In Northern Mists Volume Ii Part 8

[Ill.u.s.tration: A portion of Gourmont's map of 1548, with the north-west coast of Iceland and the rocky island of Hvitserk]

Whether news had recently arrived from Greenland at the time the letter was written does not appear from the words of the letter, and cannot, in my opinion, be inferred therefrom, though Storm [1892, p. 401] thought it could. The only thing which might point to this is the story of the altar-cloth being exhibited once a year; but this, of course, may be a tradition which goes back to the last s.h.i.+p, eighty years before.

[Sidenote: Pining's possible voyages to Greenland]

Meanwhile we meet with obscure information in other quarters about a possible communication with Greenland at that time. In a map of Iceland, printed in Paris in 1548 by Hieronymus Gourmont,[93] a rocky island is marked to the north-west of Iceland, with a compa.s.s-card and a Latin inscription. This, as A. A. Bjornbo has pointed out,[94] is of interest; it reads in translation:

"The lofty mountain called Witsarc, on the summit of which a sea-mark was set up by the two pirates (piratis), Pinnigt and Pothorst, to warn seamen against Greenland."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The rock Hvitserk, and a fight with a Greenland Pygmy (Olaus Magnus, 1557)]

The map is a modified copy of Olaus Magnus's well-known large chart of 1539, on which the island with the compa.s.s-card is found, but not the inscription.

It is possibly a fuller version or adaptation of the substance of this inscription, or of the source from which it is taken, that is met with again in Olaus Magnus's work on the Northern peoples, of 1555, where he says of "the lofty mountain 'Huitsark,' which lies in the middle of the sea between Iceland and Greenland":

"Upon it lived about the year of Our Lord 1494 two notorious pirates (piratae), Pining and Pothorst, with their accomplices, as though in defiance and contempt of all kingdoms and their forces, since, by the strict orders of the Northern kings, they had been excluded from all human society and declared outlaws for their exceedingly violent robberies and many cruel deeds against all sailors they could lay hands on, whether near or far."... "Upon the top of this very high rock the said Pining and Pothorst have constructed a compa.s.s out of a considerable circular s.p.a.ce, with rings and lines formed of lead; thereby it was made more convenient for them, when they were bent on piracy, as they thus were informed in what direction they ought to put to sea to seek considerable plunder."

It may be the expression "piratae," which might be used both of an ordinary pirate and of a privateer or freebooter, which misled Olaus Magnus into constructing this wonderful story. The mere fact that, both in his map of 1539 and in his work of 1555, he makes Hvitserk, which of course was in Greenland, into a rocky island out at sea between Greenland and Iceland, where no island is to be found, is enough to shake one's belief in the trustworthiness of this strange report. His incomprehensible story of the compa.s.s constructed there does not make things any better. G. Storm [1886, p. 395] thought it might have come about in this way: that Olaus Magnus, who was no great sailor or geographer, read on a chart a note about Pining's voyage to Greenland, and saw in its proximity the name Hvitserk and a compa.s.s-card in the middle of the sea; and then, without understanding its real meaning, he made it an island and gave it his own explanation. Bjornbo and Petersen [1909, pp. 250, 251] have, it is true, pointed out that something of the same sort is told of the North Cape by Sivert Grubbe, who accompanied Christian IV. on his voyage to Finmark, and who writes in his journal (in Latin) on May 12, 1599: "We sailed past the North Cape. On the top of this mountain is a compa.s.s cut into the rock."

But as they "sailed past," Grubbe cannot have been up and seen this compa.s.s; it may therefore be supposed that a similar error is at the base of this improbable statement; it is difficult to see what value for mariners such a compa.s.s could have. But notwithstanding Olaus Magnus's fantastic story, Pining and Pothorst may really have been in Greenland.

The former must be the Norwegian n.o.bleman Didrik Pining, who together with Pothorst ("Pytchehorsius") is said to have distinguished himself during the later years of Christiern I., "not less as capable seamen than as matchless freebooters" (piratae). He was much employed by Christiern I. and King Hans against the English and sometimes against the Hanseatic League, and is mentioned by several historical authorities.[95] He seems also to have extended his activity upon occasion to the Spaniards, Portuguese and Dutch, for about 1484 he captured, off the English coast or off Brittany and in the Spanish Sea, three Spanish or Portuguese s.h.i.+ps, and brought them to the king at Copenhagen. In a treaty which was concluded in 1490 between King Hans and the Dutch it is expressly stipulated that Didrik Pinning and a certain Busch were to be excluded from the peace. Didrik Pining is spoken of as lord over Iceland, or perhaps over the eastern and southern part, in 1478; but on the death of Christiern I. in 1481, another was appointed as "hirdstjore" (or stadtholder), and it is stated in the letter of appointment, issued by the council at Bergen in 1481, that Pining had "gone out of Iceland"; but a few years later he is again mentioned as hirdstjore there. When in 1487 King Hans took possession of Gotland, Pining accompanied him thither, doubtless as commander of the Danish-Norwegian squadron; he is called "Skipper Pining," which corresponds to commodore or admiral in our time (cf. Christiern I.'s "Skipper Clemens"). In July 1489 Didrik Pining was among the Norwegian n.o.blemen who paid homage at Copenhagen to the king's son, Christiern (II.) as heir to the kingdom of Norway; and in August and September 1490 he took part in the settlement of a suit concerning a large inheritance at Bergen; but in two Icelandic laws or edicts of that time, 1489 and 1490, the so-called "Pining's Laws," he is described as "'hirdstjore' over the whole of Iceland," and a later chronicler speaks of him as one of the most famous men in Iceland, and he says that "he was in many ways a serviceable man and put many things right that were wrong." It must be the same Didrik Pining who was appointed in 1490 governor of Vardohus, and it may be supposed that he was commander-in-chief on sea and land in northern waters.

We hear of Pining, and his a.s.sociate Pothorst, in an old (Icelandic ?) report which, together with Ivar Bardsson's description of Greenland, was found in an old book of accounts in the Faroes, and which in an English translation was included in "Purchas his Pilgrimes" (London, 1625, vol.

iii.), where we read:

"Item, Punnus [corruption of Pinning] and Potha.r.s.e, have inhabited Island certayne yeeres, and sometimes have gone to Sea, and have had their trade in Groneland. Also Punnus did give the Islanders their Lawes, and caused them to bee written. Which Lawes doe continue to this day in Island, and are called by name Punnus Lawes."

[Sidenote: A new doc.u.ment on Pining]

As this last statement agrees with the two "Pining's Laws" mentioned above, there may also be some truth in the voyages to Greenland. An unexpected confirmation of this recently came to light in the discovery of a doc.u.ment by Louis Bobe [1909] at Copenhagen; it is a letter, dated March 3, 1551, from Burgomaster Carsten Grip, of Kiel, to King Christiern III.

Grip was, as we are told in the letter, the king's commissioner for the purchase of books, paintings, and the like. He tells the king that he has not found any valuable books or suitable pictures, but sends him two maps of the world,

"from which your majesty may see that your majesty's land of Greenland extends on both maps towards the new world and the islands which the Portuguese and Spaniards have discovered, so that these countries may be reached overland from Greenland. Likewise that they may be reached overland from Lampeland [i.e., Lapland], from the castle of Vardohus, etc.[96] This year there is also published at Paris in France a map of your majesty's land of Iceland and of the wonders there to be seen and heard of; it is there remarked that Iceland is twice as large as Sicily, and that the two skippers ['sceppere,' i.e., commodores or admirals] Pyningk and Poidthorsth, who were sent out by your majesty's royal grandfather, King Christiern the First, at the request of his majesty of Portugal, with certain s.h.i.+ps to explore new countries and islands in the north, have raised on the rock Wydthszerck [Hvitserk], lying off Greenland and towards Sniefeldsiekel in Iceland on the sea, a great sea-mark on account of the Greenland pirates, who with many small s.h.i.+ps without keels ('szunder bodem') fall in large numbers upon other s.h.i.+ps," etc.

It seems, as Dr. Bjornbo has suggested,[97] that the Paris map here spoken of may be Gourmont's of 1548, mentioned above. But Grip's letter contains information about the despatch of the expedition and about the Eskimo kayaks, which cannot be taken from the inscription attached to Hvitserk on that map. The statement about the Eskimo (the Greenland pirates) recalls what Ziegler says in his work "Scondia" (1532) of the inhabitants of Greenland, that "they use light boats of hide, safe in tossing on the sea and among rocks; and thus propelling themselves they fall upon other s.h.i.+ps" [Gronl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 499]. It also has some resemblance to what Olaus Magnus says in his later work of 1555 of the Greenland "pirates, who employ hide-boats and an unfair mode of seamans.h.i.+p, since they do not attack the upper parts of merchant s.h.i.+ps, but seek to destroy them by boring through the hull from outside, down by the keel," etc.

These statements may be derived from mythical accounts of the Greenland Eskimo, which have come down by some channel we do not know of. Something of the sort may have appeared on some now lost map, from which Grip may have taken it; but his statement as to the two skippers having been sent out by Christiern I. shows that in any case there was in his day a tradition of the voyage of Pining and Pothorst. We must therefore a.s.sume that they were despatched on a voyage of discovery by Christiern I. (some time before 1481, when he died), probably at the request of the well-known King Alfonso V. of Portugal (1438-1481). As Hvitserk must be on the coast of Greenland, they seem, in agreement with the other sober statement in Purchas, to have really reached Greenland, perhaps more than once, and to have traded by barter with the natives, which may have ended, as it frequently did later, in skirmishes brought about by the encroachments of the Europeans. This last possibility would explain Grip's statement about the Greenland pirates attacking in many small s.h.i.+ps without keels, as also the mythical statements of Ziegler and Olaus Magnus. Nor is it impossible that Pining may have set up some sea-mark or other there. All this sounds more probable than Olaus Magnus's wonderful story. But nevertheless it does not appear to me that the authorities now known justify us in altogether rejecting the latter and the date 1494. As there is mention in 1491 of a new "hirdstjore" in Iceland, we must suppose that Pining was either dead or had left the island; if we compare with this the fact that Pining was excluded from the peace that King Hans concluded in 1490 with the Dutch, and thus in a way became an outlaw to the latter, and that in the same year a provisional peace was made with the king of England, by which, of course, all privateering against English subjects on the part of Norwegians and Danes was strictly forbidden, we may possibly perceive a connection. Pining and Pothorst were not able to break themselves of old habits, and thus had both the English king and their own, besides the Dutchmen, against them, and were compelled to fly the country as outlaws.

This would also agree with Olaus Magnus's words, that they were outlawed by the strict edict of the northern kings ("aquilonarium regum severissimo edicto"). It may be supposed that, like the outlawed Eric the Red 500 years before, they took refuge in distant Greenland, which they already knew. But finally they may have come to grief; for among the many "pirates" who "met with a miserable death, being either slain by their friends or hanged on the gallows or drowned in the waves of the sea,"

Paulus Eliae mentions "Pyning" and "Pwthorss."[98]

[Sidenote: Johannes Scolvus's voyage to Greenland]

We have yet to mention certain obscure statements about another Northern sailor of this time, Johannes Scolvus (Jon Skolv ?).[99] The Spanish author Francesco Lopez de Gomara, who was a priest in Seville about 1550, and published his "Historia de las Indias" (i.e., America) in 1553, says there of "la Tierra de Labrador":

"Hither also came men from Norway with the pilot ['piloto,' i.e., navigator] Joan Scoluo, and Englishmen with Sebastian Gaboto."

As, according to Storm's showing [1886, p. 392], Gomara met Olaus Magnus "in Bologna and Venice" (perhaps about 1548), and says himself that the latter had given him much information about Northern waters and the sea-route from Norway, the statement about Scolvus may also be due to him.

An English State doc.u.ment--probably of 1575, and written on the occasion of the preparations for Frobisher's first voyage (1576)--gives a brief survey of earlier attempts to find the North-West Pa.s.sage,[100] and mentions among others Scolvus. This the historians who have written about him have not noticed. After stating that Sebastian [should be John]

Cabotte was sent out by King Henry VII. of England in 1496 [should be 1497] to find the pa.s.sage from the North Sea [i.e., the Atlantic Ocean] to the South Sea [i.e., the Pacific], and that "one Gaspar Cortesreales, a pilot of Portingale," had visited these islands on the north coast of North America in 1500, the doc.u.ment continues:

"But to find oute the pa.s.sage oute of the North Sea into the Southe we must sayle to the 60 degree, that is, from 66 unto 68. And this pa.s.sage is called the Narowe Sea or Streicte of the three Brethren [i.e., the three brothers Corte-Real]; in which pa.s.sage, at no tyme in the yere, is ise wonte to be found. The cause is the swifte ronnyng downe of sea into sea. In the north side of this pa.s.sage, John Scolus, a pilot of Denmerke, was in anno 1476."

Then follows a story of a Spaniard who in 1541 is said to have been on the south side of this pa.s.sage with a troop of soldiers, and to have found there some s.h.i.+ps that had come thither with goods from Cataya (China).

Complete impossibilities, like this last story, are thus blended together with statements that have a sure historical foundation, like the voyage of Gaspar Corte-Real. As the statement about Scolus or Scolvus contains things that are not found in Gomara, it seems to be derived from another source; the date in particular is remarkable. That Scolus is a pilot from Denmark, while the pilot Scolvus in Gomara came from Norway, is perhaps immaterial, as of course Norway and Denmark were under a common king, who resided in Denmark.

On an English map of 1582 (after Frobisher's voyages), which is attributed to Michael Lok, there is a country to the north-west of Greenland, upon which is written: "Jac. Scolvus Groetland." As the name is here written Jac. Scolvus, it is not likely that it can be derived from the doc.u.ment we have quoted of 1575. The corresponding country on Mercator's map of 1569 is inscribed: "Groclant, insula cuius incole Suedi sunt origine" (island whose inhabitants are Swedes by descent). It may seem as if this inscription also was connected with Scolvus, and we thus get the third Scandinavian country as his native land; but this word "Suedi" may be derived from Olaus Magnus, who happens to have often used it in the sense of Scandinavians--i.e., Swedes and Norwegians.

In 1597 the Dutchman Cornelius Wytfliet in his description of America ("Continens Indica") states that its northern part was first discovered by "Frislandish" fishermen [i.e., from the imaginary Frisland of the Zeno map], and subsequently further explored about 1390 during the voyage of the brothers Zeno (which is fict.i.tious).

"But [he continues] the honour of its second discovery fell to the Pole Johannes Scoluus (Johannes Scoluus Polonus), who in the year 1476--eighty-six years after its first discovery--sailed beyond Norway, Greenland, Frisland, penetrated the Northern Strait, under the very Arctic Circle, and arrived at the country of Labrador and Estotiland."

Estotiland is another fict.i.tious country on the notorious Zeno map (a fabrication from several earlier maps). Apart from this introduction of the Zeno voyage the statement contains nothing that has not already appeared in Gomara and in the English doc.u.ment of 1575, with the exception that Scolvus is called a Pole (Polonus), but this, as pointed out by Storm [1886, p. 399], must be due to a misreading of "Polonus" for "piloto."[101] As Norway is named first among the countries beyond which the voyage extended, it may have started from thence in Wytfliet's authority.[102]

On the L'Ecuy globe, of the sixteenth century, there is written in Latin between 70 and 80 N. lat. and in long. 320:[103] "These are the people to whom the Dane Johannes Scovvus penetrated in the year 1476." The description of Scolvus as a Dane may indicate the same source as the English mention of him in 1576.[104]

Finally it may be mentioned that Georg Horn in his work "Ulysses peregrinans" (Louvain, 1671), after speaking of voyages of the Icelanders (Thylenses) to "Frisland or Finmark" (sic!), to Iceland, Greenland, Scotland, and Gotland under "auspiciis Margaretae Semiramis Dan., Sued., Norv.," and then of the voyages of the Zenos in the year 1390, says:

"Joh. Scolnus Polonus discovered under the auspices of Christian I., King of the Danes, the Anian-strait and the country Laboratoris in the year 1476."

The Anian-strait was the mythical strait between Asia and north-western America, which was talked about and which appeared upon maps more than a hundred years before Bering Strait was discovered by the Russian Deshenev in 1648. But the name may sometimes have been extended to the whole of the strait, called above, p. 130, the Strait of the Three Brethren, which was a.s.sumed to go north of America to the Pacific. What is new in Horn's statement is that the voyage is said to have been made under the auspices of Christiern I.; it may be supposed that he knew enough of the history of Denmark to draw this conclusion from the date 1476.

This is what is known from old sources about this Scolvus and his voyage.

It must be remembered that the name of Labrador (in various forms) was used on the maps of the sixteenth century both for Greenland and Labrador, and was originally the name of the former. It is therefore most probable that the statements about Scolvus's voyage referred in the first instance to Greenland, which in the first part of the sixteenth century was known as Labrador.

[Sidenote: Pining, Pothorst and Scolvus on the same voyage]

To sum up what has been said above, we have, on the one hand, statements, from wholly different sources, of one or more voyages to Greenland under the leaders.h.i.+p of Pining and Pothorst, in the time of Christiern I.--i.e., before 1481; on the other hand, we have statements, probably from several, but at least from two sources independent of each other, about a voyage, also to Greenland, with the pilot Johannes Scolvus, from Denmark or more probably from Norway, in the time of Christiern I., and this is even referred to a particular year, 1476. One is therefore led to conclude, as G. Storm has already done, that we are here concerned with the same voyage or voyages to Greenland, which were made under the leaders.h.i.+p of the two "skippers" and freebooters Pining and Pothorst, with Johannes Scolvus (Jon Skolvsson ?) as pilot or navigator. In some authorities of Scandinavian origin the voyage was connected with the names of the real leaders, while in Southern authorities it was connected with that of the pilot or navigator, in the same way as, for instance, the name of William Barentsz was a.s.sociated with the voyages in which he took part, instead of those of Hemkerck and the other leaders. There seem thus to be sufficiently good historical doc.u.ments in support of at least one expedition having reached Greenland in the latter part of the sixteenth century, possibly sent out by Christiern I. in 1476, and perhaps there were more. Possibly it was rumours of this new communication with Greenland that awoke a desire in the monk Mathias to go there as bishop.

But then we hear no more of it. For a while longer bishops continued to be appointed to Greenland, a land which was no longer known to any one, and to these bishops least of all. Thus ends the history of the old Greenland settlements. Notices of them become rarer and rarer, with long intermissions, until after this time they cease altogether, and we know no more of the fate of the old Nors.e.m.e.n there.

"The standing-stone on the mound bears no mark, and Saga has forgotten what she knew."

[Ill.u.s.tration]

CHAPTER XII

EXPEDITIONS OF THE NORWEGIANS TO THE WHITE SEA, VOYAGES IN THE POLAR SEA, WHALING AND SEALING

EXPEDITIONS TO THE WHITE SEA

[Sidenote: Expeditions to the White Sea]

Even if Ottar was perhaps not the first Norwegian to reach the White Sea, his voyage is in any case a remarkable exploring expedition, whereby both the North Cape and the White Sea became known, even in the literature of Europe, nearly seven hundred years before Richard Chancellor reached the Dvina in the s.h.i.+p "Edward Buonaventura" in 1553, from which time the discovery of this sea has usually been reckoned.

In Ottar's time, or soon after, the Norwegian king a.s.serted his sovereignty over all the Lapps as far as the White Sea, and in the Historia Norwegiae it is said that Halogaland reached to Bjarmeland. The headland Vegistafr is mentioned in the Historia Norwegiae, in the laws, and elsewhere, as the boundary of the kingdom of Norway towards the Bjarmas (Beormas). This may have been on the south side of the Kola peninsula by the river Varzuga, already mentioned, or by the river Umba (see the map, vol. i. p. 170).[105] After Ottar's time the Norwegians more frequently undertook expeditions, doubtless for the most part of a military character, to the White Sea and Bjarmeland. We hear about several of them in the sagas.