Ptolemy calculates his degrees of longitude eastwards from a meridian 0 which he draws west of the Fortunate Isles (the Canaries), the most western part of the earth. It will be seen that he gives Thule no very great extent. His removing it from the Arctic Circle south to 63° is doubtless due to the men of Agricola’s fleet having thought they had sighted Thule north of the Orkneys. In his eighth book [c. 3] he says:

It is evident that these “hours” are found by calculation, and are merely a way of expressing degrees of latitude and longitude; they cannot therefore be referred to any local observation of the length of the longest day, etc. It is curious that Ptolemy only mentions Ebudes and Orcades, and not the Shetland Isles; perhaps they are included among his thirty Orcades.

The northern part of Ptolemy’s map of the world, Europe and Asia.

From the Rome edition of Ptolemy of 1490 (Nordenskiöld, 1889)

He represents the Cimbrian Peninsula (Jutland) with remarkable correctness, though making it lean too much towards the east, like Scotland. Upon it “dwelt on the west the Sigulones, then the Sabalingii, then the Cobandi, above them the Chali, and above these again and farther west the Phundusii, and more to the east the Charudes [Harudes or Horder; cf. p. 85], and to the north of all the Cimbri.” It was suggested above (p. 94) that possibly the name Cobandi might be connected with the Codanus of Mela and Pliny. The Sabalingii, according to Much [1905, p. 11], may be the same name as Pytheas’s Abalos (cf. p. 70), which may have been written Sabalos or Sabalia, and may have been inhabited by Aviones. To the north of the Cimbrian Chersonese Ptolemy places three islands, the “Alociæ,” which may be taken from the Halligen islands, properly “Hallagh” [cf. Detlefsen, 1904, p. 61], off the coast of Sleswick.[125]

It will be seen that Scandia would not be much larger than Thule: 20′ longer from west to east, and only 10′ longer from north to south.

The Scandinavian North according to Ptolemy.
The most northern people in Scandinavia, the Phinni, are omitted in this map, as in most MSS.

The “Chædini” must be the Norwegian “Heiðnir” or “Heinir,” whose name is preserved in Heiðmǫrk, Hedemarken [cf. Zeuss, 1837, p. 159; Much, 1893, p. 188; Müllenhoff, 1900, p. 497]. This is the first time that an undoubtedly Norwegian tribe is mentioned in known literature. “Phinni” (Finns) is only found in one MS.; but as Jordanes (Cassiodorus) says that Ptolemy mentions seven tribes in Scandia, it must have been found in ancient MSS. of his work, and it occurs here for the first time as the name of a people in Scandinavia. Ptolemy also mentions “Phinni” in another place as a people in Sarmatia near the Vistula (together with Gythones or Goths); but these must be connected with the “Fenni” of Tacitus, and doubtless also belong originally to Scandinavia. The “Gutæ” must be the Gauter or Göter, unless they are the Guter of Gotland (?). The “Dauciones,” it has been supposed, may possibly be the Danes, and the “Levoni” might perhaps be the Hilleviones mentioned by Pliny, whose name does not otherwise occur. Thus a knowledge of Scandinavia slowly dawns in history.

Ptolemy’s map of Europe, etc., compared with the true conditions (in dotted line)

To the north of the known coasts and islands of Europe there lay, according to Ptolemy and Marinus, a great continuous ocean, which was a continuation of the Atlantic. On the extreme north-west was “the Hyperborean Ocean, which was also called the Congealed (πέπεγος) or ‘Cronius’ or the Dead (νεκρός) Sea.” North of Britain was the Deucaledonian Ocean, and east of Britain the Germanic Ocean as far as the eastern side of the Cimbrian Chersonese, that is, the North Sea and a part of the Baltic. This was joined by the Sarmatian Ocean, with the Venedian (i.e., Wendish) Gulf, from the mouths of the Vistula north-eastwards. The Baltic was still merely an open bay of the great Northern Ocean. But whether the latter extended farther to the east, round the north of the œcumene, making it into an island, was unknown. Ptolemy and Marinus therefore put the northern boundary of the known continent at the latitude of Thule, and made this continent extend into the unknown on the north-east and east; they thus furnish the latest development of the doctrine that the œcumene was not an island in the universal ocean, since they considered that guesses about the regions beyond the limits of the really known were inadmissible, and no one had reached any coast in those directions; for the Caspian Sea was closed and not connected with the Northern Ocean. In the same way the extent of Africa towards the south was uncertain, and they connected it possibly with south-eastern Asia, to the south of the Indian Ocean, which thus also became enclosed.

Ptolemy’s tribes in Denmark and South Sweden

Ptolemy wrote at a time when the Roman Empire was at its height, and he had the advantage of being able, as a Greek, to combine the scientific lore of the older Greek literature with the mass of information which must inevitably have been collected from all parts of the world by the extensive administration of this gigantic empire. His work, like that of Marinus, was therefore a natural fruit which grew by the stream of time. But the stream had just then reached a backwater; he belonged to a languishing civilisation, and represents the last powerful shoot which Greek science put forth. Some thirteen centuries were to elapse before, by the changes of fate, his works at last made their mark in the development of the world’s civilisation. In the centuries that succeeded him the Roman Empire went steadily backwards to its downfall, and literature degenerated rapidly; it sank into compilation and repetition of older writers, without spirit or originality. It is therefore not surprising that the literature of later antiquity gives us nothing new about the North, although communication therewith must certainly have increased.

The geographical author of antiquity most widely read in the Middle Ages was C. Julius Solinus (third century A.D.), who for the most part repeated passages from Pliny, with a marked predilection for the fabulous. All that is to be found in the MSS. of his works about Thule, the Orcades and the Hebudes, beyond what we read in Pliny, consists, in the opinion of Mommsen [1895, p. 219], of later additions by a copyist (perhaps an Irish monk) of between the seventh and ninth centuries, and as this has a certain interest for our country it will be dealt with later under this period.

Rufus Festus Avienus lived in the latter half of the fourth century A.D. and was proconsul in Africa in 366 and in Achæa in 372. His poem “Ora Maritima” is mainly a translation of older Greek authors and, as mentioned above (p. 37), is of interest from his having used an otherwise unknown authority of very early origin. His second descriptive poem is a free translation of Dionysius Periegetes.

Amongst other authors who in this period of literary degeneration compiled geographical descriptions may be named: Ammianus Marcellinus (second half of the fourth century) in his historical works, Macrobius[126] (circa 400 A.D.), the Spaniard Paulus Orosius, whose widely read historical work (circa 418 A.D.) has a geographical chapter, Marcianus of Heraclea (beginning of the fifth century), Julius Honorius (beginning of the fifth century), Marcianus Capella (about 470 A.D.), Priscianus Cæsariensis (about 500 A.D.) and others.

Their statements about the northern regions are repetitions of older authors and contain nothing new.

Much of the geographical knowledge of that time was included in the already mentioned (p. 116) “Itineraries,” which were probably illustrated with maps of the routes. Partial copies of one of them are preserved in the so-called “Tabula Peutingeriana” [cf. K. Miller, vi. 1898, pp. 90 ff.], which came to be of importance in the Middle Ages.

Thus at the close of antiquity the lands and seas of the North still lie in the mists of the unknown. Many indications point to constant communication with the North, and now and again vague pieces of information have reached the learned world. Occasionally, indeed, the clouds lift a little, and we get a glimpse of great countries, a whole new world in the North, but then they sink again and the vision fades like a dream of fairyland. It seems as though no one felt scientifically impelled to make an effort to clear up these obscure questions.

Then followed restless times, with roving warlike tribes in Central Europe. The peaceful trading communication between the Mediterranean and the northern coasts was broken off, and with it the fresh stream of information which had begun to flow in from the North. And for a long time men chewed the cud of the knowledge that had been collected in remote antiquity. But Greek literature was more and more forgotten, and it was especially the later Roman authors they lived on.

Map of the World from a ninth-century MS. (in the Strasburg Library)

CHAPTER IV

Thus it came about that the geographical knowledge of later antiquity shows nothing but a gradual decline from the heights which the Greeks had early reached, and from which they had surveyed the earth, the universe and their problems with an intellectual superiority that inclines one to doubt the progress of mankind. The early Middle Ages show an even greater decline. Rome, in spite of all, had formed a sort of scientific centre, which was lost to Western Europe by the fall of the Roman Empire. To this must be added the introduction of Christianity, which, for a time at any rate, gave mankind new values in life, whereby the old ones came into disrepute. Knowledge of distant lands, or of the still more distant heavens, was looked upon as something like folly and madness. For all knowledge was to be found in the Bible, and it was especially commendable to reconcile all profane learning therewith. When, for instance, Isaiah says of the Lord that He “sitteth upon the circle of the earth” (i.e., the round disc of the earth), and “stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in” [xl. 22], and that He “spread forth the earth” [xlii. 5, xliv. 24], and when in the Book of Job [xxvi. 10] it is said that “He has compassed the waters with bounds, where light borders on darkness,” such statements did not agree with the doctrine of the spherical form of the earth; this was therefore regarded with disfavour by the Church; the circular disc surrounded by Ocean, which was the idea of the childhood of Greece, was more suitable, and according to Ezekiel [v. 5-6] Jerusalem lay in the centre of this disc. It was inevitable that knowledge of the earth and of its farthest limits should be still more crippled in such an age, and this is especially true of knowledge of the North.

Cosmas’s Map of the World. The surface of the earth is rectangular and surrounded by ocean, which forms four bays: the Mediterranean on the west (with the Black Sea), the Caspian above on the right, the Red Sea, and the Persian Gulf below on the right. The Nile (below), the Euphrates and the Tigris flow from the outer world under the ocean to the earth’s surface

Those writers who in the early part of the Middle Ages occupied themselves with such worldly things as geography, confined themselves mostly to repeating, and in part further confusing, what Pliny and later Latin authors had said on the subject. The most widely read and most frequently copied were Solinus and Capella, also Macrobius and Orosius. This was the intellectual food which replaced the science of the Greeks. Truly the course of the human race has its alternations of heights and depths!

Cosmas’s representation of the Universe, with the mountain in the north
behind which the Sun goes at night. The Creator is shown above

But even if the migrations had for a time interrupted peaceful trading intercourse with the North, they were also the means of new facts becoming known, and it was inevitable that in the long run these migrations, and subsequent contact with the northern peoples, should leave their mark on the science of geography. The knowledge of the North shown in the literature of the early Middle Ages is thus to be compared with two streams, often quite independent of one another; the one has its source in classical learning and becomes ever thinner and more turbid; the other is the fresh stream of new information from the North, which we find in a Cassiodorus or a Procopius. Sometimes these two streams flow together, as in an Adam of Bremen, and they may then form a mixture of like and unlike, in which it is often hopeless to find one’s way.

It is true that some were found, even in the early Middle Ages, who maintained the doctrine of the earth’s spherical form, whereas early Christian authors, such as Lactantius (ob. 330) and Severianus (ob. 407), had asserted that it was a disc; the latter also thought that the heaven was divided into two storeys, an upper and a lower, with the visible heaven as a division; the earth formed the floor of this celestial house. One ancient notion (in Empedocles, Leucippus, Democritus) was that this disc of the earth stood on a slant, increasing in height towards the north, which was partly covered by high mountains, the Rhipæan and Hyperborean ranges (as in Ptolemy’s map). These childish ideas took their most remarkable shape in the “Christian Topography,” in twelve books, of the Alexandrine monk, Cosmas Indicopleustes (sixth century). In his younger days he had travelled much as a merchant and seen many wonderful things, amongst others the wheel-ruts left by the Children of Israel during their wanderings in the wilderness. The Jews’ tabernacle, he thought, was constructed on the same plan and in the same proportions as the world. Consequently the earth’s disc had to be made four-cornered, with straight sides, and twice as long as it was broad. The ocean on the west formed a right angle with the ocean on the south. On the north was a high mountain; behind it the sun was hidden in its course during the night.[127] As the sun in winter traverses the sky in a lower orbit, it appears to us as though it receded behind the mountain near its foot, and it stays away longer than in summer, when it is higher. The whole vault of heaven was like a four-cornered box with a vaulted lid, which was divided by the firmament into two storeys. In the lower one were the earth, the sea, the sun, moon and stars; in the upper one the waters of the sky. The stars were carried round in circles by angels, whom God at the creation appointed to this heavy task. It was impossible for the earth to revolve, simply because its axle must be supported by something, and of what kind of material could it be made? He had nothing else worth mentioning to say about the North. But notions such as these had their influence on the earliest mediæval maps.

The first mediæval author who, so far as we know, definitely gave new information of value about the countries and peoples of the North, was the Roman senator and historian Cassiodorus (born at Scylaceum, it is supposed about 468), who was an eminent statesman under Theodoric, King of the Goths (493-526). After the victories of Belisarius in Italy, Cassiodorus retired into a monastery in southern Italy (Bruttium), which he himself had founded, and died there, perhaps 100 years old (about 570). He wrote several valuable works, amongst them, probably by order of Theodoric, one in twelve books on “The Origin and Deeds of the Goths,” which was perhaps completed about 534. This work has unfortunately been lost, and we only know it through the Goth Jordanes, who has made excerpts from it. There is reason to believe [cf. Mommsen, 1882, Proœmium, p. xxxvii.] that Cassiodorus’s knowledge of Gothic was defective, and that he has borrowed his information about the North, especially Scandinavia, from a contemporary, or perhaps somewhat older writer, Ablabius, who is referred to in Jordanes’ book as “the distinguished author of a very trustworthy history of the Goths,” but who is otherwise unknown. Through the Norwegian king Rodulf and his men (see below, under Jordanes), or other Northerners who visited Theodoric, and who were “mightier than all the Germans in courage and size of body,” first-hand information was brought concerning the countries of the North, which Ablabius, who certainly knew Gothic, may have written down, and from him Cassiodorus has thus derived his statements, which again are taken from him by Jordanes. In addition to various classical authors, some Latin and some Greek, of whom Jordanes mentions many more than he has made use of, it is probable that Cassiodorus has also drawn upon the maps of Roman itineraries [cf. Mommsen, 1882, Proœmium, p. xxxi.], and perhaps also Greek maps.

The Gothic monk (or priest) Jordanes lived in the sixth century, and wrote about 551 or 552 a book on “The Origin and Deeds of the Goths” (“De origine actibusque Getarum”), which for the most part is certainly a poor repetition of the substance of Cassiodorus’s great work on the same subject; and in fact he tells us this himself, with the modest addition that “his breath is too weak to fill the trumpet of such a man’s mighty speech.” It is true that Jordanes asserts in his preface that he has only had the loan of the work to read for three days, for which reason he cannot give the words but only the sense, and thereto, he says, he has added what was suitable “from certain histories in the Greek [which he did not understand] and Latin tongues,” and he has mixed it with his own words. But this is only said to hide his lack of originality; for the book evidently contains long literal excerpts from the work of Cassiodorus, while Jordanes’ Latin becomes markedly worse when he tries to walk alone. Not even the preface to the work is original; this is copied from Rufinus’s translation of Origines’ commentary on the Epistle to the Romans.

Of the uttermost ocean we read in Jordanes:

Of the western ocean he says, amongst other things:

After having spoken of Ptolemy’s (also Mela’s) mention of this island, which according to his version of the former had the shape of “a citron leaf, with curved edges and very long in proportion to its breadth” (this cannot be found in Ptolemy), and lay opposite the three mouths of the Vistula, he continues:

The “Screrefennæ” of Jordanes (in other MSS. “Crefenne,” “Rerefennæ,” etc.) are certainly a corruption of the same word as Procopius’s “Scrithifini” (Skridfinns), and were a non-Germanic race inhabiting the northern regions (see later). The mention of these people, together with their neighbours the “Adogit,” who had the midnight sun and a winter night of forty days (cf. also Procopius), shows without a doubt that Jordanes’, or rather Cassiodorus’s, authority had received fresh information from the most northern part of Scandinavia, possibly through the Norwegian king Rodulf and his men.

The mysterious name “Adogit” is somewhat doubtful. P. A. Munch [1852, p. 93], and later also Müllenhoff [ii., 1887, p. 41], thought that it might be a corruption of Hálogi (“Háleygir,” or Helgelanders) in northern Norway. Sophus Bugge [1907] does not regard this interpretation as possible, as this name cannot have had such a form at that time; he (and, as he informs us, Gustav Storm also independently) thinks that “adogit” is corrupted from “ādogii,” i.e., “andogii,” meaning inhabitants of And or Andö in Vesterålen.[131] The termination -ogii he takes to be a mediæval way of writing what was pronounced -oji, i.e., islanders.[132] But it should be remembered how much the name “Screrefennæ” has been corrupted, and that it is very possible that other names may have been so equally.

The statement that the Adogit had forty days’ daylight in summer and a corresponding period of night in winter is, unfortunately, of no assistance in the form in which it is given for deciding the locality inhabited by them, for no such phenomenon occurs anywhere on the earth. If we suppose that the Adogit people themselves observed the rising and setting of the sun above a free horizon, then we must believe that they reckoned the unbroken summer day from the first to the last night on which the upper limb of the sun did not disappear below the edge of the sea. And they would have reckoned the unbroken winter night from the first day on which the sun’s upper limb did not appear above the horizon at noon, until the first day when it again became visible.

If we reckon in this way, and take into account the horizontal refraction and the fact that the obliquity of the ecliptic about the year 500 was approximately 11′ greater than now, we shall find that at that time the midnight sun was seen for forty days (i.e., from June 2 to July 12) in about 66° 54′ N. lat., or in the neighbourhood of Kunna, south of Bodö; but at the same place more than half the sun’s disc would be above the horizon at noon at the winter solstice; it was therefore not hidden for a single day, much less for forty days. But, on the other hand, it was not until 68° 51′ N. lat., or about Harstad on Hinnö, that they had an unbroken winter night, without seeing the rim of the sun, for forty days (from December 2 to January 11); but there they had the midnight sun in summer for about sixty-three days. The fable of a summer day of the same length as the unbroken winter night cannot therefore have originated with the Northerners; it must have been evolved in an entirely theoretical way by astronomical speculations (in ignorance of refraction) which were a survival of Greek science, where the length of the northern summer day was always assumed to be equal to that of the winter night. But that information had been received at this time from the Northerners is probable, since the statement of a forty days’ summer day and winter night is not found in any known author of earlier date,[133] and Jordanes’ contemporary, Procopius, has an even more detailed statement, especially of this winter night (see later). The probability is that what the Northerners took particular notice of was the long night, during which, as Procopius also relates, they kept an accurate account of the days during which they had to do without the light of the sun, a time in which “they were very depressed, since they could not hold intercourse.” This must also have been what they told to the Southerners, while they did not pay so much attention to the length of the summer day, when of course they would in any case have plenty of sunlight. We must therefore suppose that the latitude worked out according to the winter night of forty days is the correct one, and this gives us precisely Sophus Bugge’s And—Andö, or, better still, Hinnö.

The more important tribal names in Southern Scandinavia, according to Jordanes

Jordanes counts about twenty-seven names of tribes or peoples in Sweden and Norway; a number of them are easily recognised, while others must be much corrupted and are difficult to interpret.[134] He mentions first the peoples of Sweden, then those of Norway. “Suehans” is certainly the Svear.

We see then that at this time the fur trade with the North was well developed, as the amber trade was at a much earlier date. Adam of Bremen tells us of the “proud horses” of the Svear as though they were an article of export together with furs. In the Ynglinga Saga it is related [cf. Sophus Bugge, 1907, p. 99] that Adils, King of the Svear at Upsalir,

The original authority for the statement in Jordanes was probably King Rodulf, who perhaps came from the northern half of Norway, and it looks as though the Norwegians even at that time were acquainted with Swedish horses.

Jordanes further mentions five tribes who “dwell in a flat, fertile land [i.e., south Sweden], for which reason also they have to protect themselves against the attacks of other tribes (‘gentium’).” Among the tribes in Sweden are mentioned also the “Finnaithæ”—doubtless in Finn-heden or Finn-veden (that is, either Finn-heath or Finn-wood), whose name must be due to an aboriginal people called Finns—further, the “Gautigoth,” generally taken for the West Göter, who were a specially “brave and warlike people,” the “Ostrogothæ” [East Göter] and many more.

Then he crosses the Norwegian frontier and mentions

The small (?), “very mild” Finns must, from the order in which they are named, have lived in the forest districts—Solör, Eidskogen, and perhaps farther south—on the Swedish border. P. A. Munch [1852, p. 83] saw in their kinsmen the “Vinoviloth” the inhabitants of “Vingulmark” (properly “vingel-skog,” thick, impenetrable forest), which was the forest country on Christiania fjord from Glommen to Lier. Müllenhoff agrees with this [ii., 1887, pp. 65 f.], but thinks that “-oth,” the last part of the word, belongs to the next name, Suetidi, and that “Vinovil” may be a corruption of Vingvili or Vinguli (cf. Paulus Warnefridi’s “Vinili” ?). But however this may be, we must regard this people and the foregoing as “Finnish” and as inhabiting forest districts, as hunters, as well as a third Finnish people, “Finnaithæ” in Småland. We shall return later to these “Finns” in Scandinavia. It has been thought that “Suetidi” may be from the same word as “Sviþjoð”; but as Jordanes has already mentioned the Svear (“Suehans”), and as the name occurs among the Norwegian tribes, and there is evidently a certain order in their enumeration, Müllenhoff may be right in seeing in it a corruption of a Norwegian tribal name. He thinks that “Othsuetidi” may be a corruption of “Æthsævii,” i.e., “Eiðsivar” (cf. Eidsivathing), “Heiðsævir” or “Heiðnir” in Hedemarken, who were certainly a very tall people. The mention of the Norwegian warriors has a certain interest in that it is due to the Roman statesman Cassiodorus (or his authority), who glorified the Goths and had no special reason for praising the Northmen.[138] It shows that even at that time our northern ancestors were famed for courage and bodily size, and that too above all other Germanic peoples, who were highly esteemed by the Romans. It is not clear whether Rodulf was King of the “Ranii” (Raumer ?) alone, or of all the Norwegian tribes from Grenland to Romsdal. It may be supposed that he was a Norwegian chief who migrated south through Europe at the head of a band of warriors, composed of men from the tribes mentioned, and that finally on the Danube, hard pressed by other warlike people, he sought alliance and support from the mighty king of the Goths, Theodoric or Tjodrik (Dietrich of Berne). This may have been just before 489, when the latter made his expedition to Italy. Many circumstances combine to make such a hypothesis probable.[139]

We know that about 489 the Eruli were just north of the Danube, and were the Goths’ nearest neighbours. Now, as we shall see later, Eruli was perhaps at first a common name for bands of northern warriors, and these Eruli on the Danube may therefore certainly have consisted to a greater or less extent of Norwegians. We know, further, that at this time there was a king of the Eruli to whom Theodoric sent as a gift a horse, sword and shield, thereby making him his foster-son [cf. Cassiodorus, Varia iii. 3, iv. 2]. Finally, we know from Procopius that the Eruli just at this time had a king, Rodulf, who fell in battle against the Langobards (about 493). When we compare this with what Jordanes says about the Norwegian king Rodulf, who hastened to Theodoric’s arms and found there what he sought, it will be easy to conclude that this Norwegian chief is the same as the chief of Eruli here spoken of. Rodulf, or “Hrodulfr,” is a known Norwegian name. “Rod-,” or “Hrod,” is the same as the modern Norwegian “ros” (i.e., praise), and means probably here renowned.

One is further inclined to believe that it was from this Rodulf or his men, of whom some may have come from And in Hålogaland, that Cassiodorus or his authority obtained the information about Scandinavia and northern Norway, which is also partly repeated in Procopius.

The Byzantine historian Procopius, of Cæsarea (ob. after 562), became in 527 legal assistant, “assessor,” to the general Belisarius, and accompanied him on his campaigns until 549, amongst others that against the Goths in Italy. In his work (in Greek) on the war against the Goths (“De bello Gothico,” t. ii. c. 14 and 15), written about 552, he gives information about the North which is of great interest. He tells us of the warlike Germanic people, the Eruli, who from old time[140] were said to have lived on the north bank of the Danube, and who, with no better reason than that they had lived in peace for three whole years and were tired of it, attacked their neighbours the Langobards, but suffered a decisive defeat, and their king, Rodulf, fell in the battle (about 493).[141]