.

There were six decoy reindeer ('stael hranas'), which are very dear among the Finns, for with them they catch the wild reindeer. He was among the princ.i.p.al men in that country [Hlogaland], although he had no more than twenty horned cattle, and twenty sheep, and twenty pigs; and the little ploughing he did was done with horses [i.e., not with oxen, as among the Anglo-Saxons]. But their largest revenue is the tribute paid them by the Finns; this tribute consists of pelts and birds' feathers [down] and whalebone [walrus tusks], and they gave ships' ropes made of whales' [walrus] hide, and of seals'. Each one pays according to his rank; the chiefs have to pay fifteen martens'

skins, five reindeers' skins, one bear's skin, ten ankers of feathers, a kirtle of bear- or otter-skin, and two ships' ropes, each sixty cubits long, one made of whales' [i.e., walrus] hide, and the other of seals'."

This description gives a valuable picture of the state of society in northernmost Norway at that time. Ottar's Finns had tame and half-tamed reindeer, and their hunting even of such sea-beasts as walrus and seal was sufficiently productive to enable them to pay a considerable tribute.

These early inhabitants of the most northerly regions of the old world will be treated of later in a separate chapter.

Ottar's mention of walrus-hunting is of great interest, as showing that it was regularly carried on both by Norwegians and Finns even at that time.

Of about the same period (about the year 900) is the well-known Anglo-Saxon casket, called the Franks Casket, of which the greater part is now in the British Museum, one side being in Florence. The casket, which on account of its rich decoration is of great historical value, is made of walrus ivory. It has been thought that it might be made of the tusks that Ottar brought to King Alfred. If this was so, it is in any case improbable that so costly a treasure should be worked in a material the value and suitability of which were unknown. We must therefore suppose that walrus ivory sometimes found its way at that time to this part of Europe, and it could come from no other people but the Norwegians. They certainly carried on walrus-hunting long before Ottar's time. This appears also from his narrative, for men who were not well practised could not kill sixty of these large animals in a couple of days, even if we are to suppose that they were killed with lances on land where they lie in big herds. If these sixty animals were really whales (i.e., small whales), and not walruses, it is still more certain evidence of long practice. We see, too, that walrus ivory and ships' ropes of walrus hide had become such valuable objects of commerce as to be demanded in tribute. So difficult and dangerous an occupation as this hunting, which requires an equipment of special appliances, does not arise among any people in a short time, especially at so remote a period of history, when all independent development of a new civilisation, which could not come from outside, proceeded very slowly. It is therefore an interesting question whether the Norwegians developed this walrus-hunting themselves or learned it from an earlier seafaring people of hunters, who in these northern regions must consequently have been Ottar's Finns. To find an answer to this, it will be necessary to review the whole difficult question of the Finns and Lapps connectedly, which will be done in a later section.

The walrus, called in Norwegian "rosmal"[171] or "rosml" (also "rosmar,"

and in Old Norse "rostungr"), is an arctic animal which keeps by preference to those parts of the sea where there is drift-ice, at any rate in winter. It is no longer found in Norway, but probably it visited the coasts of Finmark not unfrequently in old times, to judge from place-names such as "Rosmlvik" at Loppen, and "Rosmlen" by Hammerfest. Even in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries its visits to the northern coasts of the country were frequent, perhaps annual [cf. Lillienskiold, 1698]. But as these places were certainly the extreme limit of its distribution, it can never have been very numerous here; like the herds of seals in our own time, it must have appeared only for more or less short visits. Curiously enough, so far as is known, walrus bones have not been observed in finds below ground in the North, while bones of other arctic animals, such as the ring-seal (Phoca ftida), are found.

Since, therefore, the walrus cannot be supposed to have been common on the northern coasts of Norway at any time during the historical period, and since its hunting gave such valuable products, we must suppose that the Norwegian walrus-hunters were not long in looking for better and surer hunting-grounds eastward in the Polar Sea, where there is plenty of walrus. It was there too that Ottar went, for this very reason (probably because there was not enough walrus in his home waters) and, as he says, to find out how far the land extended; but it is also probable that walrus-hunters had been in these waters long before him. It is true that the statement that after three days' sail from home he "was as far north as the farthest point reached by whalers" ("a hwaelhuntan firrest farra") might mean that walrus-hunting was not carried on farther east than Loppen (where there is still a "Rosmlvik"), that is, if by these whalers is meant walrus-hunters; but doubtless these expressions are not to be taken so literally, and perhaps the meaning is rather that this was the usual limit of their voyages. Unfortunately, we have no information as to Ottar's own catch on the eastward voyage.

[Sidenote: Norwegian whaling]

From Ottar's statement that "in his own country there is the best whaling, they are forty-eight cubits long, and the largest are fifty cubits long,"

we must conclude that the Norwegians, and perhaps the Finns also, carried on a regular whaling industry, with great whales as well as small (see later, chap. xii.).

[Sidenote: Ottar's voyage to South Norway and Sleswick]

Of Ottar's statements about Norway we read further in King Alfred:

"He said that Nordmanna-Land was very long and very narrow. All that is fitted either for grazing or ploughing lies on the sea, and that, however, is in some places very rocky, with wilderness [mountainous waste] rising above the cultivated land all along it. In the wilderness dwell the Finns. And the inhabited land is broadest eastward, and always narrower farther north. On the east it may be sixty leagues broad, or a little broader; and midway thirty or more, and on the north, he said, where it was narrowest, it may be three leagues to the waste land; and the wilderness in some places is so broad that it takes two weeks to cross it; and in others so broad that one can cross it in six days.

"There is side by side with the land in the south, on the other side of the wilderness, Sveoland, extending northwards, and side by side with the land in the north, Cwena-Land. The Cwenas sometimes make raids upon the Nors.e.m.e.n over the wilderness, sometimes the Nors.e.m.e.n upon them; and there are very great freshwater lakes in this wilderness; and the Cwenas carry their ships overland to these lakes, and from thence they harry the Nors.e.m.e.n. They have very small ships and very light.

"Ottar said that the part of the country where he lived was called Halgoland [Halogaland]. He said that no man [i.e., no Norseman] lived farther north than he. Then there is a harbour in the southern part of that country which men call 'Sciringes heale' [Skiringssal[172] in Vestfold]. Thither, said he, one could not sail in a month, anchoring at night, with a favourable wind every day; and all the while he must sail near the land: and to starboard of him would be first 'Iraland,'[173] and then the islands which lie between Iraland and this country [Britain ?]. Afterwards there is this country [to starboard] until he comes to Sciringesheal; and all the way on the port side there is Norway (Norweg).[174] South of Sciringesheal a very great sea [the Skagerak and Cattegat] goes up into the land; it is broader than any man can see across; and 'Gotland' [Jutland] is on the opposite side, and then 'Sillende.'[175] This sea goes many hundred leagues up into the land.

"And from Sciringesheal he said that it was five days' sail to the harbour which is called 'Haeum' [Heidaby or Sleswick]; it lies between the Wends and the Saxons and the Angles, and belongs to the Danes.

When he sailed thither from Sciringesheal, he had on the port side Denmark[176] [i.e., southern Sweden, which then belonged to Denmark], and on the starboard open sea for three days; and for the two days before he came to Heidaby he had to starboard Gotland and Sillende, and many islands. In those countries dwelt the Angles before they came to this land. And for these two days he had on the port side the islands which belong to Denmark."

This account of Ottar's of his southward voyage is remarkable for the same sober lucidity as his narrative of the White Sea expedition; and as, on all the points where comparison is possible, it agrees well with other independent statements, it furnishes strong evidence of his credibility.