Footnotes:

[1] HecatÆus of Miletus (549-after 486 B.C.) was the best-known geographer of the Ionian school. He made a map of the world, and summarised the contemporary Greek ideas of geography.

[2] Cf. Kretschmer, 1892, pp. 41-42.

[3] Berger, 1894, p. 13.

[4] Men like Empedocles, Leucippus, Heraclitus, Anaxagoras, and even Herodotus entertained the naive view that the earth was a disc.

[5] Cf. Kretschmer, 1892, p. 99; Berger ii., 1889, p. 36.

[6] Cf. Theopompus (about 340 B.C.) in Ælian, “Varia,” iii. c. 18.

[7] The celebrated physician Hippocrates (470-364 B.C.) makes Scythia extend on the north to the RhipÆan Mountains, which stretch far enough to be just below the Great Bear. From them comes the north wind, which therefore does not blow farther north, so that there must be a milder climate where the Hyperboreans dwell. The RhipÆan Mountains had become altogether mythical, but seem often to have been connected with the Ural and placed north of Scythia; sometimes also they were connected with the Alps, or with the mountains farther east.

[8] The Cimmerians of the Odyssey (xi. 14) are undoubtedly the same as the historical Cimmerians of the districts north of the Black Sea, who made several inroads into Asia Minor in the eighth century, and whose name was long preserved in the Cimmerian Bosphorus. Cf. Niese, 1882, p. 224, and K. Kretschmer, 1892, p. 7. W. Christ [1866, pp. 131-132] connects the name with the Cimbri of Jutland, whose name is alleged to have been somewhat modified under the influence of the Phoenician “kamar,” dark, which may be doubtful; but Posidonius seems to have been the first to take Cimmerii and Cimbri for the same name [cf. Strabo, vii. 293], and there is nothing improbable in the supposition that the wandering Cimbri may have reached the Black Sea and been the same people as the Cimmerians, who were remarkable just in the same way for their migrations. Similarly, we find the Goths both on the shores of the Baltic and by the Black Sea, where we first meet with them in literature.

[9] O. Helm of Danzig has shown by chemical analysis that the amber of the MycenÆ beads contains 8 per cent. of succinic acid, and is thus similar to that found on the Baltic and the North Sea, and unlike all known amber from districts farther south, Sicily, Upper Italy or elsewhere. Cf. Schuchhardt, 1890, p. 223, f., and Kretschmer, 1892, p. 10.

[10] “The Times” of Sept. 28, 1909, pp. 9-10. A. W. BrÖgger [1909, p. 239] mentions a find from a grave at Corinth of six necklaces of amber, of the neolithic period, which is preserved in the Museum fÜr VÖlkerkunde at Berlin. BrÖgger informs me that nothing has been published about this find, which was bought in 1877 from Prof. Aus’m Weerth of Kessenich, near Bonn. Prof. Schaafhausen briefly mentioned it at the congress at Stockholm in 1874 [CongrÈs internat. d’anthrop. et d’archÉol. de Stockholm, Compte rendu, 1874, ii. p. 816]. Assuming that this is Baltic or North Sea amber, it points to an intercourse of even far greater antiquity, which is also probable.

[11] Strabo, vii. 295.

[12] Damastes of Sigeum (about 450 B.C., and contemporary with Herodotus) says that “beyond the Scythians dwell the Issedonians, beyond these again the Arimaspians, and beyond them are the RhipÆan Mountains, from which the north wind blows, and which are never free from snow. On the other side of the mountains are the Hyperboreans who spread down to the sea.”

[13] Since the form of the sphere was the most perfect according to the opinion of the Pythagoreans.

[14] It was, moreover, a common belief in mediÆval times that people who were connected with the other world could not be killed by iron.

[15] “Hyperboreans” are first mentioned in certain poems doubtfully attributed to Hesiod, but which can scarcely be later than the 7th century B.C. The full development of the myth is first found in Pindar (about 470 B.C.); but his Hyperboreans cannot be considered as dwelling especially in the north; their home, to which “the strange path could be found neither by sea nor by land,” lay rather beyond the sea in the far west, and thither came Perseus borne by wings on his way to Medusa.

[16] This idea can be traced back to Delphi, where any one who had incurred the god’s displeasure was thrown from a cliff. Something similar happened at the annual festivals of Apollo at Leucas, where he who was chosen as a victim to ward off evil threw himself from the Leucadian rock into the sea. It is true that all sorts of feathers and birds were fastened to the victims to act as a parachute, and after their fall they were rescued by boats and taken beyond the frontier, as bearers of a curse. According to some it was the priests themselves who made this leap.

Among the Germanic peoples, if we may believe “Gautrek’s Saga” [cf. J. Grimm, 1854, p. 486; Ranisch, 1900, p. lxxvii. f.], there existed the custom that the elders of the tribe, when tired of life, used to cast themselves down from a high crag, called “Ætternis stapi” (the tribal cliff), so as to die without sickness and go to Odin. As a reward for faithful service the head of the house took his thrall with him in the leap, so that he too might come thither. After Skapnartungr had divided the inheritance, he and his wife were conducted to the cliff by their children, and they went joyfully to Odin. This reminds one strongly of the happy Hyperboreans. Thietmar of Merseburg (about A.D. 1000) has a similar legend about the tribal cliff. It is probable that the Germanic peoples in very early times, like other peoples—the Eskimo, for example—may have had the custom of taking the lives of the old and useless, or that these may have taken their own lives, by throwing themselves into the sea, for instance, as occurs among the Eskimo. On the other hand, it seems very doubtful that there should have been such tribal cliffs; and it is more probable that this legend is of literary origin and derived from the cliffs of Delphi and Leucas, which through the Hyperborean legend came down to the Roman authors Mela and Pliny, and from them was handed on to the writers of the Middle Ages and to the scribe of the “Gautrek Saga.” It has been thought that many such “Ätte-stupar” can be pointed out in southern Sweden, but they seem all to be of recent date, and may have been suggested by this saga.

[17] These may be the architectonical figures on the roof of the temple of Delphi, transferred to the North together with the Hyperboreans. At Delphi they were no doubt regarded as guardians of the temple’s treasures.

[18] This idea has been explained as being derived from stories of people dressed in breeches of goats’ skin.

[19] Strabo [iii. 147] and Diodorus [v. 38], following Posidonius, mention these three districts as the places where tin was found.

[20] In the three districts named tin oxide (SnO₂) occurs in lodes in the solid rock, as well as (sometimes in conjunction with gold and silver) in the gravel or sand of streams, and it was certainly in the latter form that tin was first extracted, after its discovery by some accident or other.

[21] It is possible, of course, that the first bronze, like silk, may have reached the people of the Orient and Egypt from China, without their knowing from whence it was originally derived. Bronze articles have been found at Troy which may indicate a connection with China, and it has even been asserted that Chinese characters have been found there [cf. Schliemann, 1881, p. 519]. Tin is also known to occur in Persia, but it has not been ascertained that it was worked there in ancient times. Strabo [xv. 724] says, however, that the DrangÆ in Drangiana, near the Indus, “suffer from want of wine, but tin occurs with them.” Tin is found in the Fichtelgebirge, and it has been thought possible to identify prehistoric tin-mines there [cf. O. Schrader, 1901, article “Zinn”].

[22] The Phoenicians’ “Tarsis” (or Tarshish), rich in silver, called by the Greeks “Tartessos,” was on the south-west coast of Spain between the Pillars of Hercules and the Guadiana. About 1100 B.C. Tyre established there the colony “Gadir” (i.e., “fortress”), called by the Greeks “Gadeira,” and by the Romans “Gades” (now Cadiz).

[23] Cf. S. Reinach, 1892, p. 277. In Breton tin is called “sten,” a name which is certainly not borrowed from the Latin “stannum,” as Reinach thinks; according to the above-quoted opinion of Professor Torp we must believe that the borrowing has been in the opposite direction.

[24] The explanation of this statement may be that Crassus sailed to the Cassiterides from the mouth of the Garonne, up which river the route ran to Narbo. What is alluded to here would then be the sea-passage from the Garonne.

[25] Pliny [xxxiv. 162] mentions the tinning of copper objects as a Gaulish invention.

[26] Strabo’s repeated statement [ii. 120 and 175] that the Cassiterides lay north of the land of the Artabri [north-west Spain] also points decisively to Brittany. The idea must be derived from Eratosthenes, who borrowed from Pytheas, and the latter placed CabÆum, the promontory of Brittany, farther west than Cape Finisterre. Diodorus [v. 38] says that the islands lay opposite Iberia in the Ocean. That they are always mentioned in connection with the Artabri or north-west Spain shows that the voyage to them was made from that country.

[27] Georg Mair [1899, p. 20, f.] has allowed himself to be led astray by Sven Nilsson’s fanciful pictures [1862, 1865] into regarding it as a historical fact that the Phoenicians had permanent colonies in Skane and regular communication with Scandinavia, even so far north as the Lofoten isles, whose rich fisheries are supposed to have attracted them.

[28] In a translation of the cuneiform inscription on the obelisk of the Assyrian king Asurnasirabal (885-860 B.C.) the Assyriologist J. Oppert has the following remarkable passage, which is taken as referring to this king’s great predecessor Tiglath Pileser I., of about 1100 B.C.: “In the seas of the trade-winds his fleets fished for pearls, in the seas where the pole-star stands in the zenith they fished for the saffron which attracts.” [Cf. Schweiger-Lerchenfeld, 1898, p. 141.] Oppert has since altered the latter part of his translation to “fished for that which looks like copper.” Both interpretations might mean amber, and if the translation were correct this inscription would furnish a remarkable piece of evidence for direct communication between Assyria and the Baltic as early as the ninth century B.C., and in that case we might suppose it established by means of the Phoenicians. But unfortunately another eminent Assyriologist, Professor Schrader, has disputed the correctness of the translation given above, which he thinks is the result of a false reading of the inscription. According to Schrader there is no mention of pearls, or amber, or fleets, or pole-star, or zenith; the whole refers merely to this ancient king’s hunting in the mountains of Assyria which took place “in the days when the star Sukud shone, gleaming like bronze.” [Cf. Verhandl. d. Berliner Gesellsch. f. Anthrop. Ethnol. u. Urgesch, 1885, pp. 65, 66, 306, 372; and Mair, 1903, p. 47.] The last interpretation is undeniably more probable than the first, and it may well be thought that the bronze-coloured star which shone may have been Venus.

[29] That amber may have followed this route in early times is made probable by the finds of ornaments of amber in graves of the Bronze Age (Halstatt period) in the Caucasus, at Koban and Samthavro.

[30] Franz Mathias [1902, p. 73] draws attention to the statement of Von Alten [“Die Bohlwege im Gebiet der Ems und Weser,” p. 40 and Pl. V.; this paper has not been accessible to me] that in 1818 there was found a piece of amber with a Phoenician inscription on one of the oldest and deepest-lying bog causeways (“MoorbrÜcken”) on the prehistoric trade-route from the district of the Weser and Ems to the Rhine. As one would expect amber to be carried from the countries in the north-east towards the south, and not in the reverse direction, this find, if properly authenticated, might show that there were Phoenicians on the coast to the north. But the piece, if it be Phoenician, may also have come from the south by chance.

[31] See on this subject specially MÜllenhoff, 1870, i. pp. 73-203. Also W. Christ, 1866; Marx, 1895; G. Mair, 1899; and others.

[32] This epithet, which constantly recurs when Ireland is mentioned, may perhaps in ancient times be due to the resemblance between the Greek words “hieros” (holy) and “Hierne” (Ireland), which latter may be derived from the native name of the island, “Erin.” In later times, of course, it is due to Ireland’s early conversion to Christianity and its monastic system.

[33] In spite of MÜllenhoff’s contrary view [1870, p. 92], it does not appear to me altogether impossible that it may have arisen through a corruption of the name of the people whom Pytheas calls “Ostimians” or “Ostimnians,” and which in some manuscripts of Strabo [iv. 195] also takes the forms “Osismians” [cf. also Mela, iii. 2, 7; Pliny, iv. 32; Ptolemy, ii. 8, 5; Orosius, 6, 8] and “Ostidamnians” [i. 64], and who lived in Brittany.

[34] In CÆsar’s description [B.G., iii. 13] of the ships of the Veneti it is also stated that “the keels were somewhat flatter than in our ships, whereby they were better able to cope with the shallows and the falling tides.”

[35] It has been alleged as a proof that the Phoenicians really knew of the Sargasso Sea that Sargasso weed is mentioned by Theophrastus [“Historia Plantarum,” iv. 6, 4], but I have not been able to find anything of the sort in this author; nor can I find any statement in Aristotle [Miral. Auscult.] which can be thus interpreted, as some have thought.

[36] Lycaon was the father of Callisto, and the latter became a she-bear and was placed among the stars as the constellation of the Great Bear. At the axis of Lycaon means, therefore, in the north.

[37] As to Pytheas, see in particular: MÜllenhoff, 1870, pp. 211 f.; Berger, iii., 1891, pp. 1 f.; Hergt, 1893; Markham, 1893; Ahlenius, 1894; Matthias, 1901; KÄhler, 1903; Detlefsen, 1904; Callegari, 1904; Mair, 1906.

[38] The principal authorities on Pytheas are: Strabo (1st century A.D.), who did not know his original works, but quotes for the most part from Polybius (2nd century B.C.), who was very hostile to Pytheas, and from Erastosthenes, Hipparchus, and TimÆus. Pliny has derived much information from Pytheas, though he does not know him directly, but chiefly through TimÆus, Isidorus of Charax, who again knew him through Erastosthenes, &c. Diodorus Siculus (1st century B.C.) knows him chiefly through TimÆus. Geminus of Rhodes (1st century B.C.), who has a quotation from him, possibly knew his original work, “On the Ocean,” but he may have quoted from Crates of Mallus. Solinus (3rd century A.D.), who has much information about Pytheas, knows him chiefly through Pliny and TimÆus. Further second-hand quotations and pieces of information derived from Pytheas occur in Pomponius Mela (1st century A.D.), Cleomedes (2nd century A.D.), Ptolemy (3rd century A.D.), Agathemerus (3rd century A.D.), scholiasts on Apollonius of Rhodes, Ammianus Marcellinus (4th century A.D.), Orosius (5th century A.D.), Isidorus Hispaliensis (7th century A.D.), and others.

[39] A “gnomon” was the pillar or projection which cast the shadow on the various Greek forms of sun-dial. In the case mentioned above the gnomon was a vertical column raised on a plane. By measuring the length of the shadow at the solstice, Pytheas found that it was 41? : 120 or ²⁰⁹/600 the height of the column. According to that the altitude of the sun was 70° 47' 50. From this must be deducted the obliquity of the ecliptic, which was at that time 23° 44' 40, and the semi-diameter of the sun (16'), as the shadow is not determined by the sun’s centre but by its upper edge, besides the refraction, which however is unimportant. When the equatorial altitude thus arrived at is deducted from 90°, we get the latitude of Massalia as 43° 13' N. The new observatory of Marseilles is at 43° 18' 19; but it lies some distance to the north of the ancient city, where Pytheas’s gnomon probably stood in the market-place. It will be seen that this is an accuracy of measurement which was not surpassed until very much later times.

[40] It has been supposed that these three stars were of the Little Bear, a and ? of Draco. The pole was at that time far from the present pole-star, and nearer to of the Little Bear.

[41] Both “gnomon” and “polus” are mentioned as early as Herodotus; and AthenÆus [v. 42] describes the polus in the library on board the ship “Hiero” which was built by Archimedes.

[42] It is not probable that Pytheas divided the earth’s circumference into degrees. Even Eratosthenes (275-194 B.C.) still divided the circumference of the earth into sixty parts, each equal to 4200 stadia, and the division into degrees was first universally employed by Hipparchus. But Aristarchus of Samos, and perhaps even Thales, had already learnt that the sun’s diameter was 2 × 360 or 720 times contained in the circle described by them. It is possible that they originally had this from the ChaldÆans.

[43] When it is brought forward as a proof of Pytheas having made such angle-measurements [cf. Mair, 1906, p. 28], that Hipparchus is said to have given the sun’s height (in cubits) above the horizon at the winter solstice for three different places in north-west Europe [cf. Strabo, ii. 75], it must be remembered that if these altitudes were direct measurements by Pytheas himself, he must have been at each of these three places at the winter solstice, that is to say, in three different winters, where he found that in one place the sun stood six cubits, in another four cubits, and in the third less than three cubits above the horizon. This is improbable, and it is more reasonable to suppose that these altitudes are the result of calculations either by Pytheas himself or by Hipparchus from his data.

[44] In Diodorus it is called Orkan, but this may be the accusative of Orkas, as in later writers, also in Ptolemy (MÜllenhoff, 1870, p. 377, thinks that Orkan is the real form), and from which the name Orcades has been formed for the group of islands immediately to the north. Orkneyar or Orkneys certainly comes from the same word, which must presumably be of Celtic origin. P. A. Munch [1852, pp. 44-46] thought that the name came from the Gaelic word “orc” for the grampus (the specific name of which in Latin was therefore “Delphinus orca,” now called “Orca gladiator”). This species of whale is common on the coasts of Norway, the Shetlands and Orkneys, the FÆroes and farther west. It usually swims in schools, and is the great whale’s deadliest enemy, attacking it in numbers and cutting blubber out of its sides. The Eskimo in Greenland assert that it is sometimes dangerous to kayaks; I myself have only once seen a grampus attack a boat; but in any case it is a species which easily draws attention to itself wherever it appears.

[45] Allowing for the greater bays, and putting a degree of latitude at 700 stadia, the sides of Great Britain are about 4000, 7800 and 12,000 stadia; altogether 23,800 stadia, or about 2375 miles.

[46] Strabo erred just as much on his side in making the circumference of Britain much too small.

[47] Cf. Hergt, 1893, p. 44. This hypothesis is supported by the round numbers which answer to 7½, 15, and 20 days’ sail.

[48] The Greeks divided the day into twelve hours at all times of the year; it was thus only at the equinoxes, when the day was really twelve hours long, that the hours were of the same length as ours. These are, therefore, called equinoctial hours.

[49] A similar statement in Cleomedes [i. 7], after Eratosthenes and Posidonius [i. 10], may also be derived from Pytheas: “the longest day in Britain has eighteen hours.”

[50] If we assume that the length of the day was found by a theoretical calculation of the time between the rising and setting of the sun’s centre above the horizon, without taking account of refraction, then a longest day of nineteen hours answers to 60° 52' N. lat.; but if we suppose that the length of the day was found by direct observation and was calculated from the first appearance of the sun’s limb in the morning until its final disappearance in the evening, then horizontal refraction will be of importance (besides having to take the sun’s semi-diameter into account), and a longest day of nineteen hours then answers to 59° 59' N. lat. Now the Shetland Isles lie between 59° 51' and 60° 51' N. lat.; while the northern point of the Orkneys lies in 59° 23' N. lat., and has a longest day, theoretically of 18 hours 27 minutes, and actually of 18 hours 36 minutes. A longest day of 18 hours answers theoretically to 57° 59', actually to fully 57° N. lat. Professor H. Geelmuyden has had the kindness to work out several of these calculations for me. Hipparchus said that at the winter solstice the sun attained to a height of less than three cubits above the horizon in the regions where the longest day was of nineteen hours. If we take one cubit as equal to two degrees these regions will then lie north of 60° N. lat.

[51] It may be possible, as many think, that it was the Shetlands that he called Orkan (or Orkas); but the more reliable of the known quotations from him seem rather to show that it was really the northernmost point of Britain, or the neighbouring Orkneys that were thus called by him, and have thenceforward been known by that name; while it is later authors who have extended the name also to Shetland. If this supposition be correct: that the islands north of Britain mentioned by Pliny [Nat. Hist. iv. 104] are originally derived from Pytheas, which may be doubtful, and that Berricen (or Nerigon) is Mainland of Shetland, then Orkan cannot apply to these. But, as we shall see later, it is very doubtful what Pliny’s islands may have been originally.

[52] Cf. Strabo [ii. 114] and Cleomedes [i. 7]. The Arctic Circle (or Circle of the Bear) was, as already mentioned, the circle round the celestial pole which formed the limit of the continuously visible (circumpolar) stars, and it had been given this name because in Asia Minor (and Greece) it ran through the Great Bear (Arctus). Its distance in degrees from the north celestial pole is equal to the latitude of the place of observation, and consequently increases as one goes farther north. At the polar circle, as mentioned above, it coincides with the Tropic of Cancer, and at the North Pole with the Equator. Cleomedes has also the remarkable statement that the latitude for a summer day of one month in length runs through Thule.

[53] It may be thought that Pytheas is merely relating a legend current among the barbarians that the sun went to its resting-place during the night, a myth which is moreover almost universal. But it seems more probable that as an astronomer he had something else in his mind. If he had had the two points accurately indicated to him, where the sun set and rose on the shortest night of the year, he must easily have been able, by measuring the angle between them, to ascertain how long the sun was down.

[54] These figures are kindly supplied by Professor H. Geelmuyden.

[55] According to existing MSS. of Solinus [c. 22] it was five days’ sail to Thule from the Orcades, which must here be Shetland, and which are mentioned as the second station on the way to Thule; the Ebudes (Hebrides) were the first station. Mommsen [1895, p. 219] regards the passage as corrupt, and considers it a later interpolation of between the 7th and 9th centuries.

[56] Cf. Brenner, 1877, pp. 32, 98.

[57] Cf. Keyser (1839), 1868, p. 92.

[58] If we were able to make out the etymological origin of the name Thule, it would perhaps give us some indication of where we ought to look for the country. But the various attempts that have been made to solve this riddle have been without success. It has been asserted by several authors that it comes from an old Gothic word “tiele,” or “tiule,” which is said to mean limit [cf. Forbiger, 1842, iii. p. 312], or an Old Saxon word “thyle,” “thul,” “tell” (or “tell,” “till,” “tiul”), said to mean the same [cf. Markham, 1893, p. 519; and Callegari, 1904, p. 47]; but Professor Alf Torp, whom I have consulted, says that no such word can be found in either of these languages. The word has been further erroneously connected with the name Telemarken, which accordingly would mean borderland, but which in reality must be derived from the Norwegian word “tele,” Old Norse “Þeli,” frozen earth, and it is by no means impossible that Thule should be a Greek corruption of such a word. E. Benedikson has supposed that Thule might come from a Gallic word “houl,” for sun [cf. Callegari, 1904, p. 47], which with a preposition “de” (or other prefix) might have been thus corrupted in Greek; but Professor Torp informs me in a letter that no such Gallic word exists, though there is a Cymric “haul,” “which in Gallic of that time must have sounded approximately ‘hÂvel,’” and it “is quite impossible that a preposition or prefix ‘de’ could have coalesced with initial ‘h’ so as to result in anything like Thule.” The Irish “temel” (Cymric “tywyll”) for dark, which has also been tried [Keyser, 1839, p. 397; 1868, p. 166], or “tawel” for silent, still [MÜllenhoff, 1870, i, p. 408], are of no more use, according to Torp, since both words at that time had “m,” which has later become “w.” The only Celtic root which in his opinion might be thought of is “‘tel’ (== raise, raise oneself), to which the Irish ‘telach’ and ‘tulach’ (== a height, mound); but this does not seem very appropriate. The Germanic form of this root is ‘thel’ (modification ‘thul’); but in Germanic this is not applied to soil or land which rises. I cannot find anything else, either in Celtic or Germanic; it is thus impossible for me to decide to which of the languages the word may belong; I can only say that the Greek ? (th) rather points to Germanic. For no Celtic word begins with an aspirate, whereas Germanic, as you know, has transmutation of consonants (Indo-germanic ‘t’ to ‘th,’ etc.), and it is not impossible that this sound-change goes as far back as the time of Pytheas.” Professor Torp has further drawn my attention to the fact that from the above-mentioned “thel,” raise oneself, is formed the Old Norse “Þollr,” tree (cf. “Þoll” == fir-tree), which in early times was “Þull” as radical form. There might be a bare possibility of Thule being connected with this word.

If it should appear, as hinted here, that the word Thule is of Germanic origin, then the probability of the country lying outside the British Isles would be greatly strengthened; for Britain and the Scottish Islands were at that time not yet inhabited by a Germanic race, and the native Celts can only have known a Germanic name for a country from its own Germanic inhabitants. This land farther north must then be Norway.

It has been pointed out [cf. Cuno, 1871, i. p. 102; Mair, 1899, p. 15] that the name Thule reminds one of “Tyle,” the capital of the Celtic colony which was established in Thrace in the 3rd century B.C. But we know nothing of the origin of this latter name, and here again there is the difficulty that it begins with “t” and not “th.”

It may be further mentioned that C. Hofmann [1865, p. 17] has suggested that Thule may come from such a name as “Thumla,” which in the Upsala Edda [ii. 492] is the name of an unknown island, but which was also the name of an island at the mouth of the GÖta river (cf. Thumlaheide in Hising). He thinks that a Greek could not pronounce such a combination of sounds as “ml” (?), but would pronounce it as “l” (?). The word would therefore become “Thula,” or according to the usual form of the declension “Thule.” Meanwhile we know of no name resembling Thumla for any district which Pytheas could have reached from Britain.

[59] That Thule was Norway or Scandinavia was assumed as early as Procopius. In the last century this view was supported by Geijer, 1825; Sven Nilsson, 1837; R. Keyser, 1839; Petersen; H. J. Thue, 1843, and others. In recent years it has been especially maintained by Hergt, 1893.

[60] MÜllenhoff’s reasons for supposing that Thule cannot have been Norway are of little weight, and in part disclose an imperfect knowledge of the conditions. That Pytheas, if he came to Norway, must have found new species of animals and new races of men, especially the Lapps with their reindeer, which, according to MÜllenhoff, he evidently did not find, is, for instance, an untenable assertion; for in the first place it is very uncertain whether the reindeer-Lapps had reached Norway so early as that time, since they appear to be a comparatively late immigration. In the second place, if they were really already living in Finmarken and the northern part of Helgeland (HÁlogaland), it is unreasonable to suppose that a seafarer who went along the coast as far as to the neighbourhood of the Arctic Circle should have met with these Lapps. Finally, it is impossible to take it for granted that Pytheas did not mention all the things that are not to be found in the chance quotations of later writers.

[61] The Arctic Circle at that time lay in 66° 15' 20. If we put the horizontal refraction plus the sun’s semi-diameter at 50' in round figures, then the upper edge of the sun would be visible at midnight at the summer solstice a little north of 65° 25'.

[62] Cf. Markham, 1893. If the longest day of the year is given in the different authorities (Strabo, Geminus, etc.) at various places as seventeen, eighteen, nineteen hours, etc., after the statements of Pytheas, it must not, of course, be assumed that Pytheas was at each of these places precisely on Midsummer Day. It was only one of the Greek methods of indicating the latitude of places.

[63] The origin of this name for the northernmost or outer sea, which occurs in several authors, is somewhat uncertain. It is usually supposed [cf. Hergt, 1893, p. 71] that it comes from the Greek god “Cronos” (Latin “Saturn”). R. Keyser [1839, p. 396, 1868, p. 165] thought (after Toland in 1725) that it was of Celtic origin and cognate with the Welsh “croni,” to collect together; “Muir-croinn” was supposed still to be Irish for the Polar Sea, and to have some such meaning as the curdled sea; but no such word is to be found in Irish or Old Irish [cf. MÜllenhoff, 1870, p. 415].

[64] Hergt [1893, p. 71] lays stress on the use of “ultra” here and not “trans,” and thinks that this does not indicate an immediate connection with Thule, but that we must rather suppose an intervening space (?).

[65] Perhaps it is worth while to remark in this connection that on its second occurrence in the quotation the word is simply “lung” and not “sea-lung.” If this is not to be looked upon merely as an abbreviation, it may indicate that the writer was really thinking of a bodily lung [cf. Hergt, 1893, p. 74].

[66] It has occurred that drift-ice has been brought as far as the neighbourhood of Shetland by the East-Icelandic Polar current; but this is so entirely exceptional that it cannot be argued that Pytheas might have seen drift-ice there.

[67] It is difficult to understand how he was able to converse with the natives; but probably he took interpreters with him. In the south of England, for instance, he may have found people who had come in contact through the tin-trade with the Mediterranean peoples and understood their languages, and who could thus act as interpreters with the Celts. It would not be so easy with the Germanic people of Thule. But in Scotland he may have found Celts who understood the speech of Thule, and who could act as interpreters through the more southern Celtic people.

[68] It has already been mentioned that Avienus ascribes even to Himilco some similar ideas of the extreme parts of the ocean; and that Aristotle thought that the sea beyond the Pillars of Hercules was muddy and shallow and little stirred by the winds.

[69] According to a communication from Professor Moltke Moe.

[70] It has been supposed by some that this name, which may remind one of the “Æstii” (Esthonians) mentioned by Tacitus, is really a clerical error for “Ostimii.”

[71] The more usual spelling “Mentonomon” (after some MSS.) can hardly be right [cf. Detlefsen, 1904, p. 9]. The name may be connected with the Frisian “meden” (Old Frisian “mede” or “medu,” English “meadow”) for low-lying, swampy pasture, and in that case would suit the German North Sea coast well, between the Rhine and Sleswick-Holstein.

[72] The name may have some connection with those of Habel and Appeland among the Halligen Islands on the west coast of Sleswick [cf. Detlefsen, 1904, p. 60]. It also has some resemblance to “Sabalingii,” which is given by Ptolemy as the name of a tribe in Jutland. The name Abalus (Greek, Abalos) has a remarkable likeness to Avalon (the apple-island) of Welsh folk-lore, and it is possibly originally the same word (?).

[73] As to what we know of the work of this important geographer see in particular Berger [1880].

[74] According to Eratosthenes’ accurate calculation the Arctic Circle lay in 66° 9' N. lat.

[75] Cf. Strabo, i. 63, ii. 114. More accurately it should be 37,400 stadia.

[76] Cf. Strabo, i. 5-6. Seleucus of Selucia on the Tigris lived in the middle of the 2nd century B.C., and was one of the few who (like Aristarchus of Samos, c. 260 B.C.) held the doctrine of the earth’s rotation and movement round the sun.

[77] Herodotus [iv. 26] says of the Issedonians in Scythia that “when a man’s father dies, all the relatives bring cattle; and when they have slain them as a sacrifice and cut the flesh in pieces, they also cut up their host’s deceased father; then they mix all the flesh together and serve it for the meal; but the head they decorate with gold, after having taken the hair off and washed it; and afterwards they treat it as an idol and bring offerings to it every year.” Such a cannibal custom, if it really existed, may have been connected with religious ideas. But Herodotus [i. 216] attributes to the MassagetÆ the following still more horrible custom: “when a man grows very old, all his relatives assemble and slay him, and together with him several kinds of cattle; then they boil the flesh and hold a banquet. This is accounted among them the happiest end.”

[78] Cf. M. Schanz: “Geschichte der RÖmischen Literatur,” ii. p. 241, 1899; in I. MÜller: “Handb. Klass. Altert.-Wiss.,” bd. viii. See also MÜllenhoff, iv., 1900, p. 47.

[79] Cf. Detlefsen, 1897, p. 197; 1904, p. 45. By his voyage in 12 B.C. with his fleet along the coast of the North Sea from the mouth of the Rhine and the Zuyder Zee to the mouth of the Ems, Drusus won fame as the first general who had sailed in the North Sea. The Romans, of course, were not great seafarers.

[80] The MSS. have “flamine” (winds); but it has been thought that “flumine” (streams) gives a better meaning [cf. Detlefsen, 1897, p. 198]. “Flamine” (winds) might, however, suit the ideas of the earth’s limits (cf. the description of Himilco’s voyage in Avienus, see above, p. 37).

[81] The text has here “alium liberis (or ‘libris’) intactum quÆrimus orbem,” which might be: “towards another world untouched by books,” that is, of which no book has said anything. As such an expression is quite at variance with the generally pompous style of the poem, Detlefsen [1897, p. 200, 1904, p. 47] has thought that “libris” here was “libra” == “libella,” that is, the level used by builders, with two legs and a plumb hanging in the middle, and the meaning would then be that this part of the earth’s circumference was not touched by the plumb of the level, but that the latter was obliquely inclined over the abyss at the end of the world. This explanation seems to make Pedo’s poem even more artificial than it is, and Detlefsen appears to think [1897, p. 200] that the builder’s level is used to find perpendicular lines, instead of horizontal. It is probable, however, that such an idea of a gulf or abyss at the end of the world was current at that time, as it was much later (cf. Adam of Bremen, and also the Ginnungagap of the Norsemen), even if it does not appear in this poem. It might be thought that “libris” was here used in the sense of sounding-lead, so that the meaning would be, “untouched by soundings,” in other words, a sea where no soundings had been made; but this meaning of “libris” would be unusual, and besides one would then expect some word for sea, and not “orbem.”

[82] I cannot, with Detlefsen [1904, p. 48], find anything in this expression to show that Augustus gives the Greeks the credit for having penetrated beyond the Cimbrian Cape earlier.

[83] Cf. MÜllenhoff, ii., 1887, p. 285, and iv., 1900, p. 45; Holz, 1894, p. 23; Detlefsen, 1904, p. 47.

[84] K. Miller [vi., 1898, p. 105] proposes to read “Gotorum rex” (the king of the Goths) instead of the “Botorum rex” of the MSS. The last name is otherwise unknown, and has also been read “Boiorum.” Pliny, who has the same story almost word for word [Nat. Hist., ii. c. 67, 170] says that the same Celer had the Indians from the king of the Suevi.

[85] This was a common idea among the Greeks about the Amazons [cf. Hippocrates, ?e?? ?e???, etc., c. 17; Strabo, xi. 504; Diodorus, ii. 45]; it has even been sought to derive the name itself from this, since “mazos” (a???) means breast, and “a” (a) is the negative particle; this would therefore be “without breasts.” But other explanations of the origin of the name have been given, e.g., that they were not suckled at the breast. It is possible that the name meant something quite different, but that owing to its resemblance to the Greek word for breast it gave rise to the legend, and not vice versa. In Latin the Amazons were sometimes called “Unimammia” (one-breasted), but in Greek art they were always represented with well-developed breasts. Hippocrates says that the right breasts of the Scythian women were burned off by the mother with a special bronze instrument, while the girls were quite small, because “then the breast ceased to grow, and all force and development were transmitted to the right shoulder and the arm.”

[86] Cf. Herodotus, iv. cc. 116, 117.

[87] Cf. Herodotus, iv. c. 22.

[88] These are Herodotus’s “ArgippÆi” or “ArgimpÆi” [iv. c. 23], who lived in tents of felt in winter. They were bald, whereas those of Mela go bare-headed.

[89] To understand [like K. Miller, vi., 1898, p. 105] “vectÆ” as the name of an island (“Vectis” == the Isle of Wight) seems in itself somewhat improbable, and is moreover excluded by Mela’s rhetorical style, which demands a clause following HÆmodÆ to balance that attached to Orcades just before.

[90] These “BelgÆ” are, of course, the same as the “BelcÆ” already mentioned by Mela as the Scythian people in the northernmost part of Scythia (see above, p. 89). What people is meant is uncertain.

[91] Sophus Bugge [1904, pp. 156 f.] thinks that Codanus may come from an Old Norse word “KoÐ,” which meant a shallow fjord or a shallow place in the water (equivalent to old Indian “gadhÁ-m”) and which according to him is akin to the root “KaД in some Norwegian place-names. “Codanus sinus” (“Koda,” accus. “Kodan”) is then the shallow sea, or Cattegat, especially near the Belts. “Codan-ovia” is the island in “Kodan.” MÜllenhoff [1887, ii. p. 284] and Much [1893, p. 207] have connected “Codanus” with Old High German “quoden” (== femina, interior pars coxÆ) from the same root as the Anglo-Saxon “codd” (== serpent, sack, bag), Middle Low German “koder” (== belly, abdomen), Old Norse “koÐri” (== scrotum). It would then mean a sack-inlet or sack-bay, equal to the Frisian “JÂde,” or else a narrower inlet to an extended bay of the sea (the Baltic ?). The explanation does not seem quite natural. R. Keyser [1868, p. 82] derives the name from “Godanus,” i.e., the Gothic, although the Goths at that time were usually called “Gutones” by the Romans. Ahlenius’s suggestion [1900, p. 24] that Codanus might be an old copyist’s error for “Toutonos” (Teutons), because one MS. reads Thodanus, does not sound probable. Detlefsen [1904, p. 31] thinks that the name Codanus is preserved in Katte(n)-gat, which would mean the inlet (gat) to Codanus, which would then come to include the whole of the Baltic. If Bugge’s explanation given above is correct, it might however mean the shallow gat or inlet.

[92] Professor Alf Torp calls my attention to R. Much’s [1895, p. 37] explanation of “Kobandoi” as a Germanic “*Kowandoz,” a derivation from the word cow. This should therefore be divided “Kow-and-,” where “and” is a suffix, and the meaning would be a cow-people.

[93] I have proposed this explanation to Professor Alf Torp; he finds that it “might indeed be possible, but not altogether probable.”

[94] It has been sought to derive “Daner” from an original Germanic word, equivalent to Anglo-Saxon “denu” (Gothic “*danei”) and “dene” for dale, and its meaning has been thought to be “dwellers in dales or lowlands” [cf. Much, 1895, p. 40; S. Bugge, 1890, p. 236].

[95] That they lived in the sea or bay must, of course, mean that they lived on islands; and the northern part of Jutland, north of the Limfiord, was probably looked upon as an island; but the Cimbrian Promontory is not mentioned; it occurs first in Pliny. The Germanic form of the name, “himbroz,” perhaps still survives in the Danish district of Himmerland, the old Himbersyssel, with the town of Aalborg [cf. Much, 1905, p. 100].

[96] There is a resemblance of name which may be more than accidental between Mela’s “ŒneÆ,” or Pliny’s “ŒonÆ,” and Tacitus’s “Aviones” [“Germania,” c. 40], who lived on the islands of North Frisia and the neighbouring coast. “Aviones” evidently comes from a Germanic “*awjonez,” Gothic “*aujans,” Old High German “ouwon” (cf. Old Norse “ey,” Old High German “ouwa” for island), which means islanders. In the Anglo-Saxon poem “Widsid” they are called “eowe” or “eowan” [cf. Grimm, 1880, p. 330 (472), Much, 1893, p. 195; 1905, p. 101]. It is possible that the Greeks, on hearing the Germanic name, connected it with the Greek word “ŒonÆ” (== egg-eaters), and thereby the whole idea of egg-eating may have arisen, without anything having been related about it.

[97] To this it might be objected that he ought in that case to have obtained much information also about the interior of Scythia and Sarmatia; but in the first place this is not certain, as the special goal of the merchants was the amber countries, and they would therefore keep to the known routes and travel rapidly through—and in the second, Pliny actually mentions a good many tribes in the interior. He says, it is true [iv. 26, 91], of Agrippa’s estimate of the size of Sarmatia and Scythia, that he considers such estimates too uncertain in these parts of the earth; but to conclude from this, as Detlefsen [1904, p. 34] has done, that Pliny’s Greek authorities cannot have received their information by the land route, seems to me unreasonable, since Pliny perhaps did not even know how his authorities had obtained their knowledge.

[98] This river is not mentioned elsewhere and must be invented, HecatÆus of Abdera (circa 300 B.C.) having imagined that it rose in mountains of this name in the interior of Asia and fell into the northern ocean.

[99] This is certainly wrong. The name “Amalcium” cannot come from any northern language, but must come from the Greek “malkios” (??????), which means “stiffening,” “freezing”; “a” must here be an emphatic particle.

[100] This Greek is given as an authority in several passages of Pliny; he is also mentioned by Ptolemy, but is not otherwise known. He may have lived about 100 B.C. [cf. Detlefsen, 1904, pp. 23-25].

[101] On account of the syllable “rus,” which is found in Phoenician names (e.g., Rusazus, Ruscino, Ruspino) and which means headland, cape, it has been sought to derive it from the Semitic; but Detlefsen [1904, p. 24] thinks it more reasonable to suppose it Germanic. Not the smallest trace of Phoenician names has been found in the north. R. Keyser [1868, p. 165] thinks the name, which he reads “Rubeas,” “is without doubt the Welsh ‘rhybyz’” (rhybudd == sign, warning); but the word cannot have had this form in Pliny’s time.

[102] The name may be either Celtic or Old Germanic. In Celtic “mori,” Irish “muir,” Cymric “mÔr,” is sea; but R. Much [1893, p. 220] thinks that Germanic “mari” and Gothic “marei” (German “Meer,” Latin “mare”) may also have been pronounced formerly with “o.” “Marusa” is related to Irish “marb,” Cymric “marw” for dead; but according to Much it may be of Germanic origin and have had the form “*marusaz” (cf. “*marwaz”) with the meaning of motionless, lifeless. “Morimarusa” would thus be the “motionless sea,” which reminds one of Pytheas’s kindred ideas of the sluggish, congealed sea (“mare pigrum, prope immotum mare”). If the name is of Germanic origin, this does not debar its being derived from Pytheas (and taken from him by Philemon); he may have got it from Norway. If Rusbeas is southern Norway, this would point in the same direction. But it is doubtless more reasonable to suppose that the name is derived from the Cimbri, who are mentioned in connection with it, while Pliny does not mention any people in Norway.

[103] Hergt [1893, p. 40] thinks that “Morimarusa” would be the Baltic (and the Cattegat), which was called dead because it had no tides and was frozen in winter. “Rusbeas” would thus be the point of the Skaw. In this way he has two names for the Baltic, and two, if not three, for the Skaw. This interpretation seems to be even less consistent than that given above. Pliny in another passage mentions (see pp. 65, 106) that the sea called “Cronium” was a day’s sail beyond Thule, which lay to the north of Britain and within the Arctic Circle. This in itself makes it difficult for Cronium to begin at Lindesnes, but if it has to begin at Skagen, and thus be the Skagerak, it becomes still worse.

[104] This must come from an Old Germanic word “*glez,” Anglo-Saxon “glÆr,” for amber. It is the same word as the Norwegian “glas” or Danish “glar,” which has come to mean glass.

[105] The origin of the name “SÆvo” cannot be determined with certainty. Forbiger [1848, iii. p. 237] thinks it is KjÖlen, and asserts that it is a Norwegian name which is still found in the form of “Seve,” ridge; but no such name is known in Norway. It seems possible that the name may be connected with the Gothic “saivs” for sea (cf. Old Norse “sÆr”); but it may also be supposed to have arisen from a corruption of “svevus”; in any case it was so regarded in the Middle Ages. Solinus says [c. 20, 1], following Pliny, that “Mons SÆvo ... forms the commencement of Germany,” but Isidore Hispalensis says that “Suevus Mons” forms the north-east boundary of Germany, and on the Hereford Map (about 1280) a mountain chain, “Mons Sueuus,” runs in north-east Germany to a bay of the sea called “Sinus Germanicus,” which may be the Baltic. On the Ebstorf map (1284) “Mons Suevus” has followed the Suevi southwards to Swabia. It is also possible that Ptolemy’s mountain chain “Syeba” (S??a, vi. c. 14) in northernmost Asia (62° N. lat.) has something to do with Pliny’s “SÆvo.” There has been much guessing as to where the latter is to be sought: some [cf. Detlefsen, 1904, p. 28] think it was KjÖlen, although it is quite incomprehensible how this far northern range could be connected with Codanus; others [cf. LÖnborg, 1897, p. 20] that it was in Mecklenburg or Pomerania or even in Jutland [Geijer, 1825, p. 77], where no mountain is to be found, least of all an immense one (“inmensus”). Pliny’s words could be most simply connected with the Norwegian mountains [cf. Holz, 1894, p. 25]. It may indeed be supposed, as MÜllenhoff [iv., 1900, p. 600] thinks, that the men of Augustus’s fleet, in 5 A.D., may have seen in the Cattegat or heard of the “Sea-mountains” of the Scandinavian (or rather, Swedish) coast, “*Saivabergo” or “*SaivagabËrgia,” which rose up over the sea, and the same of which became in Latin “Mons SÆvo”; but perhaps it is just as reasonable to suppose that the information may be derived from the Germans of Jutland, who had communication with Norway and knew its high mountainous country, and that therefore it did not originate with the low west coast of Sweden.

[106] One might be tempted to connect the name “Scadinavia” with the old Norse goddess Skade or SkaÐi, who was of Finnish race; she was black-haired, lived in the mountains in the interior of the country, and was amongst other things the goddess of ski-running. The name Scadinavia would then be of Finnish origin. This derivation has also been put forward [cf. MÜllenhoff, ii., 1887, pp. 55 f., 357 f.]. The termination “avi,” “avia,” must then be the same as “ovia” (see p. 94). This explanation would take for granted an original non-Germanic, so-called “Finnish” population in south Sweden (which does not appear impossible; see below); but it will then be difficult to explain why the name should have survived only in the most southern part, SkÅne. Sophus Bugge [1896, p. 424] thought that “Scadinavia” (later “Scadanavia”) is related to the common Norwegian place-name “SkoÐvin” or SkÖien (“vin” == pasture) and may come from a lost Old Norse word “*skaÐa” (old Slavonic “skotu”) for cattle. “SkoÐvin” would then be cattle-pasture. From “*skaÐa” the word “*skaÐanaz” may be regularly derived, with the meaning of herdsman; and “Skadan-avia” or “Skadinavia” will be herdsman’s pastures, since the termination “avia” may have the same meaning as the German “Au” or “Aue” (good pasture, meadow). The Old Norse “SkÁney” (“SkÁni,” now “SkÅne”) would then come from SkaÐney, where the “Д has been dropped as in many similar instances. Bugge himself afterwards [1904, p. 156] rejected this explanation and derived “Scadinavia” from the same word as “Codanus” (see p. 93), taking it to mean the island or coast-land by “Kodan,” which has had a prefixed “s,” while the long “o” has been changed into short “a.” This explanation may be very doubtful. In many parts of Norway a name “SkÅney” is known, which comes from “skÁn” (meaning crust), and it may therefore not be improbable that the Swedish “SkÁney” or SkÅne is the same name.

[107] Ahlenius [1900, p. 31] has tried to explain the name as a copyist’s error for “Æstingia,” which he connects with the “Æstii” (Esthonians) of Tacitus; but the people would then have been called Æstingii rather than Æstii. One might then be more inclined to think of Jordanes’ “Astingi” or “Hazdingi,” the same as the Old Norse Haddingjar (Hallinger).

[108] R. Keyser [1868, p. 89] explains the name as the same as in the Old Norse name for a people, “Kylpingar,” in northern Russia, neighbours of the Finns. He thinks that there may have been an Old Norse name “Kylpinga-botn” for the Baltic; but it is not likely that this word Kylpingar existed at that time.

[109] Keyser [1868, p. 80] derives the word from Gothic “lagus” (corresponding to Old Norse “logr”) for sea.

[110] The same islands which are here spoken of as British, have been previously referred to (see above, p. 101) by Pliny as Germanic, or rather as a single island with the name “GlÆsaria.” This is another proof of how he draws directly from various sources without even taking the trouble to harmonise the statements. In this case he has probably found the islands mentioned in connection with facts about Britain, or a journey to that country. And it may be supposed that the original source is Pytheas.

[111] In his ignorance of astronomy Pliny adds that “this is said to continue alternately for six months.”

[112] Some MSS. read “Vergos.”

[113] Tacitus, “Agricola,” c. 10; see also c. 38. Cf. also Bunbury, 1883, ii. p. 342.

[114] Tacitus, “Agricola,” c. 28.

[115] Here Tacitus is mistaken, as amber was extensively employed for amulets and ornaments even in the Stone Age (see above, p. 32).

[116] Much [1905, p. 133] connects the name with “ge-swio” == “related by marriage.” It may be just as reasonable to suppose that the name means “burners” (“svier”), since they cleared the land by setting fire to the forests [cf. MÜllenhoff, iv., 1900, p. 499].

[117] Cf. MÜllenhoff, iv., 1900, p. 502.

[118] This might be thought to show that arms of metal, especially of iron, were still rarities in Scandinavia, which only rich and powerful chiefs could obtain, and this might agree with the statement about the esteem in which wealth was held among this particular people. But perhaps the more probable explanation is that the idea may have arisen through foreign merchants (South Germans or Romans) having been present at the great annual “things” and fairs at some well-known temple, e.g., Upsala [cf. MÜllenhoff, 1900, p. 503], where for the sake of peace and on account of the sacredness of the spot it was forbidden to carry arms, and where arms were therefore left in a special “weapon-house,” like those which were later attached to churches in Norway, and there guarded by a thrall. The foreigners may have seen this without understanding its meaning, and Tacitus may have given his own explanation.

[119] The name “Sitones” reminds one forcibly of the “Sidones” mentioned by Strabo and Ptolemy [cf. Geijer, 1825, p. 82]; but the difficulty is that Strabo includes the latter among the Bastarni, with the Peucini who lived on the north and east of the Carpathians and therefore far to the south of the Baltic [cf. Ahlenius, 1900, p. 36]. Ptolemy’s “Sidones” also lived in the neighbourhood of the Carpathians, and to the north of them. But it is nevertheless possible that Tacitus may have heard a similar word and confused it with this name, or he may have heard a story of a reigning woman or queen among Strabo’s Sidones, somewhere north of the Carpathians, and thought that anything so unheard of could only be found in the farthest north. It is also to be noted that Tacitus himself mentions “Peucini” or “BastarnÆ” as neighbours of the “Fenni” (Finns), and therefore inhabiting some distant tract bordering on the unknown in the north-east; on the other hand he does not mention the Sidones in this connection, though they are spoken of in conjunction with the BastarnÆ both by Strabo before him and by Ptolemy after him. Add to this the similarity of names between Sitones and Suiones, and it seems likely that he thought they must be near one another. MÜllenhoff [ii., 1887, p. 9] supposes that the word “Sitones” may have been an appellative which has been mistaken for the name of a people, and he connects it with Gothic “*sitans,” Old Norse “*setar,” from the same root as the Norwegian “sitte” (to sit, occupy). If this is correct we might suppose it to be used in the sense of colonists (cf. Norwegian “opsitter”). Much [1905, p. 31] suggests that perhaps it may be derived from Old Norse “siÐa” == to practise witchcraft (cf. “seid”), and mean sorcerers. On the “Sidones” cf. Much, 1893, pp. 135, 187, 188; MÜllenhoff, 1887, pp. 109, 325.

[120] Wiklund [1895, pp. 103-117] thinks that the “KvÆns” in north Sweden were not Finns, but colonists from Svearike (middle Sweden).

[121] Cf. Zeuss, 1837, p. 157; MÜllenhoff, ii., 1887, p. 10.

[122] Cf. LÖnborg, 1897, p. 136; Ahlenius, 1900, p. 37.

[123] Cf. Baumstark, 1880, p. 329; MÜllenhoff, iv., 1900, p. 516.

[124] Many of his place-names in Ireland especially point to frequent communication, probably due to trade, between this island and the continent, perhaps with Gaul.

[125] Much [1895, a, p. 34] thinks that the “AlociÆ” may have been some small rocky islands which have now disappeared. Upon them he supposes there may have been colonies of auks, which have given them their name, as in Gothic, for instance, they may have been called “*alakÔ.” The hypothesis is improbable; even if any such rocky islets had been washed away by the sea they must have left behind submerged rocks, and none such are known in the sea off Jutland.

[126] Macrobius’s division of the earth into zones after Parmenides with an equatorial ocean like Mela, in graphic representation, had great influence during the Middle Ages.

[127] Similar conceptions are to be found in Avienus (“Ora Maritima,” vv., 644-663), and are derived from ancient Greek geographers (Anaximenes, cf. MÜllenhoff, i., 1870, p. 77).

[128] This description would best suit the Baltic (and the Belts) as forming the eastern side of Scandza; but the term inland sea (“lacus”) does not agree well with Scandza being an island and lying just opposite the Vistula, which “with its three mouths discharged itself into the Ocean”; and in the rear of the Vidivarii at the mouths of the Vistula “dwelt likewise on the Ocean the Æstii, that very peace-loving people” [v. 36, cf. Tacitus]. Besides which Jordanes’ Germanic Ocean may be the Baltic, although his very obscure description may equally well suit the North Sea, or both together. The supposition that the great inland sea and the River Vagi might be Lake Ladoga and the Neva [cf. Geijer, 1825, p. 100] or Lake Vener and the GÖta River [cf. LÖnborg, 1897, p. 25, and Ahlenius, 1900, p. 44] does not agree with the description of Jordanes, which distinctly asserts that it lay on the east side of Scandza in contradistinction to the immense ocean on the west and north. The fact must be that Jordanes had very obscure ideas on this point, and this has made his description confusing.

[129] These small islands have been taken to be the Danish islands [cf. Ahlenius, 1900, p. 43]; but as we hear in immediate connection with them of severe cold and of the wolves losing their eyes on crossing the frozen sea (“congelato mari”), our thoughts are led farther north and we would be inclined to take them for the Åland islands.

[130] This reminds us of Mela’s statement respecting the Œneans, who lived on fen-fowl’s eggs (see above, pp. 91, 95).

[131] And or Amd was used formerly not only for the island of And (AndÖ), but for a great part of VesterÅlen and HinnÖ.

[132] I will mention as yet another possibility a corruption of Ptolemy’s islands, the “AlociÆ,” which lay at the extreme north of his map, north of the Cimbrian Chersonese and farther north than the island of Scandia (see above, pp. 119 f.). A Greek capital lambda, ?, may easily be mistaken for a capital delta, ?, especially in maps, and in such corrupted form may have been transferred to Roman maps, and thence have been used for the name of a people who were said to live specially far north. LÄffler [1894, p. 4] thinks that “Adogit” was a Lappish people, and that the name certainly cannot be of Scandinavian-Germanic origin, but he does not say why.

[133] Cleomedes says that the summer day in Thule lasted a month, while the astronomically ignorant Pliny puts it at six months.

[134] As to these tribal names see especially LÄffler [1894, 1907] and Sophus Bugge [1907], besides P. A. Munch [1852], MÜllenhoff [1887], and others.

[135] The origin of the word “sappherinas” is uncertain. LÖnborg [1897, p. 26] proposes that it may have meant deep sapphire blue, and have been used of the skins of blue foxes. Probably it is rather a northern word, not Germanic, but either Slavonic or Finnish (?).

[136] MÜllenhoff, Mommsen, LÄffler, and others think that the “mitiores” (milder) of the MSS. may be an error for “minores” (smaller), which gives better sense, in contradistinction to the “Suetidi” who come just after and were taller than all the rest. Sophus Bugge proposes that “mitissimi” and “mitiores” may be errors for “minutissime” and “minutiores,” and that it should therefore be translated “the very small Finns who are smaller than all the other, etc.” [cf. also A. Bugge, 1906, p. 18]; but the necessity for so great a change is doubtful [cf. LÄffler, 1907, p. 109].

[137] S. Bugge thought [1907, p. 101] at one time that these might be people of Gond or Gand, i.e., HÖiland, south of Stavanger, but afterwards changed this view [cf. 1910, p. 97].

[138] Jordanes, who was a Goth, had even less reason for glorifying the Northmen at the expense of the Germans or Goths.

[139] Cf. Mommsen, 1882, p. 154; A. Bugge, 1906, pp. 21, 33 f.

[140] This is certainly incorrect; probably they came from the north and established themselves near the Danube in the neighbourhood of the Langobards.

[141] Paulus Warnefridi gives a mythical account of the cause of the war and of the battle and death of king Rodulf [Bethmann and Waitz, 1878, pp. 57 ff.]; the fight and king Rodulf are also referred to in the “Origo Gentes Langobardorum” (of about 807). In both these works it is stated that it was the Langobards (and not the Eruli) who had lived in this country (by the Danube ?) in peace for three years.

[142] It is probable that the mention of the tribes in Jordanes is taken from two different sources; for he begins by saying that Ptolemy only has the names of seven, without mentioning any of these, and later on he gives a whole series of others, which may have been added from another author who supplemented the one from whom the mention of Ptolemy is taken.

[143] Jordanes here repeats Ptolemy, from whom the name of Scandza, == Scandia, is taken (and the statement as to the shape of the island ?), while Procopius has nothing about it.

[144] The name appears in the runic inscriptions to be often a designation of the author of the inscription. Sophus Bugge thought that the Eruli had obtained their knowledge of runes from the Goths, and that they kept them a secret (this reappears in the word “run” itself, which means secret), especially in the leading families, who turned them to account. During their centuries of roving life they carried the knowledge of runes with them to various parts of Denmark, Sweden and Norway. In this way the uniformity of language in the inscriptions from widely separated places may also be explained.

[145] It appears to have been a general custom among the Germans to put old people to death (cf. p. 18). Herodotus [i. 216] relates of the MassagetÆ, who may have been a Germanic tribe, that “when any one has grown very old all his relatives come together and slaughter him, and with him other small cattle; they then cook the flesh and hold a banquet. This is considered by them the happiest end. But they do not eat one who dies of sickness, but bury him underground, and lament that he did not live to be slaughtered.”

[146] This widespread form of anthropophagy is due to the superstition that by eating something of another, beast or man, or particular parts, e.g., the heart (cf. Sigurd Favnesbane), one acquired the peculiar properties of the other, such as strength, courage, goodness, etc. It is thus a similar idea to that in the Christian sacrament.

[147] They were also called O T maps; O T being the initials of Orbis Terrarum.

[148] Cf. Wuttke, 1854.

[149] The text has “ovium” (== sheep), but this is doubtless a copyist’s error for “ovum” (== egg). This may remind us of the ŒonÆ of Mela and Pliny, who lived on the eggs of fen-fowl (see above, p. 92).

[150] Cf. the “Origo Gentis Langobardorum” (of the second half of the seventh century), where the “Winnilians,” who were later called Langobards, live originally on an island called “Scadanan,” or in another MS. “Scadan.” The latter name, with the addition of a Germanic word for meadow or island, might become Scadanau, Scadanauge, or Scadanovia. Cf. also Fredegar Scholasticus’s abbreviated history after Gregory of Tours, where it is related that the Langobards originated in “Schatanavia,” or in one MS. “Schatanagia.”

[151] It is difficult to understand how Paulus has managed to transfer the legend to the North. It might be thought that the idea, which already appears in Herodotus, that the people of the North sleep for the six winter months (see p. 20), is connected with it. Plutarch [“De defectu oraculorum,” c. 18] relates that in the ocean beyond Britain there was according to the statement of Demetrius an island “where Cronos was imprisoned and guarded, while he slept, by Briareus. For sleep had been used as a bond, and there were many spirits about him as companions and servants.” According to another passage in Plutarch [“De facie in orbe LunÆ,” 941] this island was north-west of the isle of Ogygia, which was five days’ sail west of Britain. It is possible that this myth of the sleeping Cronos has also helped to locate the legend of the Seven Sleepers on the north-west coast of Europe. Viktor Rydberg [1886, i. pp. 529 ff.] thought that the legend and its localisation in the North might be connected with Mimer’s seven sons, who in the Volospo’s description (st. 45) of Ragnarok were to spring up at the sound of the horn Gjallar, after having lain asleep for long ages. But this interpretation of the strophe: “Leika Mims synir” is improbable.

[152] In other MSS. Scridowinni and Scritofinni, etc.

[153] According to the “Grottasongr,” Mysing carried off the quern and the two female thralls, Fenja and Menja, on his ship and bade them grind salt, and they ground until the ship sank (according to some MSS. it was in the Pentland Firth), and there was afterwards a whirlpool in the sea, where the water falls into the hole in the quern. Thus the sea became salt. This is the same legend which is repeated in the tale of the mill which grinds at the bottom of the sea.

[154] As will be mentioned later, the islands were possibly inhabited by Celts before the arrival of the monks. In that case the latter must doubtless have visited them with the additional object of spreading Christianity.

[155] It has also been translated: “two rows of oars,” which is improbable.

[156] Some writers have thought that they might be the Shetlands; but this seems less probable.

[157] Cf. A. Bugge, 1905, pp. 55 f. Several names of fishing-banks, which A. Bugge gives from Dr. Jakobsen, are also of interest. Off Sandey is a fishing-bank called “Knokkur” (or “Á Knokki”), and one of the same name lies west of Syd-Straumsey. West of Sudrey is a fishing-place called “Knokkarnir.” The fishing-banks are called after the landmarks; “cnoc” is Celtic for hill, and must have been the name of the heights that formed landmarks for the fishing-places in question; on land these names have given way to more modern Norse ones, but have held their own out to sea. A. Bugge thinks that the Celtic place-names may be due to Norwegians who before they came to the Faroes had lived with Irish-speaking people in the Scottish islands or in Ireland; but it nevertheless seems very improbable that they should have used a foreign language to give names to their new home. A more natural explanation is that they had the names from the earlier Celtic inhabitants, whether these were only the Irish monks, or whether there were others. Names of islands and hills are usually among the most ancient of place-names.

[158] Cf. LandnÁma, Prologue. Further on in the LandnÁma places are frequently mentioned where priests had formerly lived, and where in consequence heathens dared not settle.

[159] It is explicable that places and estates may be called after the personal names of Irish land-takers; but it is more difficult to understand how the Norwegians should have come by Celtic names, derived from appellatives, for mountains, fjords, and rivers—which are everywhere among the earliest of place-names—if the Celts had not been there before they came. Among such place-names of Celtic origin, or which indicate a Celtic population, may be mentioned: “DÍmunarvÁg, Dimunar-klakkar” (an inlet and two rocky islets in Breidifjord); “DÍmon,” in many places as the name of a ridge, a mountain, and an islet; “Katanes”; “Katadalr”; “KÚÐafljÓt,” the name of a confluence of several rivers into a large piece of water, in Vester-Skaftarfells district, from Irish “cud” (== head). “MinÞakseyrr” is mentioned above. Further, there are many names after Irishmen: a river “IrÁ,” two places “IragerÐi,” a channel into Hvammsfjord “Irska leiÐ,” “Irsku bÚÐir,” a hill “Irski hÓll,” besides “Vestmanna-eyjar,” etc.

[160] The “Ost-sÆ^” 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-sÆ^.” As the Ost-sÆ^ 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 passage somewhat later he says that “no men [i.e., Norsemen, Norwegian chiefs] lived to the north of him.” This may have been somewhere about Malangen or Senjen, which archÆological 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 nobles 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. Japetus 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 ships” (“syx ascum”); 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 quantity 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. LÖnborg’s reasons [1897, p. 37] for rejecting Storm’s view and maintaining the Dvina as the river in question have little weight. LÖnborg examines the statements of direction, south, north, etc., as though King Alfred and Ottar had had a map and a modern compass before them during the description. He has not remarked that Ottar has merely confined himself to the chief points of the compass, 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 circumstance 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., “kjÖpstad” == 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 shores 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. SÖrensen, who thinks that Sciringesheal may be a translation into Norse of “baptisterium” (“skÍra” == 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 Norsemen 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. LÖnborg [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 LunÆ,” 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 pass 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 QazwÎnÎ, 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-TartÛshÎ 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-TartÛshÎ 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 IbrÂhÎm ibn Ja’qÛb (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 KvÆnland. 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 passage is undoubtedly taken from Solinus, and we see how Magister Adam confuses together what he has heard and what he finds in classical authors.

[185] It seems very probable, as Mr. F. Schiern [1873, s. 13] suggests, that this conception of even the noblest men (nobilissimi homines) being herdsmen may be due to a misunderstanding of the old Norse word “fehirÐir,” 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 KvÆns, 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 “lutrÆ” (otters); but as “uri” is found in two passages 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]. LÖnborg’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. xxxiv., xxxvii., 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 passage 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 superstition.

[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 classical 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 HÁlogaland), it is here given as fourteen days in HÁlogaland. 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 passage, 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 HardrÅde 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 LÖnborg [1897, p. 168].

[197] Adam’s idea of HÁlogaland (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: HelgeÖ in MjÖsen, 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 FinnÉdi 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 KvÆnland with the Cynocephali, etc.

[200] S. Bugge has since maintained the probability that the name “SkaÐi” 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.

[204] As Professor Alf Torp has pointed out to me, the word “Fin” must, on account of the Germanic mutation of sounds, be expected to have sounded something like “Pen” at that remote time. “Pen” in Celtic means head, and it is not altogether impossible that such a word might have been transformed into a national name.

[205] Cf. O. Solberg, 1909. The particulars here given of this remarkable find are for the most part taken from Solberg’s interesting paper, the proofs of which he has allowed me to see. He has also been kind enough to give me an opportunity of examining the objects.

[206] Lapps belonging to the Greek Church, who live in a Russian enclave on the Pasvik, Varanger Fjord. (Tr.)

[207] Curiously enough, no bones of the great bearded seal (Phoca barbata) are mentioned; but its absence may perhaps be accidental.

[208] In a grave in North Varanger some fragments were found, probably of walrus-tusk [cf. Solberg, 1909, p. 93].

[209] Professor G. Storm [1894, s. 97] and others have thought that the Karelian-Finnish name “Kantalaksi” (“Kandalaks”) and “Kantalahti” for the north-western bay of the White Sea, and the town at its inner end, may be a corrupted translation of the Norwegian name “Gandvik” for the White Sea, as “kanta” (“kanda”) might be the Finnish-Karelian pronunciation of the Norwegian “gand,” and the Finnish-Karelian “lahti” or “laksi” has the same meaning as the Norwegian “vik” (bay). Dr. Hansen, considering this explanation probable, takes it as proof that the Karelians must have come to the region later than the Norwegians, and later than the Beormas of Ottar’s time. But if the Karelians had immigrated thither after the Norwegians had given it this name, it would be equally incomprehensible that they should not have taken their place-names from the settled Beormas instead of from the casually visiting Norwegians. Storm’s explanation of the name “Kandalaks” is, however, in my opinion highly improbable; the casually visiting Norwegians cannot possibly have given the settled Beormas or Karelians the name of their own home. It is then, according to my view, much more probable that the Norwegian “Gandvik” is some kind of “popular etymological” translation of “Kantalaksi,” which must then be a name of Finnish-Karelian origin. I have asked Professor Konrad Nielsen, of Christiania, about this, and he has also discussed the question with Professor E. SetÄlÄ, and Professor Wichmann, of Helsingfors. All three are of my opinion. The meaning of “Kantalaksi” (or “Kannanlaksi,” from an older word “KanÐanlaksi,” where the first part is genitive) seems to Nielsen to be quite certain: “kanta” (genitive, “kannan”) is heel, basis. The name should, according to SetÄlÄ, be translated, “the broad bay.” The Norwegians must consequently have corrupted the first part of the name in a “popular etymological” manner to their “gand” (which means sorcery), and the latter part of the name they have translated by “vik” (bay). The name “Gandvik” may already have been known in Norway in the tenth century, as it is mentioned by the heathen skald, Eilif Gudrunsson, in ThorsdrÁpa. This seems to prove that the Beormas of the tenth century (and then evidently also of Ottar’s time) were Karelians, using the Karelian name “Kantalaksi” for the White Sea. This name consequently leads to conclusions contrary to those of Dr. Hansen, and it goes against the correctness of his views.

[210] Dr. Hansen seeks to explain the difficulty that the Beormas near the Dvina, according to the name of the goddess “Jomale” in the tale of Tore Hund’s journey to Beormaland, must have spoken Karelian, by supposing that the Beormas on the Dvina and those on the Gulf of Kandalaks were two entirely different peoples, although in the old narratives no support for such an assertion is to be found. Besides, we have above found evidence that the Beormas at Kandalaks also spoke Karelian, because this name is a Karelian word, which was used already in the tenth century.

[211] Cf. BjÖrnbo and Petersen, 1904, p. 178. In Michel Beheim’s travels in Norway in 1450 “Wild lapen” are also mentioned, cf. Vangensten, 1908, pp. 17, 30 f.

[212] Hakluyt: “The Principal Navigations, etc.” (1903), iii. p. 404.

[213] Gustav Storm [1881, p. 407] altered “some” to “none,” evidently thinking it would make better sense of this obscure passage; following him therefore Magnus Olsen, J. Qvigstad and A. M. Hansen have recently discussed the passage as though it read: “which none can understand.” It appears to me that “which some [i.e., a few] can understand” gives clearer sense.

[214] This passage seems somewhat confused and it is difficult to find a logical connection in it. The first part is simple; most of the Sea Finns (Fishing Lapps) speak Norwegian, but badly. Among themselves and with the Mountain Finns (Reindeer Lapps) they do not use this, but their own language. The language of the latter people must consequently have been the same, unless we are to make the improbable assumption that the Fishing Lapps had a language different from that of the Reindeer Lapps, which the latter however had learned, although they are still in our time very bad linguists, and speak imperfect Norwegian. So far there cannot be much doubt of the meaning, but it is different when we come to the statement that they had more languages than one, and that of “their languages they have however another to use among themselves.” It seems to me that the certain examples mentioned by Qvigstad [1909] of the Lapps having been in the habit of inventing jargons at the beginning of the eighteenth century give a natural explanation of this passage [cf. also Magnus Olsen, 1909]. A. M. Hansen’s interpretation [1907 and 1909], that the original mother-tongue of the Fishing Lapps (called by him “Skridfinnish”), which was quite different from that which they spoke with the Reindeer Lapps, is here meant, cannot be reconciled with the words of the text, for in that case they must have had two mother-tongues; it is expressly said that the second language was “their own,” which they spoke among themselves; if it was only the language of the Reindeer Lapps, then it was precisely not their own, nor would they have any reason to speak it among themselves. I understand the passage thus: “of their [own] language they have also another [i.e., another form, variant, or jargon] to use among themselves, which [only] some [of them] can understand.” But how it should result from this that “it is certain that they have nine languages” is difficult to explain; for even if we assume with Hansen that nine is an error for three, it does not improve matters; for in any case they did not use all three languages, including Norwegian, “among themselves.” It is probable enough, as indeed both Hansen and Magnus Olsen have assumed, that there is a reference here to the magic arts of the Lapps; and we must then suppose that this mention of the nine languages was an expression commonly understood at the time, which did not require further explanation, to be compared with the nine tongue-roots of the poisonous serpent [cf. M. Olsen, 1909, p. 91]. Nine was a sacred number in heathen times, cf. Adam of Bremen’s tale of the festivals of the gods every ninth year at Upsala, where nine males of every living thing were offered, etc. Thietmar of Merseburg mentions the sacrificial festival which was held every ninth year at midwinter at Leire, etc.

[215] Remark the resemblance between this passage and the mention of the Lapps in the “Historia NorvegiÆ” (above, p. 204).

[216] Ottar’s statement that he owned 600 reindeer is, as pointed out by O. Solberg [1909, p. 127], evidence against the correctness of A. M. Hansen’s assumption that the Finns mentioned by Ottar had learned to keep reindeer by imitating the Norwegian’s cattle-keeping, and that they kept their reindeer on the mountain pastures in summer, but collected them together for driving home in winter; it would have been a difficult matter to manage several hundred reindeer in this fashion, unless they were divided up into so many small herds that we cannot suppose them all to have been the property of one man. Large herds of many deer must have been half wild and have been kept in a similar way to the Reindeer Lapps’ reindeer now.

[217] Gregory of Tours; “Gesta Francorum”; the Anglo-Saxon poems “Beowulf” and “WÎdsÎÐ,” etc.

[218] Zeuss, 1837, p. 501; MÜllenhoff, 1889, pp. 18 f., 95 f.; A. Bugge, 1905, pp. 10 f.

[219] Cf. H. Zimmer [1891, 1893, p. 223] and A. Bugge [1905, pp. 11 f.]. In a life of St. Gildas, on an island off the Welsh coast [“Vita GildÆ, auctore Carodoco Lancarbanensi,” p. 109], we read that he was plundered by pirates from the Orcades islands, who must be supposed to have been Norwegian Vikings. This is said to have taken place in the sixth century, but the MS. dates from the twelfth. The island of Sark, east of Guernsey, was laid waste by the Normans, according to the “Miracula Sancti Maglorii,” cap. 5. [A. de la Borderie, “Histoire de Bretagne,” Critique des Sources, iii. 13, p. 236.] This part of the “Miracula” was composed, according to Borderie, before 851; but even in the saint’s lifetime (sixth century) the “Miracula” places an attack by the “Normans” (cap. 2). It has been suggested [cf. Vogel, “Die Normannen und das FrÄnkische Reich,” 1896, p. 353] that this might refer to Saxon pirates; but doubtless incorrectly.

[220] Cf. Zeuss, 1837, pp. 477 f.; MÜllenhoff, 1889, p. 19.

[221] What an enormous time such a development requires is demonstrated by the history of the rudder. The most ancient Egyptian boats were evidently steered by two big oars aft, one on each side. These oars were later, in Egyptian and Greek ships, transformed into two rudders or rudder oars, one on each side aft (see illustrations, pp. 7, 23, 35, 48). On the Viking ships we find only one of these rudders on the starboard side, but fixed exactly in the same way. Then at last, towards the end of the Middle Ages, the rudder was moved to the stern-post. But the rudder of the boats of Northern Norway has still a “styrvold” (instead of an ordinary tiller), which is a remnant of the rudder of the Viking ships.

[222] The types of Scandinavian craft it most reminds one of are the fjord and Nordland “jagt,” in western and northern Norway, and the “pram,” which is now in use in south-eastern Norway. It is conceivable that it represents an ancient boat type resembling the form of the “jagt.”

[223] Professor Gustafson informed me that in the summer of 1909 he saw in a megalithic grave in Ireland a representation of a ship, which might have some resemblance to a Scandinavian rock-carving; but he regarded this as very uncertain.

[224] Professor G. Gustafson has in recent years examined and figured many Norwegian rock-carvings for the University of Christiania. The illustration reproduced here (p. 237) is from a photograph which he has kindly communicated to me.

[225] The Viking ships had, however, only one rudder on the starboard side, while the ancient Egyptian, Phoenician and Greek ships had two rudders, one on each side.

[226] But “Viking” is also explained as derived from a Celtic word, and is said to mean warrior [cf. A. Bugge].

[227] Cf. P. A. Munch, i., 1852; MÜllenhoff, ii., 1887, p. 66; iv., 1900, pp. 121, 467, 493, etc.; Much, 1905, pp. 124, 135; Magnus Olsen, 1905, p. 22; A. Bugge, 1906, p. 20.

[228] H. Koht [1908] has suggested the possibility that the name “HÅlÖiger” (HÁleygir) from HÅlogaland (Northern Norway) may be the same as the Vandal tribe Lugii, which about the year 100 inhabited the region between the upper course of the Elbe and Oder. With the prefix “hÁ” they are distinguished as the high Lugii. Moltke Moe thinks that “Hallinger” or “Haddingjar” may come from another Vandal tribe, the “Hasdingi” (Gothic “HazdiggÔs”), which had its name from the Gothic “*hazds,” long hair [cf. MÜllenhoff, iv., 1900, p. 487; Much, 1905, p. 127]. It may also be possible that the name of Skiringssal in Vestfold was connected with the Sciri in eastern Germany [cf. Munch, 1852].

[229] O. Irgens [1904] thinks the Norwegians may have had the compass very early (lodestone on a straw or a strip of wood floating on water in a bowl), perhaps even in the eleventh century; indeed, he considers it not impossible that the lodestone may have been brought to the North even much earlier than this by Arab traders. But the expression often used in the sagas that they drifted about the sea in thick and hazy weather (without seeing the heavenly bodies), and did not know where they were, seems to contradict this.

[230] O. Irgens [1904] has suggested the possibility that they might measure the length of the shadow of the gunwale by marks on the thwart, and determine when the boat lay on an even keel by a bowl of water, and that thus they might obtain a not untrustworthy measurement of the sun’s altitude even at sea. He further supposed that the Norwegians might have become acquainted with the hour-glass from Southern Europe or from the plundering of monasteries, and that thus they were able to measure the length of the day approximately at sea. But no statements are known that could prove this.

[231] Presuming that King Alfred’s “Iraland” is not an error for “Isaland” and does not mean Iceland (see p. 179).

[232] The priest Ari Thorgilsson, commonly called Ari hinn FrÓÐi or Are Frode (i.e., the learned), lived from 1068 to 1148.

[233] G. Storm, “Monumenta Historica NorvegiÆ,” 1880, pp. 8 f.

[234] R. Meissner [1902, pp. 43 f.] thinks it was written between 1260 and 1264.

[235] The original LandnÁmabÓk, which was the source of both Styrmir’s and Sturle’s versions, must have been written at the beginning of the thirteenth century.

[236] Cf. VigfÚsson, 1856, i. p. 186; P. A. Munch, 1860; J. E. Sars, 1877, i. p. 213; A. Bugge 1905, pp. 377 ff. Finnur JÓnsson, 1894, ii. p. 188, is against this view.

[237] Thus the Norsemen settled in Greenland are always described in the Icelandic sagas, while the Eskimo are called SkrÆlings.

[238] Opinions have been divided as to the origin of this name; but there can be no doubt that the word is Germanic, and is the same as the modern Norwegian word “skrÆlling,” which denotes a poor, weak, puny creature.

[239] This took place, according to Are Frode’s own statements, in the year 1000.

[240] It seems possible that this note may refer to an island which appeared in 1422 south-west of Reykjarnes, and later again disappeared [cf. Th. Thoroddsen, 1897, i. pp. 89 f.].

[241] See “GrÖnlands historiske MindesmÆrker,” iii. p. 250; F. JÓnsson, 1899, p. 322.

[242] Instead of the words “very slightly ...” some MSS. have: “but then steer south-west.”

[243] Both SnÆbjÖrn and Rolf had to fly from Iceland for homicide. Rolf and StyrbjÖrn fell in blood-feud when they returned.

[244] Goe began about February 21. What is here related would thus show that it was not till after that time that mild weather began, so that the snow melted and there was water on the stick that stuck out through the aperture.

[245] It was, perhaps, not altogether by chance that Eric was supposed to have sailed west from this point, as GunnbjÖrn’s brother, Grimkell, lived on the outer side of SnÆfellsnes; and it may have been on a voyage thither that GunnbjÖrn was thought to have been driven westward [cf. Reeves, 1895, p. 166].

[246] SnÆfell lay far north on the west coast of Greenland. A SnÆfell far north is also mentioned in connection with the Nordrsetu voyages (see later); it lay north of KrÓksfjardarheidr; but whether it is the same as that here mentioned is uncertain.

[247] In the Eastern Settlement there was a Ravnsfjord (HrafnsfjÖrÐr), which is probably the same as that intended here, as it is compared with Eiriksfjord.

[248] The above is for the most part a translation from Hauk’s LandnÁmabÓk.

[249] We know little of how the ancient Scandinavians were able to provide themselves on their long voyages with food that would keep; they used salt meat, and it is probable that when they were laid up for the winter they often died of scurvy, as indeed is indicated by the narratives. Meat and fish they could doubtless often obtain fresh by hunting and fishing; for grain products they were in a worse position; these can never have been abundant in Iceland, and they certainly had no opportunity of carrying a large provision with them; but as a rule they can scarcely have got on altogether without hydro-carbons, which are considered necessary for the healthy nourishment of a European. Milk may have afforded a sufficient compensation, and in fact we see that they usually took cattle with them. In the narrative of Ravna-Floki’s voyage to Iceland it is expressly said that the cattle died during the winter (see above, p. 257), and it must have been for this reason that they thought they must go home again the next summer, which shows how important it was. Probably Eric also took cattle with him on his first voyage to Greenland, and thus he was obliged before all to find a more permanent place of abode on the shores of the fjords where there was grazing for the cattle; but it is likely that he lived principally by sealing and fishing. In that case he must have been a very capable fisherman.

[250] Edda Snorra Sturlusonar, i. pp. 686, 688, HafniÆ, 1848.

[251] If the GunnbjÖrnskerries lay on the east coast, then GunnbjÖrn Ulfsson was the first to reach it; but, as has been pointed out above (p. 261), they are more likely to have been near Cape Farewell, assuming the voyage to be historical.

[252] This incident is obviously connected with Irish legends, with which that same saga shows other points of resemblance. We read in the Floamanna-saga [cf. “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” ii. p. 118]: “They were then much exhausted by thirst; but water was nowhere in the neighbourhood. Then said Starkad: I have heard it said that when their lives were at stake men have mingled sea-water and urine. They then took the baler, ... made this mixture, and asked Thorgils for leave to drink it. He said it might indeed be excused, but would not either forbid it or permit it. But as they were about to drink, Thorgils ordered them to give him the baler, saying that he wished to say a spell over their drink [or: speak over the bowl]. He received it and said: Thou most foul beast, that delayest our voyage, thou shalt not be the cause that I or others drink our own evacuation! At that moment a bird, resembling a young auk, flew away from the boat, screaming. Thorgils thereupon emptied the baler overboard. They then row on and see running water, and take of it what they want; and it was late in the day. This bird flew northwards from the boat. Thorgils said: Late has this bird left us, and I would that it may take all the devilry with it; but we must rejoice that it did not accomplish its desire.”

In Brandan’s first voyage, in the Irish tale, “Betha Brenainn,” etc., or “Imram Brenaind” (of about the twelfth century; cf. Zimmer, 1889, pp. 137, 319), the seafarers one day suffered such thirst that they were near to death. They then saw glorious jets of water falling from a cliff. His companions asked Brandan whether they might drink of the water. He advised them first to say a blessing over it; but when this was done, the jets stopped running, and they saw the devil, who was letting the water out of himself, and killing those who drank of it. The sea closed over the devil, in order that thenceforth he might do no more evil to any one. The similarities are striking: both are perishing of thirst and about to drink urine, the Icelanders their own, the Irish the devil’s. They ask their leaders—the Icelanders Thorgils, the Irish Brandan—whether they may drink it. In both cases the leaders require a prayer to be said over it. Thereupon in both cases they see the devil: the Icelanders in the form of a bird that screams and finally leaves them to trouble them no more, and the Irish in the form of the devil himself, who is passing water, and disappears into the sea to do no more evil. The Icelandic tale is to some extent disconnected and incomprehensible, but is explained by being compared with the Irish; one thus sees how there may originally have been a connection between the bird (the Evil One) and the drink, which is otherwise obscure. The Icelandic account may have arisen by a distortion and adaptation, due to oral transmission, of the Irish legend.

[253] Cf. “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” ii. p. 656.

[254] Cf. “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” ii. p. 662.

[255] Ibid. pp. 684 ff.

[256] According to the “Islandske Annaler” [pp. 121, 181, 477] it was in 1200, therefore eleven years later, not fourteen; it is there related merely that Ingimund the priest was found uncorrupted in the uninhabited region, but the other six are not mentioned.

[257] I.e., wax tablets to write on.

[258] The Arab QazwÎnÎ (thirteenth century) tells a story, after Omar al ’Udhri (eleventh century), of a cave in the west where lie four dead men uncorrupted [cf. G. Jacob, 1892, p. 168].

[259] Cf. “Islandske Annaler,” edited by G. Storm, 1888, pp. 50, 70, 142, 196, 337, 383.

[260] Cf. G. Storm’s arguments to this effect, 1888a, pp. 263 ff.; 1887, pp. 71 f.

[261] It is true that in Bishop Gissur Einarsson’s (bishop from 1541 to 1548) copy-book there is an addition to the ancient sailing directions for Greenland that “experienced men have said that one must sail south-west to New Land (Nyaland) from the Krysuvik mountains” (on the Reykjanes peninsula) [see “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” iii. p. 215; and G. Storm, “Hist. Tidskr.,” 1888, p. 264]; but it is impossible to attach much weight to a statement of direction in a tradition 260 years old; it may easily have been altered or “improved” by later misconceptions.

[262] “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” iii. pp. 222-224.

[263] As we have said, they can scarcely have known anything of the coast to the north of this, which runs in a more northerly direction.

[264] Cf. G. Storm, 1891, p. 71; “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” i. p. 361.

[265] The mathematician and cosmographer Jacob Ziegler (ob. 1549) in his work “Scondia” (printed at Strasburg, 1536) placed the promontory of HvÍtserk (“Hvetsarg promontorium”) in 67° N. lat. [cf. “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” iii. pp. 500, 503]. This may be the usual confusion with BlÁserk. It happens to be by no means ill suited to Ingolf’s Fjeld, which lies in 66° 25' N. lat.

[266] In the Walkendorff additions to Ivar BÁrdsson’s description of Greenland it is called HvÍtserk, which may be a confusion with BlÁserk; the passage continues: “And it is credibly reported that it is not thirty sea-leagues to land, in whichever direction one would go, whether to Greenland or to Iceland” [see “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” iii. p. 491]. The distance here given is remarkably correct. In BjÖrn JÓnsson’s “GrÖnlands Annaler” (written before 1646) it is related that “Sira Einar Snorrason,” priest of Stadarstad, near SnÆfellsnes (he became priest there in 1502), owned a large twelve-oared boat, which, with a cargo of dried cod, was carried away from Öndverdarnes (the western point of SnÆfellsnes) “and drifted out to sea, so that they saw both the glaciers, as GunnbjÖrn had done formerly, both SnÆfells glacier and BlÁserk in Greenland; they had thus come near to Eric’s course (‘Eiriksstefnu’)” [“GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” i. p. 123]. Here, then, we have the same idea that both glaciers can be seen simultaneously, as is also found in BjÖrn’s work with reference to GunnbjÖrn Ulfsson’s voyage (see above, p. 263).

[267] Cf. “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” iii. p. 843. Captain Graah brought the stone to Denmark in 1824.

[268] In a paper read before the ArchÆological Society at Stockholm, March 13, 1905. Cf. “Svenska Dagbladet,” March 14, 1905. I owe this reference to Professor Magnus Olsen.

[269] Cf. A. Bugge, 1898, p. 506. By a printer’s error, seventeenth century is given instead of fourteenth.

[270] See also the 5th and 6th cantos of the same poem, “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” ii. pp. 522 ff., for the voyage to Greipar and its being the resort of outlaws.

[271] Captain Isachsen [1907] has attached much weight to this expression (which he translates from “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.” by “long and dangerous sea-route”; but the original is “mikit og lÁngt sjÓleiÐi”) in order to prove that the Nordrsetur must lie far north. But it is seen from the text itself that this idea of a long sea voyage is taken from the SkÁld-Helga lay (where also similar expressions are used), which is of late origin, and consequently an untrustworthy base for such conclusions. Moreover, according to the lay itself, Skald-Helge belonged probably to the Eastern Settlement, and thence to Holstensborg, 67° N. lat., was a long voyage.

[272] This is obviously an error for “bygÐar sporÐr” (end of the inhabited country), as in the “SkÁld-Helga Rimur” (see above, p. 298).

[273] “Greipar,” plural of “Greip,” would mean literally the grip or interval between the fingers, but it may also be used of mountain ravines. The name seems to point to a particularly rugged or fjord-indented coast, and would be appropriate to the whole country north of Straumsfjord, for instance about Holstensborg, in about 67°.

[274] “KrÓksfjarÐar-heiÐr” would literally mean the flat, waste mountain tract (“heiÐr”) by the crooked fjord, Kroksfjord. The latter name would be very appropriate to Disco Bay and Vaigat. The flat plateaux of basalt, which form Disco on one side, and the Nugsuak Peninsula on the other side of Vaigat, might be called “heiÐr.”

[275] Cf. “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” iii. p. 226; F. JÓnsson, 1899, p. 319.

[276] Perhaps these names of fjords were so indistinct in the original MS. that BjÖrn JÓnsson could not read them, and therefore inserted these words (cf. “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” iii. p. 233).

[277] The name of this island is left blank, and was doubtless illegible in the original.

[278] So the mountain is called in an Icelandic translation, and this form may be nearest to the name in the original Norwegian text. In the various Danish MSS. the mountain is called “Hemeuell Radszfielt” (oldest MS.), “Hammelrads Fjeld,” “Himmelradsfjeld,” etc. In a MS. which is otherwise considered trustworthy, it is called “Hemelrachs Fjeld,” and this has been frequently supposed to mean the heaven-reaching mountain [cf. “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” iii. p. 259]. As will be mentioned later, the real name of the mountain was possibly “HiminroД (flushing of the sky), or perhaps “HiminroД (wall of heaven, i.e., wall reaching towards heaven).

[279] The words in parenthesis are in German, and are certainly an explanation added later. XIII. is evidently an error for XIIII.

[280] It is also possible that it means whales from which “tauer” or ropes are obtained, i.e., the walrus; the ropes of walrus-hide being so very valuable.

[281] One might then suppose that “Hunenrioth” was connected with the Norwegian word “hun” for a giant (sometimes used in our day for the Evil One). The name might then be applied to the mythical Risaland or Jotunheim, in the Polar Sea, north-east of Greenland; but it would then be difficult to explain the meaning of the latter part of the name, -rioth.

[282] Professor Moltke Moe has suggested to me this explanation of the name. One might also suppose it to mean the western land of sunset, that is, America, but it would be unlike the Scandinavians to use such a name for a country. There is a possibility that it was connected with “roД (gen. “raÐar,” a ridge of land) and meant the ridge or wall of heaven, i.e., reaching toward heaven. It is, perhaps, less probable that “-rioth” or “-raД came from a word of two syllables like “roÐa” (a rod, later a cross, Anglo-Saxon “rod,” modern English “rood”) or the poetical word “rÓÐi” (wind, storm). In O. Rygh: “Norske Gaardnavne,” xvi. Nordlands Amt [ed. K. Rygh, 1905, p. 334], there is the name of an estate “Himmelstein” (in Busknes), which in 1567 was written “Himmelstand,” “Himmelstaa” [from 1610 on == “sten”]. K. Rygh remarks of this: “Himmel occurs occasionally in names of mountains: thus, a little farther north we have the lofty Himmeltinder on the border of Busknes and Borge. One is disposed to regard this name as similar to the Danish Himmelbjerg, meaning a very high mountain....” Professor Torp has mentioned to me the similarity of name with the giant Hymer’s ox “Himinhrjotr” in the Snorra-Edda; but it is difficult to think that a mountain should have been called after the proper name of an animal.

[283] Rafn, in “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” iii. pp. 881-885, commits the absurdity of separating these two places by the whole of Baffin’s Bay, in spite of their being mentioned together in the old accounts under the common designation of “Nordrsetur.” He puts “Greipar” in about 67° N. lat., but makes KrÓksfjardarheidr into Lancaster Sound, 74° N. lat., on the other side of the ice-blocked Baffin’s Bay.

[284] Cf. “Islandske Annaler,” ed. Storm, p. 120, etc.; “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” ii. pp. 754, 762. As is pointed out by Finnur JÓnsson [1893, p. 539], most of the coffins found in graves in Greenland are fastened together with wooden nails. We are also told how all the iron spikes and nails were carefully taken out of a stranded Norwegian ship (about 1129).

[285] Since this chapter was written a few years ago, an excellent treatise by O. Solberg on the Greenland Eskimo in prehistoric times has appeared [1907]. The author has here reached conclusions similar to the above as regards the northward extension of the Nordrsetu voyages; but he proposes to place Kroksfjord south of Disco Bay, since he does not think the Greenlanders came across the Eskimo who lived there. I do not consider this view justified; on the contrary, it seems to me probable (as will be mentioned later) that the Greenlanders had intercourse with the Eskimo.

[286] Otto Sverdrup found on two small islands in Jones Sound several groups of three stones, evidently set up by human hands as shelters for sitting eider-ducks, similar to those with which he was acquainted in the north of Norway. Whether these stone shelters were very ancient could not be determined. Captain Isachsen [1907] thinks they may be due to the ancient Scandinavians of the Greenland settlements, and sees in them possible evidence of Jones Sound having been Kroksfjord. But too much importance must not be attached to this: no other sign of Europeans having stayed in Jones Sound was discovered, whereas there were many signs of Eskimo. Unless we are to believe that the latter set up the stones for some purpose or other, it is just as likely that they may have been placed there by chance hunters in recent times as that they were due to the ancient Norsemen.

[287] As these pieces of driftwood must have been carried by the East Greenland Polar Current, this seems to show that there were already Eskimo on the east coast of Greenland at that time. As they are spoken of as something remarkable, the pieces, with wedges of tusk and bone, cannot have been due to Norsemen, either in Greenland or Iceland. Their being shaped with “hatchets” or “adzes” (i.e., Eskimo tools) was looked upon as strange.

[288] This passage seems obscure, and there may be some error or misunderstanding on the part of the various copyists. But as it now stands, it may be best taken to mean that all known land and all the known glaciers had disappeared beneath the horizon; but that the “jÖkull” (i.e., snow-field or inland ice) which they saw to landward extended southward along the coast as far as they could see. The expression “to the south of them” is not, of course, to be interpreted as meaning due south of the spot where they were, but rather as southward along the coast, from the part off which they lay; this is confirmed by the addition “as far as they could see,” which can only refer to a coast along which they were looking southward.

[289] The text has three “doegr” (and one long day’s rowing), that is, three times twelve hours; but in this case it seems most natural to suppose that days are meant, and that they put in to shore at night.

[290] The text says that these islands were to the south of “SnÆfell”; but where this was we do not know. In the Saga of Eric the Red we read that in the third summer Eric (see above, p. 267) “went as far north as ‘SnÆfell’ and into ‘Hrafns-fjord.’” Whether this was the same SnÆfell is uncertain, but quite possible; while Hrafns-fjord (Ravnsfjord) is most probably to be regarded as the Hrafnsfjord that lay in the Eastern Settlement, near Hvarf.

[291] Cf. “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” iii. p. 885.

[292] Finnur JÓnsson [1901, ii. p. 648] thinks it was written about 1200.

[293] Gudbrand Vigfusson [1878, i. pp. lix. f.] thinks that Eric the Red’s Saga and the FlateyjarbÓk’s “GrÖnlendinga-ÞÁttr” are derived, in complete independence of one another, from oral traditions, which were different in the west, at Breidafjord, where the former was written, and in the north, from whence the latter is derived.

[294] We cannot here take any account of Rolf Raudesand’s having come to Norway on his return from Greenland (see p. 264); for even if this were historical, which is doubtful, and even if it be referred to a date anterior to Leif’s voyage, which is not certain either, he was driven there accidentally instead of to Iceland.

[295] “M surr” (properly “valbirch”) was probably a veined tree, like “valbjerk,” which was regarded as valuable material. “Valbjerk” is birch grown in a special way so that it becomes twisted and gnarled in structure. It is still much used in Norway, e.g., for knife-handles.

[296] I do not mention here the fourteenth-century tale (in the FlateyjarbÓk) of Bjarne Herjulfsson’s discovery of Wineland as early as 985, since, as G. Storm has shown, this account hardly represents the tradition which in earlier times was most current in Iceland.

[297] ThorbjÖrn Vivilsson came from Iceland to Greenland in 999, the same summer that Leif sailed to Norway. His daughter was Gudrid, afterwards married to Thorstein Ericson. The exact statement as to which ship was used on this occasion, and as to those which were used later on Thorfinn Karlsevne’s expedition, shows how few ships there were in Greenland (and Iceland), and in what esteem the men were held who owned them. The Saga of Eric the Red seems to assume that Leif’s ship was no longer very fit for sea after his last voyage, as we hear no more about it. This may perhaps be regarded as the reason for his not going again, if indeed there be any other reason than the patchwork character of the saga. In the FlateyjarbÓk, on the other hand, we are told that it was Leif’s ship, and not ThorbjÖrn Vivilsson’s, that was used first by Thorvald and afterwards by Thorstein.

[298] If the “great hundred” is meant, this will be 160 men.

[299] From the context it would seem probable that these islands, or this island (?), lay in the Western Settlement. If they had been near Lysefjord, Karlsevne, as Storm points out, might be supposed to go there first because his wife, Gudrid, had inherited property there from Thorstein, and there might be much to fetch thence. But the name Bjarneyjar itself points rather to some place farther north, since the southern part of the Western Settlement (the Godthaab district) must have been then, as now, that part of the coast where bears were scarcest. In BjÖrn JÓnsson’s “GronlandiÆ vetus Chorographia” a “Biarney” (or “-eyiar”) is mentioned, to which it was twelve days’ rowing from Lysefjord [cf. above, p. 301], and as they are the only islands (or island ?) of this name mentioned on the west coast of Greenland, there is much in favour of their being the place here alluded to.

[300] “Doegr” was half a twenty-four hours’ day [cf. Rymbegla]; but whether twelve hours or twenty-four, the distance, like those given later, is impossible. They cannot have sailed from Greenland to Labrador, or even if it was Baffin Land they made, in two days of twelve hours, and scarcely in two of twenty-four. According to the MS. in the HauksbÓk “they sailed thence [i.e., from Bjarneyjar] two half-days [i.e., twenty-four hours in all] to the south. Then they sighted land.” It might be supposed that this should be taken to mean that the difference in latitude between this land and their starting-point was equivalent to two half-days’ sail. It is true that we read in the “Rymbegla” [1780, p. 482] there are two dozen sea-leagues, or two degrees of latitude, in a “‘doegr’s’ sailing,” and two “doegr” would therefore be four degrees; but when we see later that from this first land they found to Markland (Newfoundland ?) was also only two half-days’ sail, then these distances become altogether impossible [cf. G. Storm, 1888, pp. 32-34; Reeves, 1895, p. 173]. Reeves proposes that “tvau” might be an error for “siau” (i.e., seven; but in the MS. of the HauksbÓk we have “two” in numerals: II). It is probable that this repetition of the same distance, two “doegr’s” sail, in the case of each of the three new countries, has nothing to do with reality; it reminds us so much of the stereotyped legendary style that we are inclined to believe it to be borrowed from this. Storm thinks that as Iceland was supposed to lie in the same latitude as the Western Settlement, and Wineland in the same latitude as Ireland, there would naturally be the same distance between the Western Settlement and Wineland as between Iceland and Ireland, and the latter was put at five (or three ?) “doegr.” However, it is not five, but six “doegr” between Bjarneyjar and FurÐustrandir, according to the Saga of Eric the Red [cf. Storm’s ed., 1891, p. 32]. In the copy in the HauksbÓk, it is true, the distance is given as two “doegr” between Bjarneyjar and Helluland, two “doegr” between this and Markland, and “thence they sailed south along the coast a long way and came to a promontory ...”; but this circumstance, that the distance is not given the third time, again inclines one to think of the fairy-tale, and here again there is no statement that the distance was five “doegr” from the Western Settlement to Kjalarnes.

[301] The arctic fox is common in Labrador, but also in the northern peninsula of Newfoundland.

[302] Polar bears come on the drift-ice to the north and east coasts of Newfoundland, but not farther south.

[303] The name comes from “furÐa.” (warning, marvel, terror); “furÐu” (gen. sing.) placed before adjectives and adverbs has the meaning of extremely (“furÐu gÓÐr” == extremely good). As “FurÐustjarna” (the wonder-star) surpassed the others in size and brilliance, these strands may be supposed to surpass others in length, and thus to be endless; but it is doubtless more likely that it means marvel-strands, where there were marvels and wonderful things. In Örskog, SunnmÖre, Norway, there is a place-name “FÚrstranda” (with long, closed “u”). K. Rygh [Norske Gaardnavne, xiii., 1908, p. 155] remarks: “The first syllable must be the tree-name “fura” [fir], though the pronunciation with a long, closed ‘u’ is strange....”

[304] In the Faroes (Kodlafjord in Straumsey) there is a “Kjal(ar)nes,” the origin of which is attributed to a man’s name: “KjÖlur Á Nesi” [J. Jakobsen, 1898, p. 147]; but it is more probable that the name of the ness is the original one, and that the legend of KjÖlur is later. As to place-names ending in “-nes,” O. Rygh [Norske Gaardnavne, Forord og Indledning, 1898, p. 68] says: “Frequently the first part of the name is a word signifying natural conditions on or about the promontory.... Very often the first part has reference to the form of the promontory, its outline, greater or less height, length, etc.... Personal names are not usual in these combinations.” In Norway names beginning with “KjÖl-” (“-nes,” “-berg,” “-stad,” “-set,” etc.) are very common; they may either come from the man’s name “ÞjÓÐlfr” (which now often has the sound of “KjÖlv,” “KjÖl,” or “KjÖle”), or from the Old Norse poetical word “kjÓll,” m., “ship,” or from “kjolr” (gen. “kjalar”), “keel of a vessel, and hence, mountain-ridge” [cf. O. Rygh, Norske Gaardnavne, i., 1897, p. 269; iv. 2, ed. A. KjÆr, 1902, p. 57; vi. ed. A. KjÆr, p. 237; xiii. ed. K. Rygh, 1908, p. 344]. Our Kjalarnes above must undoubtedly be derived from the last. In Tanen, east of BerlevÅg, there is a “KjÖlnes”; in Iceland, just north of Reykjavik, outside Faxafjord, there is a “Kjalarnes.”

[305] This idea, that the land became broader towards the south, and the coast there turned eastward, must be the same that we meet with again in Icelandic geographies of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, where Wineland is thought to be connected with Africa (see later).

[306] “Svart” (i.e., black-haired and black-eyed) is the reading of HauksbÓk, but the other MS. has “small.”

[307] The word “SkrÆlingar” here occurs for the first time in this saga, and seems to be used as a familiar designation for the natives, which did not require further explanation; of this more later.

[308] Blue (blÁ) perhaps means rather dark or black in colour (cf. “Blue-men” for negroes), and is often used of something uncanny or troll-like.

[309] Nothing of the kind is related in the “GrÖnlendinga-ÞÁttr”; where, however, we are told of the first winter of Karlsevne’s voyage that the cattle pastured upon the land, “but the males (‘graÐfe’) soon became difficult to manage and troublesome.”

[310] Ed. by P. Munch and C. R. Unger, Christiania, 1853, p. 75.

[311] E. H. Lind: Norsk-IslÄndska dopnamn, p. 283. I owe it to Moltke Moe that my attention was drawn to this feature of the numerous heathen names.

[312] His wife is called “SigrÍÐr,” which is thus an exception; but in the GrÖnlendinga-ÞÁttr she is called “GrÍmhildr,” so that her name is uncertain. There is also mentioned a thrall “GarÐi,” but being a thrall perhaps he could not have the name of a god.

[313] It is very curious that in the chapter-heading in the HauksbÓk she is called “ÞuriÐr,” but in the text “GuÐriÐr” [cf. Storm, 1891, p. 23; “GrÖnl. hist. Mind.,” i. p. 392].

[314] It is perhaps more than a coincidence that in the classical legends there were three groups of islands, the Gorgades, the Hesperides and the InsulÆ FortunatÆ, to the west of Africa. Marcianus Capella says that it was two days’ sail to the Gorgades, then came the Hesperides, and besides the InsulÆ FortunatÆ. Pliny also has two days to the Gorgades; beyond them there were two Hesperides; he mentions also that it was two days’ sail to the Hesperian Æthiopians, etc. In the FlateyjarbÓk’s description of Bjarne Herjolfsson’s voyage, which is still more purely fairy-tale, he sails for two days from the first land he found (== Wineland) to the second (== Markland), then three days to the third (== Helluland) and finally four days to Greenland.

[315] If we assume that a “doegr’s” sailing is equal to two degrees of latitude or 120 nautical miles (twenty-four ancient sea-leagues), then, as shown on the map above, it will be about four doegr’s sail from Greenland to the nearest part of Labrador (not two). From Bjarneyjar to Markland should be four doegr according to the saga; but the map shows that it is between eight and ten doegr from the Western Settlement along the coast of Labrador to Newfoundland. On the other hand, between Newfoundland and Cape Breton two doegr’s sail will suit better.

[316] One must, of course, be cautious of seeing myth in all such trilogies. As warning examples may be mentioned, that the Norwegians settled in Hjaltland (Shetland), Orkney, and the SuderÖer (Hebrides); they discover the Faroes, thence Iceland, and then Greenland, in the same way as they are said from the last-named to have discovered Helluland, Markland and Wineland. On the east coast of Greenland there were three glaciers, etc. But in Eric’s Saga the triads are so numerous and sometimes so peculiar, and the saga proves to be made up to such an extent of loans, that one is disposed to regard the number three as derived from mythical poetry.

[317] Cf. Unger’s edition, Christiania, 1862, p. 292.

[318] Cf. also Joshua’s two spies, who by the advice of Rahab the harlot concealed themselves in the mountains for three days, after which they descended and came to Joshua.

[319] Cf. Andreas Austlid: “Sinklar-soga,” p. 21 (Oslo, 1899). H. P. S. Krag: “Sagn samlede i Gudbrandsdalen on slaget ved Kringlen den 26de august 1612,” p. 19 (Kristiania, 1838).

[320] Ivar Kleiven: “I gamle Daagaa, Forteljingo og Bygda-Minne fraa Vaagaa,” p. 63 (Kristiania, 1907).

[321] We are told that he talked in “ÞÝrsku.” Similarity of sound may here raise the question whether he was not originally supposed to be a Turk (cf. the Wild Turks above), to which the name itself would point.

[322] It is noteworthy that we are told of this Tyrker that he was “brattleitr” (i.e. with a flat, abrupt face); this is the only passage in Old Norse literature where this rare expression is used. The only context in which Moltke Moe has found it used in our time is in connection with the tale of the youngest son (Askeladden) in SÆtersdal [cf. also H. Ross], where it is said that “Oskefis was also brasslaitte” (Ross thinks it means here “stiff in his bearing, full of self-esteem, self-sufficient”). Can it be merely a coincidence that this rare word is used of none other than the fairy-tale hero who is favoured by fortune, and of the lucky finder of the wild grapes, by eating which he intoxicates himself?

[323] Professor Moltke Moe has called my attention to resemblances to these runners in the Welsh tale of “Kulhwch and Olwen.” In this there occur two swift-footed knights, and Queen Gwenhwyvar’s two servants (Yskyrdav and Yscudydd) “as swift as thought,” and finally Arthur’s wonderfully swift hound “Cavall” (in older MSS. “Cabal”) [cf. Heyman, “Mabinogion,” 1906, pp. 80, 82, 101, 103; J. Loth, “Les Mabinogion,” i. and ii.]. Of Tjalve it is related in the Snorra-Edda that he was “fÓthvatastr” (the swiftest), and in Utgard he ran a race with thought (Hugi). This trait is Irish, as will be shown by Von Sydow [1910]. It resembles the two servants (“swift as thought”) in the Welsh legend. The runners in the Saga of Eric the Red are also Celtic, and this in itself points to a connection.

[324] In the “GrÖnlendinga-ÞÁttr” the whale they found was both large and good; they cut it in pieces, and “they had no lack of food.”

[325] According to information given by Professor R. Collett, the Larus argentatus is the only species of gull that occurs in Nova Scotia in sufficiently large numbers to make it seem probable that it might breed extensively on an island. Can it be possible that these close-lying eggs are derived from the white and red “scaltÆ” (?) which covered the Anchorites’ Isle in the Navigatio Brandani (see below, p. 360)?

[326] Cf. Karlsevne’s people, who on arrival rested for half a month and amused themselves.

[327] W. Brede Kristensen: “Een of twe boomen in het Paradijsverhaal.” Theologisch Tijdschrift, 1908, p. 218.

[328] Of less importance in this connection is the question how far these names of islands in the Odyssey were originally connected with islands in the Mediterranean [cf. V. BÉrard, 1902, i.]; in the description in the poem they have in any case become wholly mythical.

[329] C. Sallusti Crispi Historiarum ReliquiÆ. Ed. Bertoldus Maurenbrecher, LipsiÆ, 1891, pp. 43 f.

[330] L. AnnÆus Florus, Epitome rerum Romanum, ex editione J. Fr. Fischeri Londini, 1822. Vol. i. pp. 278 f.

[331] Lytton: The Odes and Epodes of Horace. London, 1869.

[332] Cf. Johannes Peschel, 1878. Moltke Moe has called my attention to this essay, but, as he says, Peschel is certainly wrong in assuming that ancient notions like that of Schlaraffenland are the originals from which the ideas of the happy abodes of the departed, the Isles of the Blest (the Elysian Fields), have been developed. The reverse is, of course, the case.

[333] Cf. J. N. Wilse: “Beskrivelse over Spydeberg PrÆstegjÆld.” Christiania, 1779-1780. In the appended Norwegian vocabulary, p. xiii.: Fyldeholmen == Schlarafenland. I. Aasen [1873] has “Fylleholm” in the phrase “go to Fylleholm” (== go on a drinking bout), from Sogn, and other places. This may be derived from the same mythical country. H. Ross [1895] gives “Fylleholm” from SmÅlenene. From this it looks as if the idea was widely spread in Norway.

[334] In Hauk’s LandnÁmabÓk Vin(d)land is mentioned in one other passage [cap. 175], in connection with Karlsevne, who is said to have discovered it; but nothing is said about this in the SturlubÓk, and it may be a later addition (cf. p. 331).

[335] Ravn told the story to Thorfinn, Earl of Orkney (ob. circa 1064), who in turn told it to some Icelanders, and from them it reached Thorkel Gellisson, Are Frode’s uncle.

[336] Cf. Zimmer, 1889, pp. 257, 261; Kuno Meyer, 1895, i.

[337] This is evidently the land that in the Christian Breton legend of St. Machutus (ninth century) has become the paradisiacal island of “Yma,” inhabited by heavenly angels.

[338] In the Christian Irish legend “Imram Maelduin,” the voyagers arrive at two islands, that of the lamenting people with complaining voices, and that of the laughing people. The same two islands are mentioned in the Navigation of the Sons of O’Corry, “Imram Curaig Ua Corra” [cf. Zimmer, 1889, pp. 160, 171, 188, 189]. They are evidently connected with Greek conceptions, as we find them in Theopompus, of the rivers Hedone and Lype in the distant land of Meropis (see above, p. 17; cf. also the springs of voluptuousness and laughter in Lucian’s Isle of Bliss in the Vera Historia). There may further be a connection with the island of the lamenting people in the statement of Saxo Grammaticus, in the introduction to his Danish history, that it was thought that in the noise of the drift-ice against the coast of Iceland the lamenting voices of lost souls could be heard, condemned to expiate their sins in that bitter cold.

[339] These Irish ideas of a happy land of women have, it may be remarked, many points of resemblance with our Norwegian belief in fairies (“hulder”) and with the German Venusberg myth, since the “hulder,” like Frau Venus, originally Frau Holle or Holda [cf. J. Grimm, 1876, ii. p. 780], kidnaps and seduces men, and keeps them with her for a long time; but the sensual element is more subdued and less prominent in the Germanic myths. It may seem probable that the Irish land of women also has some connection with the amorous, beautiful-haired nymph Calypso’s island of Ogygia, far off in the sea, in the Odyssey [v. 135 ff.; vii. 254 ff.]. Just as the men in the Irish legends neither grow older nor die when they come to the land of women, and as the queen of the country will not let the men go again (cf. Maelduin), so Calypso wished to keep her Odysseus, and to make him “an immortal man, ever young to eternity.” In a similar way the men who come to the “hulder” in the mountain do not grow old, and they seem to have even greater difficulty in getting out again than kidnapped women. (It is a common feature that they do not grow older, or that a long time passes without their noticing it in the intoxication of pleasure. Lucian also relates that those who come to his Isle of Bliss grow no older than they are when they come.) Odysseus longs for his home, like one of Bran’s men (and like Maelduin’s men, the kidnapped men in the German myths, etc.), and at last receives permission to go, like Bran. Calypso means “the hidden one” (from ?a??pt? == hide by enveloping) and thus answers to our “hulder” (== the hidden one, cf. “hulda,” something which covers, conceals, envelops), and the German Frau Holle or Holda (== “hulder”). They are precisely the same beings as the Irish “sÍd”—people, who are also invisible, and the women in “TÍr na-m-Ban,” the island in or under the sea precisely like our “huldreland” (see later).

It may further be supposed that there is some connection between the ideas which appear in certain Irish legends of the land of virgins—where there are no men, and the virgins have to go to the neighbouring land of men (“TÍr na-Fer”) to be married [cf. Zimmer, 1889, p. 269]—and the conceptions of Sena, the Celtic island of priestesses or women, off the coast of Brittany, where according to Dionysius Periegetes there were Bacchantes who held nightly orgies, but where no men might come, and the women therefore (like the Amazons) had to visit the men on the neighbouring coast, and return after having had intercourse with them. Similar ideas of islands with women and men separated occur already in old Indian legends.

[340] Cf. Zimmer, 1889, p. 287; Whitley Stokes, Revue Celtique, xv. Paris 1894, pp. 437 f.; F. Lot, Romania, xxvii. 1898, p. 559.

[341] Cf. “Lageniensis,” 1870, p. 116; Zimmer, 1889, pp. 263, 279.

[342] It is stated in an Irish legend that the hero Ciaban went as an exile to “TrÁg in-Chairn” (the strand of cairns) [cf. Zimmer, 1889, p. 271]. This might remind us of Helluland (?).

[343] In the tale of Maelduin’s voyage, which is older than the “Navigatio” (see above, p. 336), there occurs a similar mighty bird bringing a branch with fruit like grapes, possessing marvellous properties; but there is no grape-island [cf. Zimmer, 1889, p. 169].

[344] In the Latin translation of the Bible in use at that time, the Vulgate [Num. xiii. 24 f.], the passage runs: “And they came to the valley of grapes, cut a branch with its cluster of grapes, and two men carried it upon a staff. They also took away pomegranates and figs from this place, which is called Nehel-escol, that is, the valley of grapes, because the children of Israel brought grapes from thence.”

[345] In France a poem on Brandan of as early as 1125, founded on the “Navigatio,” is known, dedicated to Queen AÉlis of Louvain; cf. Gaston Paris: La LittÉrature FranÇaise en Moyen Age, Paris, 1888, p. 214.

[346] The Irish made a distinction in their tales of voyages between “Imram,” which was a voluntary journey, and “Longes,” which was an involuntary one, usually due to banishment. In Icelandic literature there seems to be no such distinction, but the voyages are often due to outlawry for manslaughter or some other reason; cf. Ganger-Rolf’s voyage, Ingolf’s and Hjorleif’s voyage to Iceland, SnÆbjÖrn Galti’s and Rolf of Raudesand’s voyage to the GunnbjÖrnskerries, Eric the Red’s voyage with his father from Norway, and afterwards from Iceland, etc. BjÖrn BreidvikingekjÆmpe was also obliged to leave Iceland on account of his illicit love for Snorre Gode’s sister. This agreement may, of course, be accidental, but together with the many other resemblances between Irish and Icelandic literature, it may nevertheless be worth mentioning.

[347] Cf. Zimmer, 1889, p. 168; Joyce, 1879, p. 156.

[348] To these wine-fruits in the “Imram Maelduin” correspond, perhaps, the white and purple-red “scaltÆ,” which in the “Navigatio Brandani” cover the low island, bare of trees, called the “Strong Men’s Island” [SchrÖder, 1871, p. 24]. Brandan pressed one of the red ones, “as large as a ball,” and got a pound of juice, on which he and his brethren lived for twelve days. It might be supposed that these white and red “scaltÆ” from the flat ocean-island were connected with Lucian’s water-fishes (which seem to have been white) and wine-fishes (which had the purple colour of wine) (see above). The meaning of “scaltÆ” (“scaltis”) is uncertain. SchrÖder says “sea-snails”; Professor Alf Torp thinks it may be a Celtic word, and mentions as a possibility “scalt” (== “cleft”). In that case it might be a mussel, which is “cleft” in two shells.

[349] D’Avezac’s hypothesis [1845, p. 9] that it might be an echo of Teneriffe [cf. also De Goeje, 1891, p. 61], which in mediÆval maps was called “Isola dell’ Inferno,” is untenable, since the Phoenicians’ knowledge of the Canaries had long been forgotten at that time, and it was only after their rediscovery by the Italians, about 1300, that Teneriffe was called on the Medici map of 1351 “Isola dell’ Inferno.” In classical literature there is no indication that any of the Canaries was regarded as volcanic; on the contrary, Pliny’s “Nivaria” (i.e., the snow-island) seems to be Teneriffe with snow on the summit.

[350] Jens LauritzÖn Wolf’s Norrigia Illustrata, 1651.

[351] Cf. John M. Kemble: The Dialogue of Salomon and Saturnus, London, 1448, p. 198. Moltke Moe also called my attention to this remarkable passage.

[352] W. Mannhardt: Germanische Mythen, Berlin, 1858, pp. 460 f. Cf. “Vita Merlini,” the verses on the “Insula pomorum, qvÆ Fortunata vocatur” (the apple-island which is called Fortunate) [San-Marte, 1853, pp. 299, 329]. “Avallon” has a remarkable resemblance in sound to Pytheas’s amber-island “Abalus” (p. 70).

[353] Since the above was printed in the Norwegian edition of this book, Professor Moltke Moe has called my attention to the fact that, according to Icelandic sources, the Icelandic chief Gellir Thorkelsson, grandfather of Are Frode, died at Roskilde, in Denmark, in 1073, after having been prostrated there for a long time. He was then on his way home from a pilgrimage to Rome. Adam’s book was written between 1072 and 1075, and he had received the statements about Wineland from Danes of rank. The coincidence here is so remarkable that there must probably be a connection. It is Gellir Thorkelsson’s son, Thorkel Gellisson, who is given as the authority for the first mention of Wineland in Icelandic literature, and according to LandnÁmabÓk he seems to have got his information from Ireland through other Icelanders.

[354] It is not, however, quite certain that “VÍnland” (with a long “Í”) was the original form of the name, though this is probable, as it occurs thus in the MSS. that have come down to us of the two oldest authorities: Adam of Bremen (“Winland”) and Are Frode’s ÍslendingabÓk (“Vinland”). But it cannot be entirely ignored that in the oldest Icelandic MSS.—and the oldest authorities after Are and Adam—it is called: in Hauk’s LandnÁmabÓk “Vindland hit goÐa” (in the two passages where it is mentioned), in the SturlubÓk “Irland et goda,” in the Kristni-saga (before 1245) probably “Vindland hit goÐa” [cf. F. JÓnsson, HauksbÓk, 1892, p. 141], and in the Grettis-saga (about 1290, but the MS. dates from the fifteenth century) Thorhall Gamlason, who sailed with Karlsevne, is called in one place a “Vindlendingr” and in another a “ViÐlendingr.” It is striking that the name should so often be written incorrectly; there must have been some uncertainty in its interpretation. Another thing is that in none of these oldest sources is there any mention of wine, except in Adam of Bremen, who repeats Isidore, and after him it is only when we come to the Saga of Eric the Red that “Vinland” with its wine is met with. It might therefore be supposed that the name was originally something different. The Greenlanders might, for instance, have discovered a land with trees in the west and called it “ViÐland” (== tree-land). Influenced by myths of the Irish “Great Land” (“TÍr MÓr”), this might become “ViÐland” (== the great land, p. 357): but this again through the ideas of wine (from the Fortunate Isles), as in Adam of Bremen, might become “VÍnland.” We have a parallel to such a change of sound in the conversion of “viÐbein” (== collar-bone) into “vinbein.” A form like “Vindland” may have arisen through confusion of the two forms we have given, or again with the name of Vendland. A name compounded of the ancient word “vin” (== pasture) is scarcely credible, since the word went out of use before the eleventh century; besides, one would then have to expect the form “Vinjarland.” In Are Frode’s work, which we only know from late copies (of the seventeenth century), the original name might easily have been altered in agreement with later interpretation. But it is nevertheless most probable that “Vinland” was the original form, and that the variants are due to uncertainty. It may, however, well be supposed that there were two forms of the name, in the same way as, for instance, the “DraumkvÆde” is also called the “Draug-kvÆde”; or that several names may have fused to become one, similarity of sound and character being the deciding factor.

[355] Cf. Peder ClaussÖn Friis, Storm’s edition, 1881, p. 298; A. Helland, Nordlands Amt, 1907, i. p. 59, ii. pp. 467 f. Yngvar Nielsen [1905] has remarked the resemblance between the epithet “hit GÓÐa,” applied to Wineland, and the name Landegode in Norway; but following Peder ClaussÖn he regards this as a tabu-name. K. Rygh [Norske Gaardnavne, xvi. Nordl. Amt, 1905, p. 201] thinks that P. ClaussÖn’s explanation of the name of Jomfruland is right in all three cases, that “Norwegian seamen ‘from some superstition and fear’ did not call it by the name of Jomfruland, which was already common at that time, while under sail, until they had passed it.” “It is, or at any rate has been, a common superstition among sailors and fishermen that various things were not to be called by their usual names while they were at sea, presumably a relic of heathen belief in evil spirits, whose power it was hoped to avoid by not calling their attention by mentioning themselves or objects with which their evil designs were connected, while it was hoped to be able to conciliate them by using flattering names instead of the proper ones. The three islands are all so situated in the fairway that they must have been unusually dangerous for coasting traffic in former times.” Hans StrÖm in his Description of SÖndmÖr [SorÖ, 1766, ii. p. 441] thought, however, that “Landegod” in SunnmÖr was so called because it was the first land one made after passing Stad; and “SvinÖ” he thought was so called because pigs were turned out there to feed, especially in former times (see below, p. 378); he gives in addition the name StorskjÆr for the island.

[356] V. BÉrard’s explanation [1902, i. p. 579] that PhÆacians (Fa???e?) means Leucadians, the white people, and comes from the Semitic “Beakim” (from “b.e.q.” “to be white”) does not seem convincing. Professor A. Torp finds the explanation given above more probable.

[357] Cf. J. Grimm, D. M., ii. 1876, pp. 692 ff., iii. 1878, pp. 248 f.

[358] Cf. J. A. Friis: Ordbog for det lappiske Sprog, Christiania, 1887, p. 254; J. Qvigstad, 1893, p. 182; Moltke Moe’s communications in A. Helland: Finmarkens Amt, 1905, vol. ii. p. 261.

[359] Cf. Moltke Moe’s communications in A. Helland: Nordlands Amt, 1907, vol. ii. p. 430.

[360] Cf. W. Grimm, Kleinere Schriften, i. p. 468.

[361] Rietz: Svensk Dialekt-Lexikon, 1867.

[362] It may also be worth mentioning that just as there is a BjÖrnÖ (BjÖrnÖ Lighthouse) near Landegode off BodÖ, so is there mention of a Bjarn-ey near Markland on the way to “Vinland hit GÓÐa.” This may, of course, be purely a coincidence; but on the other hand there may be some connection.

[363] Cf. P. A. SÄve: Hafvets och Fiskarens Sagor, spridda drag ur Gotlands Odlingssaga och Strandallmogens Lif. Visby, 1880.

[364] Norske Gaardnavne. Forord og Indledning. 1898, p. 39.

[365] O. Nicolayssen: Fra Nordlands Fortid. Kristiania, 1889, pp. 30 ff.

[366] Remark that thus in the Faroes SvinÖi is also a fairy island, as in SunnmÖr and at BrÖnÖi in Norway.

[367] This astonishing etymological explanation of the ancient Phoenician legendary islands of the Hesperides is evidently due to a confusion of Brandan’s sheep-island with Pliny’s statements [Nat. Hist., vi. 36] about the purple islands off Africa (near the Hesperides) which King Juba was said to have discovered, and where he learned dyeing with GÆtulian purple. The idea that the sunken land Atlantis was where the “Concretum Mare” now is may be connected with the Greek myth which appears in Plutarch (see above, pp. 156 and 182) of Cronos lying imprisoned in sleep on an island in the north-west in the Cronian Sea (== “Mare Concretum”), where also the great continent was, and where the sea was heavy and thick.

[368] This is the same myth as that of HvÍtramanna-land in the Eyrbyggja Saga; see later.

[369] Cf. A. Guichot y Sierra, 1884, i. p. 296; Dumont d’Urville: Voyage autour du monde, i. p. 27. The same idea that the island withdraws when one tries to approach it appears also in Lucian’s description (in the Vera Historia) of the Isle of Dreams.

[370] Cf. P. SÉbillot, 1886, p. 348.

[371] Cf. Harriet Maxwell Converse: Iroquois Myths and Legends. Education Department Bulletin, No. 437, Albany, N.Y., December 1908, pp. 31 f.

[372] My attention has been drawn to this by Mr. Gunnar Olsen. Similar myths are found in Japan [cf. D. Brauns, Japanische MÄrchen und Sagen, 1885, pp. 146 ff.].

[373] GrÖnl. hist. Mind., i. pp. 144 f., 157 ff.

[374] This belongs to the same cycle of ideas as that of the dead rising from their graves or from the lower regions at night, but being obliged to go down again at dawn, or of trolls having to conceal themselves before the sun rises. In the same way, too, the fallen Helge Hundingsbane comes to Sigrun and sleeps with her in the mound; but when the flush of day comes he has to ride back to the west of “Vindhjelms” bridge, before Salgovne awakes. It has been pointed out above (p. 371) that the PhÆacians of the Odyssey sail at night.

[375] According to the “Guta-saga” of the thirteenth century.

[376] Cf. Moltke Moe’s communications in A. Helland, Nordlands Amt, 1907, ii. pp. 512 ff. In Brinck’s Descriptio LoufodiÆ [1676, p. ii] it is stated that the mythical land of UtrÖst in Nordland was called “Huldeland.”

[377] Cf. F. Lot, “Romania,” 1898, p. 530. Moltke Moe has also communicated to me this curious tale.

[378] Cf. P. Crofton Croker, 1828, ii. p. 259 f.

[379] Cf. “Lageniensis,” 1870, pp. 114 ff., 294; Joyce, 1879, p. 408. V. BÉrard [1902, i. p. 286] explains the Roman name “Ispania” (Spain) as coming from a Semitic (Phoenician) root “sapan” (== hide, cover) denoting “the isle of the hidden one,” which he thinks originally meant Calypso’s isle; this he seeks to locate on the African coast near Gibraltar. The explanation seems very doubtful; but if there be anything in it, it is remarkable that Spain, the land rich in silver and gold, should have a name that recalls the huldre-lands (lands of the hidden ones).

[380] Cf. E. B. Tylor: Primitive Culture, 1891, ii. pp. 63 ff.

[381] AsbjÖrnsen: Huldre-Eventyr og Folke-Sagn, 3rd ed., pp. 343 ff.; “Tufte-folket pÅ SandflÆsen.” Cf. also Moltke Moe’s note in A. Helland: Nordlands Amt, i. pp. 519 f.

[382] The name of “Lycko-PÄr” in Sweden for one who “has luck” [Th. Hielmqvist, Fornamn och Familjenamn med sekundÄr anvÄndning i Nysvenskan, Lund, 1903, p. 267] has come from the Danish “Lykke-Per,” which is a purely literary production, and does not concern us here.

[383] In Norway the “nisse” brings luck. “Lycko-nisse” in SmÅland (Sweden) is a “luck-bringing brownie. Also used occasionally of little friendly children” [Th. Hielmqvist, 1903, p. 224].

[384] Cf. Moltke Moe’s communications in A. Helland: Nordlands Amt, 1907, ii. pp. 596 f.

[385] Conceptions of a somewhat similar nature appear in the legends of Arthur, where only the pure, or innocent, are permitted to see the Holy Grail.

[386] The names Finmark (the land of the Finns or Lapps) and Finland were often confused in the Middle Ages (cf. Geographia Universalis, Eulogium, Polychronicon, Edrisi), and the latter again with Wineland (cf. Ordericus Vitalis, Polychronicon). It should be remarked that Adam does not know the name “Finn,” but only “FinnÉdi” and “Scritefini.”

[387] It must be remembered that KvÆnland (Woman-land), like Norway and “the island of Halagland” (!), were neighbouring countries to Sweden, where King Svein had lived for twelve years, the same who is supposed to have told Adam so much about the countries of the North; and between Sweden and Russia (Gardarike) there was also active communication at that time.