In Northern Mists Volume Ii Part 15

Professor Seippel considers it not impossible that there may here be a corruption of the Arabic Nurman [== Normans] to Bur?an, and to a layman this looks probable. In any case Bur?an cannot here, as elsewhere in Arab authors, be Bulgar [the Bulgarians]; on the other hand it might be the Norwegian town of Bergen. In any case the description seems to suit the Norwegians best, and the mention of Ptolemy's lat.i.tude for Thule (the longest night of twenty hours) also points to this. That they are said to be heathens is due again to the name "Ma?us" (cf. pp. 201, 209).

Qazwini also[199] tells us that

"Warank is a district on the border of the northern sea. For from the ocean in the north a bay goes in a southerly direction, and the district which lies on the sh.o.r.e of this bay, and from which the bay has its name, is called Warank. It is the uttermost region on the north. The cold there is excessive, the air thick, and the snow continuous. [This region] is not suited either for plants or animals.

Seldom does any one come there, because of the cold and darkness and snow. But Allah knows best [what is the truth of the matter]."

As mentioned above (p. 199), elsewhere in Arab writers the Varangians' Sea undoubtedly meant the Baltic; but here, as is also suggested by Professor Seippel, one might be tempted to think that it is Varanger or the Varanger-fjord in Finmark that is intended.[200] It may also be recalled that Edrisi already knew the name of Finmark. But as Qazwini has such exaggerated ideas of the cold in Rum and in Ifran?a, he may also be credited with such a description of the regions on the Baltic.[201] No importance can be attached to the statement that the bay proceeds from the northern ocean in a southerly direction, as ideas of that kind were general.

[Sidenote: 'Ash-s.h.i.+razi circa 1300]

Mahmud ibn Mas ud 'ash-s.h.i.+razi (ob. 1310) has the following about the northern regions:[202]

"Thus far as regards the islands: you may know that in that part [of the sea] which goes into the north-western quarter [of the earth] and is connected with the western ocean there are three, whereof the largest is the island 'Anglisi' [or 'Anglisei' (-island), probably England], and the smallest the island Irlanda. The most handsome of hunting-birds--those that are known by the name of 'sunqur'

[hunting-falcons]--are only found on it [this island]. The middlemost of them is the island of Orknia." Probably Ireland and Iceland are here thrown together under the name of Irlanda, as elsewhere falcons are especially attributed to the latter. "The longest day reaches twenty hours where the lat.i.tude is 63 [cf. Ptolemy, vol. i. p. 117].

There is an island that is called Tule. Of its inhabitants it is related that they live in heated bathrooms [literally, warm baths] on account of the severe cold that prevails there. This is generally considered to be the extreme lat.i.tude of inhabited land." It appears to be Norway that is here meant by Thule.

s.h.i.+razi says that "the sea that among the ancients was called Maeotis is now called the Varangians' Sea, and these are a tall, warlike people on its sh.o.r.e. And after the ocean has gone past the Varangians'

country in an easterly direction it extends behind the land of the Turks, past mountains which no one traverses and lands where no one dwells, to the uttermost regions of the land of the Chinese, and because these are also uninhabited, and because it is impossible to sail any farther upon it [the ocean], we know nothing of its connection with the eastern ocean."

[Sidenote: Dimashqi, circa 1300]

Shams ad-din Abu 'Abdallah Mu?ammad ad-Dimashqi (1256-1327) in his cosmography has little of interest about the North, and his ideas on the subject are obscure.

"The habitable part of the earth extends as far as 66-5/12;[203] the regions beyond, up to 90, are desert and uninhabited; no known animals are found there on account of the great quant.i.ty of snow and the thick darkness, and the too great distance from the sun.... It is the climate of darkness." It lies in the middle of the seventh climate, which surrounds it as a circular belt, and "around it the vault of heaven turns like the stone in a mill."

"The sea beyond the deserts of the Qipdjaks [southern Russia, Turkestan and western Siberia] in lat.i.tude 63 has a length of eight days' journey, with a breadth varying to as little as three. In this sea there is a great island [probably Scandinavia], inhabited by people of tall stature, with fair complexions, fair hair and blue eyes, who scarcely understand human speech.[204] It is called the Frozen Sea because in winter it freezes entirely, and because it is surrounded by mountains of ice. These are formed when the wind in winter breaks the waves upon the sh.o.r.e; as they freeze they are cast upon the icy edges, which grow in layers little by little, until they form heights with separate summits, and walls that surround them."[205]

He has besides various strange fables about the northern regions and the fabulous creatures there. Of the sea to the north of Britain he says that its coasts

"turn in a north-westerly direction, and there is the great bay that is called the Varangians' Sea, and the Varangians are an inarticulate people who scarcely understand human speech, and they are the best of the Slavs, and this arm of the sea is the Sea of Darkness in the north."

Afterwards the coasts extend farther still to the north and west, and lose themselves in the climate of Darkness, and no one knows what is there.

Of the whales he says that in the Black Sea a kind of whale is often seen which the ignorant a.s.sert to have been carried by angels alive into h.e.l.l, to be used for various punishments, while others think it keeps at the bottom of the sea and lives on fish;

"then Allah sends to it a cloud and angels, who lift it up out of the sea and cast it upon the sh.o.r.e for food for Ya?u? and Ma?u?. The whales are very large in the Mediterranean, in the Caspian Sea(!) and in the Varangians' Sea(!), as also off the coasts of Spain in the Atlantic Ocean."

[Sidenote: Book of Wonders, tenth century]

There is preserved an "abstract of wonders" (oldest MS. of 1484),[206] by an unknown Arab author, which gives a picture of the Arabs' mythical ideas in the tenth century. It also tells of islands in the west, which are of interest to us on account of their resemblance to many of the mediaeval mythical conceptions of Western Europe.

"In the great ocean is an island which is visible at sea at some distance, but if one tries to approach it, it withdraws and disappears. If one returns to the place one started from, it is seen again as before. It is said that upon this island is a tree that sprouts at sunrise, and grows as long as the sun is ascending; after midday it decreases, and disappears at sunset. Sailors a.s.sert that in this sea there is a little fish called 'shakil,' and that those who carry it upon them can discover and reach the island without its concealing itself. This is truly a strange and wonderful thing."

This is evidently the same myth as that of the Lost Isle, already referred to (Perdita, cf. vol. i. p. 376), and of the Norwegian huldrelands, etc. It also bears resemblance to legends from China and j.a.pan. The tree is the sun-tree of the Indian legends, which was already introduced into the earliest versions of the Alexander romance (Pseudo-Callisthenes, circa 200 A.D.), and which is met with again in the fairy-tales and mythical conceptions of many peoples.[207]

Possibly it is this same tree that grows on the mountain Fusan in the j.a.panese happy land Horaisan, and which is sometimes seen over the sea horizon (see p. 56).

"The island of 'as-Sayyara.' There are sailors who a.s.sert that they have often seen it, but they have not stayed there. It is a mountainous and cultivated island, which drifts towards the east when a west wind is blowing, and vice versa. The stone that forms this island is very light.... A man is there able to carry a large ma.s.s of rock." This floating island resembles those met with in tales from the Faroes and elsewhere (cf. vol. i. pp. 375, f.). Even Pliny [Nat.

Hist., ii. c. 95] has statements about floating islands, and Las Casas, in 1552-61 [Historias de las Indias in "Doc.u.mentos ineditos,"

lxii. p. 99], says that in the story of St. Brandan many such islands (?) are spoken of in the sea round the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores, and he a.s.serts that "the same is mentioned in the book of 'Inventio fortunata,'" that is, by Nicholas of Lynn [cf. de Costa, 1880, p. 185].

"'The Island of Women.' This is an island that lies on the borders of the Chinese Sea. It is related that it is inhabited only by women, who become pregnant by the wind, and who bear only female children; it is also said that they become pregnant by a tree, of which they eat the fruit.[208] They feed on gold, which with them grows in canes like bamboo." This myth, as will be seen, resembles Adam of Bremen's tale of the land of women, Kvaenland (vol. i. p. 186). Myths of women's islands are, moreover, very widespread; they are found in various forms in cla.s.sical authors (p. 47), in Arab writers (cf. above, pp.

197, 206), in Indian legends, among the Irish (vol. i. pp. 354, 357), among the Chinese, etc. It is partly the Amazon idea that appears here, partly the happy land desired by men.

[Sidenote: The Arabs and the compa.s.s]

Through an apparently small thing the Arabs possibly exercised more than in anything else a transforming influence upon the navigation, geography and cartography of Europe; for it was probably they who first brought to Europe the knowledge of the magnetic needle as a guide. We know that the Chinese were acquainted with it, at any rate in the second century A.D., and used it for a kind of compa.s.s for overland journeys. Whether they also used it at sea we do not know, but it may readily be supposed that they did. That the Arabs through their direct commercial intercourse with the Chinese became acquainted with this discovery at an early date seems probable; but curiously enough we hear nothing of it in Arabic literature before the thirteenth century. As the Arabs and Turks after that date used the Italian word "bossolo" for compa.s.s (bussol), it has been thought that they may have derived their knowledge of it, not from China, but from Italy; but it seems more reasonable to suppose that, while they had their first knowledge of the magnetic needle from China, they obtained an improved form of the compa.s.s from Italy, and with it the Italian word.

COMPa.s.s-CHARTS

[Sidenote: Oldest authorities on the compa.s.s in Europe]

We do not know how early the magnetic needle's property of pointing to the north became known in Europe and used for finding the way at sea. The first mention of it is found at the close of the twelfth century in the works of the Englishman Alexander Neckam, professor in Paris about 1180-1190, and of the troubadour Guyot de Provins from Languedoc. The latter, in a satirical poem of about 1190, wishes the Pope would imitate the immutable trustworthiness of the polar star by showing the steadiness of the heavenly guide; for sailors come and go by this star, which they are always able to find, even in fog and darkness, by a needle rubbed with the ugly brown lodestone; stuck in a straw and laid upon water, the needle points unfailingly to the north star. As late as in 1258 Dante's teacher, Brunetto Latini, saw as a curiosity in the possession of Roger Bacon at Oxford a large and ugly lodestone, which was able to confer on an iron needle the mysterious power of pointing to the star; but he thinks that it cannot be of any use, for s.h.i.+p-masters would not steer by it, nor would sailors venture to sea with an instrument which was so like an invention of the devil. As always when the progress of humanity is at stake, orthodoxy and religious prejudice raises its head. It is certain that the use of the compa.s.s-needle must have been known in the Mediterranean at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and probably even in the twelfth. It has been alleged that the compa.s.s was known long before that time, even in the eleventh and tenth centuries; but no proof of this has been found, and it does not appear very probable.[209] How early the compa.s.s, or lodestone, was known in the North is uncertain. We only know that when the Hauksbok was written, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, it was at any rate known in Iceland (cf. vol. i. p. 248); but it may of course have been known before that time, and it does not appear that any long time elapsed between the instrument's being known in the Mediterranean and its reaching the Scandinavians.

[Sidenote: Oldest sea-charts]

When the compa.s.s came into general use on Italian s.h.i.+ps in the thirteenth century, it naturally led to the development of an entirely new type of map, the Italian sea-charts or compa.s.s-charts, which were to be of fundamental importance to all future cartography. The mediaeval maps of the world already mentioned were learned representations which were of no practical use to the navigator. The Greeks had drawn land-maps which were also of no great use at sea, and we do not know that they had sea-charts.

On the other hand sailing-books ("peripli"), which gave directions for coasting voyages, were in use far back in antiquity. In the Middle Ages sailing-books, called "portolani," which gave information about harbours, distances, etc., were an important aid to the navigator, especially in the Mediterranean. It was the Italians before all others who at that period developed navigation. When coasting was to some extent replaced by sailing in open sea, after the compa.s.s came into use, sea-charts became a necessary adjunct to the written sailing-books or portolani. How early they began to be developed is unknown; we only know that charts were in use on Italian s.h.i.+ps in the latter half of the thirteenth century;[210]

and we must suppose that they were employed long before that time.

Whether, as some have maintained, there was a connection between these charts and the maps of the Greeks is doubtful, though there may indeed have been an indirect connection through the Arabs, among whom Edrisi, for instance, seems perhaps to have exercised some influence. But in any case it is certain that the Italians of the Middle Ages were not acquainted with Greek cartography, and this may in a way be regarded as an advantage; for they were thus obliged to invent their own mode of representation. For Greek thought the chief thing was to find the best expression for the system of the world and the "c.u.mene," to solve problems such as the reduction of a spherical to a plane surface by projection, etc.; while the sense of accurate detail was less prominent. The Italian sailor and cartographer went straight to nature, unhindered by theory, and to him it appeared a matter of course to set down on the map coasts and islands as accurately as possible according to the course sailed and the distance, without reflecting that sea and land form a spherical surface.

The Italian sea-charts seem especially to have been developed in the republics of northern Italy, Genoa and Pisa, and to some extent Venice.

Later the Catalans of the Balearic Isles and of Spain (Barcelona and Valencia) also learned the art, probably from Genoa. The charts have been justly admired for their correct and detailed representation of the coasts known to the Italians and the seamen of the Mediterranean; the world had never before produced any parallel to such a representation. It shows that the sailors of that time were masters in the use of their compa.s.s,[211]

and in making up their reckoning. The remarkable thing is that the first known compa.s.s-charts, of the beginning of the fourteenth century, were already of so perfect a form that there was little to add to or improve in them in later times. It looks as though this type of chart suddenly sprang forth in full perfection, like Athene from the brain of Zeus, without our knowing of any forerunner; it held the field with its representation of the coasts of the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and Western Europe almost unaltered through three centuries. There is something puzzling in that. We must suppose in any case that these charts were developed through many smaller special charts throughout the whole of the thirteenth century, but even that seems a short period for the development of a representation so complete as this, which thenceforward became almost stereotyped. It is princ.i.p.ally the coasts that are represented, with many names, while inland there are comparatively few, which of course is natural in sea-charts.

[Sidenote: Extent of the compa.s.s-charts]

As Italian trade did not extend farther north than Flanders and England (from whence came wool), it is also characteristic of the compa.s.s-charts that their detailed representation of the coast extends to the south of England and to Sluis in Flanders, and to the mouth of the Scheldt. Farther than this the Italian s.h.i.+ps did not sail; beyond this boundary began the commercial domain of the Hanseatic League. The delineation on the compa.s.s-charts of the greater part of Ireland, northern England, Scotland, the north coast of Germany, Denmark, the Baltic and Scandinavia has an entirely different character from that of the more southern coasts. The coast-lines are there evidently drawn in a formal way, and more or less hypothetically; the names (chiefly those of a few ports, bishops' sees and islands) are also strikingly few. It is clearly seen that these coasts cannot have been drawn from actual compa.s.s courses and reckonings; they are sketches based on second- or third-hand information. For this reason too the shape of the northern countries may be subject to considerable variation in the different types of compa.s.s-charts.

We know little of the sources from which they may have obtained their delineation of the North; probably they were many and of different kinds.

A glance at the maps reproduced (pp. 226, 232) will convince one that their image of the North differed greatly from that which we find on the wheel-maps, and from that which was probably shown on the maps of antiquity. It is a decisive step in the direction of reality, although the representation is still imperfect. In a whole series of these charts the image of the North shows certain typical features. The coast of Germany and Jutland goes due north from Flanders, thus coming much too near Britain, and the North Sea becomes nothing but a narrow strait. Even on the earliest charts (Dalorto's chart, p. 226) the shape of Jutland is quite good. Norway, the coasts of which are indicated by chains of mountains, is placed fairly correctly in relation to Jutland, but is put too far to the west and too near to England. It is also made too broad.

The Skagerak appears more or less correctly, but the Danish islands, including Sealand, usually as a round island, are placed in the Cattegat to the north-east of Jutland. This greatly distorts the picture. Sweden is much too small, and is given too little extension to the south; the Baltic has a curious form: it extends far to the east and has a remarkable narrowing in the middle, through the German coast making a great bend to the north towards Sweden. Gotland lies in the great widening of its inner portion. The Gulf of Bothnia seems to be unknown. The islands to the north of Scotland: Shetland (usually called "scetiland," "sialanda" or "stillanda"), the Orkneys, and often Caithness as an island, come to the west of Norway, frequently placed in a somewhat arbitrary fas.h.i.+on, and in the wrong order. "Tille" (Thule), the round island off the north-east coast of Scotland, is a characteristic feature on many compa.s.s-charts. Its origin is uncertain, but possibly it may be connected with the Romans having thought they had seen Thule to the north of the Orkneys (?) (cf.

vol. i. p. 107). The names in the North are in the main the same on most of the compa.s.s-charts,[212] and one cartographer has copied another; by this means also many palaeographic errors have been introduced, which are afterwards repeated. As an example: the Baltic is originally called "mar allemania," this is read by Catalan draughtsmen as "mar de lamanya," also written "de lamya," and thus we get "mar de la maya" (cf. pp. 231, 233).

Another example: Bergen is originally called "bergis" (cf. p. 221), a draughtsman corrupts this to "bregis," and that becomes the name of the town in later charts (cf. p. 232). Whence these names first came we do not know; partly, no doubt, from sailors, and partly from literary sources.

The latter must be true of names in the interior. There are also various legends or inscriptions on these charts, e.g., in Norway, in Sweden, in the Baltic, on the islands in the Northern Ocean, and in Iceland. Many of these legends can be certainly proved to have a literary origin. Some of them (e.g., that attached to Norway) may be derived in part from the Geographia Universalis. Others are connected with such authors as Giraldus Cambrensis, Higden, and others. Certain resemblances to Arabic writers, especially Edrisi, might also be pointed out; but it is uncertain whether these are not due in part to their being derived from a common source.

[Sidenote: Carignano's chart, circa 1300]

The first known compa.s.s-chart, the so-called "Carte Pisane," of about 1300,[213] goes no farther north than to the coast of Flanders and southern England. But the compa.s.s-chart[214] drawn by the Genoese priest Giovanni da Carignano (ob. 1344), evidently a little after 1300, already gives a delineation of Great Britain, Ireland, the Orkneys and Scandinavia, with the Baltic. That these regions are only represented hypothetically, and do not belong to the compa.s.s-chart proper, is also indicated by their partly lying outside the network of compa.s.s-lines. It is in the main a land map, with many names in the interior of the continents, but the delineation of the known coasts (to the south of Flanders) is evidently taken from the sea-charts. The representation of the British Isles and of the North reminds one a good deal of the Cottoniana map (cf. vol. i. p. 183), and of Edrisi's representation (cf.

p. 203);[215] as an example: it is difficult to suppose that the western inclination of Scotland should have come about independently on each of the three maps. There is also considerable resemblance to Edrisi in the names on other parts of the chart; but Carignano has no hint of Edrisi's "Island," nor of the Cottoniana's island of Tylen (Thule). Whether his Scandinavia is a peninsula, as usually a.s.serted, and not rather a long island, as on the two maps in question, is uncertain, since the delineation has suffered a good deal and is indistinct in the inner part of the Baltic. To judge from a photograph of the chart [Ongania, Pl. III.]

it appears to me most probable that it was an island, which then has considerable resemblance to the island of Norwaga [Norway] in Edrisi.

Names that are legible on this island or peninsula are: "noruegia,"

"finonia" [Finmark or Finland], "suetia"; also "bergis" [Bergen], "tromberg" [Tonsberg], "uamerlant" [Vermeland], "scarsa" [Skara on Lake Vener], "kundgelf" [Kungelf], "scania" [Skne], "lendes" [Lund], "stocol"

[Stockholm], etc. On the two islands in the Baltic there are "scamor"

[i.e., "scanior" ? Skanor] and "gothlanda" [Gotland]. Many of these names appear here for the first time in any known authority. Carignano may have taken them from older unknown maps, but he may also in some way or other have received information from the North; possibly, for instance, he may have had the names of ports, etc., from sailors. His representation of the western part of Scandinavia, with three long peninsulas (cf. Saxo), is curious; of these the eastern, with "scania," might be south Sweden with Skne; the central one with "tromberg" [Tonsberg] might be Vestfold and Grenmar, and the western with Bergen might be western Norway. The smaller peninsula to the north might be Trondelagen [the district of Trondhjem]

(cf. also Historia Norwegiae, below, p. 235).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Northern portion of Carignano's chart (a few years later than 1300)]