In Northern Mists Volume Ii Part 11

"A common look-out man goes at their head, while they collect in many two-oared boats to lie in wait for the fish; two in each boat. One of them rows, the other stands in the bow with a spear, while the look-out man gives warning of the appearance of the fish; for the animal swims with a third of its body above water. As soon as the boat has reached the fish, the spearman pierces it by hand, and immediately draws the spear out of its body again, with the exception of the point; for this is provided with barbs, and is purposely attached loosely to the shaft, and has a long line fastened to it. This is paid out after the wounded fish, until it is tired by floundering and attempts at flight; then it is drawn to land, or taken into the boat if it is not very large." No better description of harpoon-fis.h.i.+ng is to be found in the Middle Ages. The dolphin was to the Greeks Poseidon's beast, and they did not take it; but from Oppian's account we see that the barbarian fishermen on the coast of Thrace had no such scruples, but caught dolphins with harpoons to which a long line was attached [cf. Noel, 1815, p. 42].

If the Iberian people of the western Mediterranean practised this kind of fis.h.i.+ng, the Basques may also have been acquainted with it. But if they used the harpoon on swordfish and small whales, the further step to using it for the Biscay whale was not insuperable to these hardy seamen, and they may thus have themselves developed their methods of whaling without having learnt from the Normans, even if no evidence is forthcoming of their having been acquainted with whaling so early as the latter.[142] It may also be supposed that the Nors.e.m.e.n in the beginning, far back in grey antiquity, took their harpoon-fis.h.i.+ng from the south, just as they obtained the form of their craft to some extent from the Mediterranean.

Thus, although we cannot regard it as certain that the Norwegians introduced the knowledge of whaling with the harpoon and line in Normandy, it is in any case probable that they were particularly active in practising and developing this method, and we may conclude that they must have been acquainted with whaling before they came there, since we see that the whalers of Normandy bore the Scandinavian name of "walmanni."[143] If they had learnt their whaling in the foreign land, it goes without saying that they would also have taken the name from thence, and it is extremely improbable that they should have acquired a Scandinavian designation for an occupation the knowledge of which they had not brought with them from their native land.

The Normans also took with them the knowledge of whaling as far as the Mediterranean. In Guillelmus Appulus's description (of about 1099-1111) of the Norman conquest of southern Italy it is related[144] that when Robert Guiscard comes to the town of Regina in Calabria he hears

"the rumour that there is a fish not for from the town in the waves of the Adriatic, a great one with an immense body, of an incredible aspect, which the people of Italy had not seen before. The winds of spring, on account of the fresh water, had driven it thither. It was captured by the ingenuity of the leader [i.e., Robert] by means of various arts. It swam into a net made of fine ropes, and when it was completely entangled in the nets with the heavy iron, it dived down to the depths of the sea, but at last it was. .h.i.t by the seamen in various projecting places, and with much pains dragged ash.o.r.e. There the people look at it as a strange monster. Then it is out in pieces by order of the leader. Thereof he obtains for himself and his men much food, and also for the people who dwelt on the coasts of Calabria. And the Apulian people also have a share of it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Cutting up a whale (from an Icelandic MS. of the sixteenth century).]

It looks as though the author's view was that the whale was caught with nets and killed by the throwing of lances, which is not impossible; but it may also be supposed that the poetical description is somewhat misleading, and that the "nets with the heavy iron" were the harpoon with its line (?).

It may be regarded as doubtful whether the harpooning of great whales in open waters was ever so actively carried on and brought to such perfection during the Middle Ages in Norway, Iceland and Greenland as was evidently the case in Normandy and especially among the Basques, from whom later the English and the Dutch learned it. As in those days there was abundance of whales to be caught on the Norwegian coast (the nord-caper was then numerous there), this kind of whaling would not tempt the Norwegians to seek better hunting-grounds along other coasts in northern waters. On the other hand, it is evident that practice in whaling must have been of great importance to them, wherever they settled in these regions.

[Sidenote: Albertus Magnus on walrus-hunting]

Albertus Magnus (ob. 1280), who gives a detailed description of the harpoon and of whaling (cf. above, p. 158), has also the following description of walrus-hunting:

"Those whales which have bristles, and others, have very long tusks,[145] and by them they hang themselves up on stones and rocks when they sleep. Then the fisherman approaches, and tears away as much as he can of the skin from the blubber by the tail, and makes fast a strong rope to the skin he has loosened, and he binds the ropes fast to rings fixed in the rocks or to very strong posts or trees. Then he throws large stones at the fish and wakes it. When the fish is awake and wants to go back [into the sea], it pulls its skin off from the tail along the back and head, and leaves it behind there. And afterwards it is caught not far from the spot, when it has exhausted its strength, as it floats bloodless upon the sea, or lies half-dead on the sh.o.r.e."

He also tells us that walrus-rope[146] was commonly sold at the fair at Cologne, which shows that walrus-hunting must have acquired great importance at that time. It can only have been carried on by the Norwegians (and Icelanders ?), the Finns or Lapps, the peoples of the north coast of Russia, and the Greenlanders. It is unlikely that the ropes were brought all the way from Russia by land to Cologne; they must rather have come from Norway. The Norwegians obtained a certain quant.i.ty of walrus-rope ("svarreip") through the trade with Greenland, and perhaps with North Russia, but they probably got most from their own hunting in northern waters. The quant.i.ty of walrus they could kill in Finmark would not be sufficient to satisfy the demand, and, as suggested earlier (vol.

i. p. 177), they must certainly have sought fresh hunting-grounds, above all eastwards in the Polar Sea.

[Sidenote: Hunting expeditions of the Norwegians eastward and northward in the Polar Sea]

Norse-Icelandic literature does not tell us that the Norwegians in their voyages to Bjarmeland went any farther east than "Gandvik" (the White Sea) and the Dvina. But it is to be noted that the sagas as a rule only mention the expeditions of chiefs, with warlike exploits, fighting and slaughter of one kind or another; while peaceful trading voyages, which were certainly numerous, are not spoken of, nor walrus-hunting and hunting expeditions in general, since such occupations were not usually followed by chiefs. We cannot therefore expect to find anything in the sagas about countries or waters where there were no people, and where only hunting was carried on.

From Ottar, however, who was not a saga-writer, we learn that walrus-hunting was practised, and doubtless very perseveringly, in the ninth century (vol. i. p. 176), and that even at that time he went in pursuit of it as far as the White Sea. It is thus extremely improbable that such hardy hunters should have stopped there, and not continued to move eastward, where there was such valuable prey to be secured. We must suppose that at least they reached the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, where there were walrus and seal in abundance. That such was the case is just as probable as the reverse is improbable, and as it is improbable that expeditions of this kind should have found mention in the sagas. That the Norwegians knew Novaya Zemlya may perhaps be concluded from the mediaeval Icelandic geography (cf. vol. i. p. 313; vol. ii. p. 1), according to which the land extended northward from Bjarmeland round the north of Hafsbotn (the Polar Sea) as far as Greenland, making the latter continuous with Europe (cf. the map, p. 2). The knowledge that the west coast of Novaya Zemlya extended northwards into the unknown may have given rise to such an idea. It was general in Scandinavia and Iceland in the latter part of the Middle Ages, whilst Adam of Bremen speaks of Greenland as an island, like Iceland and other islands in the northern ocean. The discovery of "Svalbard" (Spitzbergen ?) in 1194 may, as we shall see directly, have lent support to the belief in this connection by land.

[Sidenote: Saxo's Farther Bjarmeland]

Saxo Grammaticus in his Danish history, of the beginning of the thirteenth century, also has mythical tales of voyages to Bjarmeland. Amongst others the legendary king Gorm and Thorkel Adelfar on a mythical voyage to the north and east came first to Halogaland, then to "Hither Bjarmeland,"

which had steep sh.o.r.es and much cattle, and then to a land with continual cold and heavy snow, without any warmth of summer, rich in impenetrable forests, which was without produce of the fields, full of beasts unknown elsewhere, and where many rivers rushed through rocky beds. This land was "Farther Bjarmeland."[147] If we except the forests this description suits Novaya Zemlya better than the Kola peninsula; but it is extremely doubtful whether any real knowledge of these regions lies at the root of Saxo's mythical tales, in which, for instance, the travellers come to the river of death and the land of the dead. The designation Farther Bjarmeland may nevertheless point to a land having been known beyond the often-mentioned Bjarmeland.

In the old legendary sagas there is frequent mention of "the Farther Bjarmeland," which lay to the north or north-east of the real Bjarmeland (Permia), and where there was a people of gigantic size and immense riches. This fabulous country may, it is true, be entirely mythical, perhaps originally derived from ancient Greek myths; but on the other hand it may be the knowledge of Novaya Zemlya that has influenced the formation of the myths about it. However this may be, we may be sure that the voyages of the Norwegian hunters in those days extended into the eastern Polar Sea far beyond the limits of Ottar's voyage, and much farther than the chance mentions in the sagas of more or less warlike expeditions of chiefs to the White Sea would indicate.

[Sidenote: Discovery of Svalbar]

A notice that is extant relating to the year 1194 shows better than anything else that the Norwegians probably made extensive voyages in the Polar Sea, and the mention of it is purely fortuitous. In the "Islandske Annaler" (in six different MSS.) it is briefly stated of the year 1194: "Svalbars fundr" or "Svalbari fundinn" (Svalbard was discovered); but that is all we are told; surely no great geographical discovery has ever been more briefly recorded in literature. Svalbari means the cold edge or side, and must here mean the cold coast. In the introduction to the Landnamabok we read about this land:

"From Reykjanes on the south side of Iceland it is five [in Hauk's Landnama three] dgr's sea [i.e., sail] to Jolldulaup in Ireland to the south, but from Langanes on the north side of Iceland it is four dgr's sea to Svalbard on the north in Hafsbotn,[148] but it is one dgr's sail to the uninhabited parts of Greenland from Kolbeins-ey in the north."

As will be seen, Svalbard is spoken of, here and in the Annals, as a land that is known. It is also mentioned in Icelandic legendary sagas of the later Middle Ages.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Countries and seas discovered by the Norwegians and Icelanders. The shaded coasts were probably all known to them. The scale gives "dgr"-sailing, reckoning 2 (or 120 geographical miles) to each "dgr's" sail]

The Historia Norwegiae says of a country in the north:[149]

"But in the north on the other side of Norway towards the east there extend various peoples who are in the toils of heathendom (ah, how sad), namely the Kiriali and Kwaeni, horned Finns[150] and both Bjarmas. But what people dwell beyond these we do not know for certain, though when some sailors were trying to sail back from Iceland to Norway, and were driven by contrary winds to the northern regions, they landed at last between the Greenlanders and the Bjarmas, where they a.s.serted that they had found people of extraordinary size and the Land of Virgins ('virginum terram'), who are said to conceive when they taste water. But Greenland is separated from these by ice-clad skerries ('scopulis')."

And in a later pa.s.sage we read:

"The fourth part [of Norway] is Halogia, whose inhabitants live in great measure with the Finns [Lapps], and trade with them; this land forms the boundary of Norway on the north as far as the place called Wegestaf, which divides it from Bjarmeland ('Biarmonia'); there is the very deep and northerly gulf which has in it Charybdis, Scylla, and unavoidable whirlpools; there are also ice-covered promontories which plunge into the sea immense ma.s.ses of ice that have been increased by heaving floods and are frozen together by the winter cold; with these traders often collide against their will, when making for Greenland, and thus they suffer s.h.i.+pwreck and run into danger."

It may seem probable that this description of a country in the north referred to Svalbard; and the naive allusion to glacier-ice plunging from the land is most likely to be derived from voyagers to the Polar Sea; for it seems less probable that it should be merely information about Greenland transferred to the North. Storm, it is true, dated the Historia Norwegiae between 1180 and 1190, that is, before the discovery of Svalbard according to the Annals; but later writers place it in the thirteenth century, even as late as 1260 (see vol. i. p. 255). The ideas of the people of great size and of the Land of Virgins are obviously taken from Adam of Bremen, and may be a literary ornament.

[Sidenote: Svalbard probably Spitzbergen]

There have been different opinions as to what country Svalbard was. Many have thought that it might be the northern east coast of Greenland; Jan Mayen has also been mentioned; while others, like S. Thorlacius, a hundred years ago (1808), supposed that it was "the Siberian coasts of the Arctic Ocean, lying to the east of Permia (Bjarmeland), that the ancient Nors.e.m.e.n included under the name of Svalbard, i.e., the cold coast." Gustav Storm [1890, p. 344] maintained that Svalbard in all probability must be Spitzbergen,[151] and many reasons point to the correctness of this supposition.

No certain conclusion can be drawn about Svalbard from the pa.s.sage quoted from the Landnamabok. "On the north in Hafsbotn" must mean in some northerly direction; for it is only the chief points of the compa.s.s, north, south and west, that are mentioned, and no intermediate points; for one course alone, from Bergen to Hvarf in Greenland, the direction "due west" is given, which must be true west.[152] Langanes is said to lie on the north side of Iceland instead of on the north-east, from Reykjanes to Ireland the course was south, instead of south-east, etc. The points of the compa.s.s are evidently used in the same way as is still common in Norway; "in the north of the valley" may be used even if the valley bends almost to the west. The Landnama's statement (Sturlubok) that it is four "dgr's sea" from Snaefellsnes "west" to Greenland (i.e., Hvarf) then agrees entirely with the common mode of expression that I have found among the arctic sailors of our day in Denmark Strait, where they never talk of anything but sailing east or west along the edge of the ice, even though it is north-east and south-west; we sail westward from Faerder to Christianssand, or we travel south from Christiania to Christianssand.

Consequently "on the north in Hafsbotn" means the same as when we say north in Finmark (cf. Ottar's directions, vol. i p. 171), or even north in the White Sea, and speak of sailing north to Jan Mayen. As Langanes in particular, the north-east point of Iceland, is mentioned as the starting-point, we should be inclined to think that Svalbard was supposed to lie in a north-easterly direction; it is true that the course to Ireland is calculated from Reykjanes and not from the south-east point of Iceland; but this may be because the voyage was mostly made from the west country.

The distances given in these sailing directions in the Landnamabok are even less accurate than the points of the compa.s.s. From Stad in Norway to the east coast of Iceland is said to be seven "dgr's" sail, while from Snaefellsnes to Hvarf is four "dgr," from Reykjanes to Ireland three or five "dgr," from Langanes to Svalbard four "dgr," and from Kolbeins-ey to the uninhabited parts of Greenland one "dgr." The actual distances are, however, approximately: from Norway to Iceland 548 nautical miles, from Snaefellsnes to Hvarf 692, from Reykjanes to Ireland 712, from Langanes to Spitzbergen 840 (from Langanes to Jan Mayen 288), and from Mevenklint to the east coast of Greenland 184 nautical miles. It is hopeless to look for any system in this; the distances from Iceland to Greenland and from Iceland to Ireland are given as being much less (4/7 and 3/7 or 5/7) than the distance from Norway to Iceland, whereas in reality they are considerably more. In the fourth part of the "Rymbegla"

[1780, p. 482] a "dgr's" sail is given as equal to two degrees of lat.i.tude, that is, 120 nautical miles (or twenty-four of the old Norwegian sea-leagues), but according to the measurements given there would be 80 nautical miles in a "dgr's" sail between Norway and Iceland, 172 between Iceland and Greenland, and 236 (or 144) between Iceland and Ireland. These measurements of distance are therefore far too uncertain to be of any use in finding Svalbard. According to the scale in the "Rymbegla" it would be two and a half "dgr" to Jan Mayen, and seven "dgr" to Spitzbergen from Langanes.[153]

The old Norwegians imagined Hafsbotn [or Trollabotn][154] as the end ("botn") of the ocean to the north of Norway and north-east of Greenland, as far as one could sail to the north in the Polar Sea. But Svalbard lay according to the Landnamabok in the north of Hafsbotn; and if one tries to sail northward in summer-time, either from Langanes, the north-east point of Iceland, or from Norway, endeavouring to keep clear of the ice, it will be difficult to avoid making Spitzbergen. If one followed the edge of the ice northwards from Iceland in July, it would infallibly bring one there.

Such a voyage would correspond to the sailing directions from Snaefellsnes when they steered west to the edge of the ice off Greenland, and then followed it south-westwards round Hvarf. On the other hand, it would be impossible to arrive at the northern east coast of Greenland without venturing far into the ice, and it is not likely that the ancient Nors.e.m.e.n would have done this unless they knew that there was land on the inside and consequently hunting-grounds (cf. vol. i. p. 286). No doubt one might make Jan Mayen; but it is difficult to suppose that this little island should have been given such a name, which is only suited to the coast of a larger country. The conclusion that Svalbard was not the northern east coast of Greenland seems also justified from the latter being mentioned immediately afterwards in Hauk's Landnamabok under the name of "the uninhabited parts of Greenland," one "dgr's" sail north of Kolbeins-ey (see vol i. p. 286; vol. ii. p. 166).

As has already been said, the Norwegians (cf. Historia Norwegiae and the "King's Mirror") and Icelanders (cf. the mediaeval Icelandic geography) thought that "land extended from Bjarmeland to the uninhabited parts in the north, and as far as the beginning of Greenland," that is, round the whole of the north of Hafsbotn. From several legendary sagas of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries we can see that Svalbard was in fact reckoned among these uninhabited parts in the north, which were reached by sailing past Halogaland and Finmark, and northward over Dumbshav (see map, p. 34).

Thus, in Samson f.a.gre's Saga [of about 1350] we read in the thirteenth chapter, "On the situation of the northern lands":

"Risaland lies east and north of the Baltic, and to the north-east of it lies the land that is called Jotunheimar, and there dwell trolls and evil spirits, but from thence until it meets the uninhabited parts of Greenland goes the land that is called Svalbard; there dwell various peoples." [Gronl. hist. Mind., iii. p. 524.]

The outcome of what has been advanced above will be briefly: there can be no doubt, from the sober statement in the Icelandic Annals and in the Landnama, that the land of Svalbard really was discovered, even though the date need not be accurate; and it may further be regarded as probable that this land was Spitzbergen.

It may be supposed that it was discovered accidentally by a s.h.i.+p on the way between Iceland and Norway, as stated in the Historia Norwegiae, being driven by storms to the north of Hafsbotn; but the mention of the country in the Landnamabok may indicate that the voyage was made more than once, and that knowledge of the country cannot in any case have been limited to an accidental discovery of this sort. It is more probable that the Norwegians and Icelanders carried on seal- and walrus-hunting northwards along the edge of the ice in the Polar Sea, and in that case it was unavoidable that they should arrive at Svalbard or Spitzbergen. And when it was once discovered they must often have resorted to it; for the valuable walrus was at that time very plentiful there.

[Sidenote: The Russians' arctic sealing a continuation of the Norwegians']

As we nowhere find mention of these sealing expeditions of the Norwegians in the Polar Sea, except in Ottar's narrative, it may be difficult to show certain evidence of their having taken place; but the Russians'

seal-hunting in the Polar Sea, of which we hear as early as the sixteenth century, can in my opinion scarcely be explained in any other way than as a continuation in the main of the Norwegians' sealing. When the English, and later the Dutch, came to the Murman coast and the coasts eastwards as far as the Pechora, Vaigach and Novaya Zemlya, they found fleets of Russian smacks engaged in fis.h.i.+ng and walrus-hunting; most of them were from the Murman coast, some from the White Sea, and a few from the Pechora. Stephen Burrough thus found in June 1556 no less than thirty smacks in the Kola fjord, which had come sailing down the river, on their way to fis.h.i.+ng- and sealing-grounds to the east. These smacks sailed well with the wind free, could also be rowed with twenty oars, and had each a crew of twenty-four men.

Pistorius[155] refers to Andrei Mikhow as saying that the "Juctri"

(Yugrians in the Pechora district) and "Coreli" (Karelian) on the coast of the Polar Sea hunted seals and whales, of whose skins they made ropes, purses, and ...? ("redas, bursas et coletas"), and used the blubber (for lighting ?) and sold it. They also hunted walrus (called by Mikhow by its Norwegian name "rosmar"),[156] the tusks of which they sold to the Russians. The latter kept a certain quant.i.ty for their own use, and sent the rest to Tartary and Turkey. The hunting was said to proceed in a curious fas.h.i.+on; the walruses, which were very numerous, clambering up on to the mountain-ridges and there peris.h.i.+ng in great numbers.[157] The Yugrians and Karelians then collected the tusks on the sh.o.r.e. Is there here some confusion with stories of the collection of mammoth tusks?

What was said earlier (p. 145) from an Arabian source about steel blades being sold to the peoples on the coast of the Polar Sea in North Russia seems to point to sea-hunting having been well developed in these regions as early as the twelfth century; for otherwise steel for hunting appliances could not have been a common article of commerce.

That Norwegians and Russians often met in northern waters may apparently be concluded from the words already quoted from Erik Walkendorf, about 1520 (cf. p. 86), that fifteen of the Skraelings did not venture to approach a Christian or Ruten (i.e., Russian). As he places the land of the Skraelings north-north-west of Finmark, this seems to be a legend that is brought into connection with the Polar Sea. Of walrus-tusks he says that "these are costly and greatly prized among the Russians." Unless this is taken from older literary sources (?), one might suppose that it was information he himself had obtained in Finmark, and it might then point to the Norwegians having sold walrus-tusks to the Russians.

[Sidenote: Russians and Lapps learned walrus-hunting from the Norwegians]

The fact that, as mentioned above, a Russian author of the sixteenth century (Mikhow) uses the Norwegian name "rosmar" seems also to point to Russian connection with the Norwegians in the arctic fisheries. In addition to this, the Russian word "morsh" for walrus is evidently the same as the Lappish "mora" (Finnish "mursu"), and may originally be the same word as "rosmar" ("rosmhvalr"). For it is striking that the same letters are present in "morsh" or "mora" as in "rosm(hvalr)," or in "rosmar"; there is only a transference of consonants, which is often met with in borrowed words in different languages.

I asked Professor Konrad Nielsen what he thought about this, and whether he could imagine any Finnish-Ugrian origin of the word, or whether any similar word was known, for instance, in Samoyed. He considers that my a.s.sumption may "be quite well founded."[158] He has consulted Professor Setala of Helsingfors about it, and the latter thinks that if the word was borrowed from Finnish into Russian, there is nothing to prevent its being connected with the Norse rosm(hvalr)--the latter would then, of course, be the primary form.

Similar metatheses are found in other Norse loan-words in Finnish.

Konrad Nielsen thinks that "the Lappish word is pretty certainly borrowed from Finnish, so that the idea of its Norse origin meets with no difficulty from that quarter." And as to the possible Russian origin of the word, he has spoken to the Slavic authority, Professor Mikkola, who informs him that in popular language the Russian word is only found in the most northern dialects, and there is no point of connection in other Slavic languages, so that he regards it as probable that it is not originally a Slavic word. No Finnish-Ugrian etymology for the word can, according to Konrad Nielsen, be put forward. "In Samoyed," he says, "the name for walrus is only known as far as Jura-Samoyed (the most western dialect of Samoyed) is concerned: 't'ewot'e,' 'tiut'ei.' I have compared this with the Lappish name for seal, 'daevok'--'davak'--'daevkka.' In this I see evidence that the Lapps (contrary to Wiklund's view) were acquainted with the Polar Sea and its animals before they came to Scandinavia."