Even if this expedition is not historical, the description of the voyage and the mention of place-names along the route nevertheless show that these regions were well known to Snorre’s informants; and journeys between Norway and Bjarmeland cannot have been uncommon in Snorre’s time or before it. Many things show that the communication with Gandvik and Bjarmeland continued through the whole of the Middle Ages, and was sometimes of a peaceful, sometimes of a warlike character; but of the later voyages only three are, in fact, mentioned in Norwegian authorities: one of them was undertaken by the king’s son Håkon Magnusson about 1090; of this expedition little is known. In Håkon Håkonsson’s time we have an account[109] of another expedition to Bjarmeland in the year 1217, in which took part Ǫgmund of Spånheim from Hardanger, Svein Sigurdsson from Sogn, Andres of Sjomæling from Nordmör, all on one ship, and Helge Bograngsson and his men from Hálogaland, on another. Svein and Andres went home with their ship the same autumn; but Ǫgmund proceeded southward through Russia to the Suzdal kingdom in East Russia, on a tributary of the Volga. Helge Bograngsson and his Nordlanders stayed the winter in Bjarmeland; but he came in conflict with the Bjarmas and was killed. After this Ǫgmund did not venture to return that way, but went on through Russia to the sea (i.e., the Black Sea) and thence to the Holy Land. He came safely home to Norway after many years.

Bjarmas and Skridfinns fighting on ski and riding reindeer (after Olaus Magnus, 1555)

When the rumour of what had happened to Helge and his men reached home, a punitive expedition was decided on. The king’s officers in Nordland, Andres Skjaldarbrand and Ivar Utvik, placed themselves at the head of it; and they came to Bjarmeland with four ships in the year 1222, and accomplished their purpose; “they wrought great havoc in plunder and slaughter and obtained much booty in furs and burnt silver.” But on the homeward voyage Ivar’s ship was lost in the whirlpool at “Straumneskinn,” and only Ivar and one other escaped. “Straumneskinn” is probably Sviatoi Nos (see p. 138).

This is the last Norwegian expedition to Bjarmeland of which Norwegian accounts are known; but that the White Sea traffic continued, though it was never very active, may be concluded from other sources. The name of the Bjarmas themselves disappears after the middle of the thirteenth century, when it is related that a number of Bjarmas fled before the “Mongols” and received permission from King Håkon to live in Malangen fjord. After that time in the districts near the Dvina we only hear of Karelians and their masters the Russians of Novgorod.

That there was considerable navigation, probably combined with piratical incursions, between the north of Norway and the countries to the east, may also appear from a provision of the older Gulathings Law, where in cap. 315, in a codex of 1200-1250, we find:

This keeping guard might, it is true, refer to Kvæns in Finmark, but it seems rather to point to ships coming from the east. In the negotiations of 1251, between the Grand Duke of Novgorod (Alexander Nevsky) and Håkon Håkonsson, there is express mention of disturbances from the east in Finmark, and after that time we hear more frequently of hostile incursions of Karelians and Russians in Finmark; they may have come by land, but occasionally also by sea.

On snow-shoes through the border-lands of Norway (Olaus Magnus, 1555)

A treaty of 1326 between Norway and Novgorod shows that Norwegian merchants traded with the people of Novgorod on the White Sea. The erection of the fortress of Vardöhus, as early as 1307, also shows the importance attached to these eastern communications, and the fortress certainly afforded them a fixed point of support. Thus about 1550 we see that “Vardöhus weight” (mark and pound) had penetrated into northern Russia and was generally used in the North Russian fish and oil trade. The Norwegians chiefly bought furs in Bjarmeland, but what they exported thither is not mentioned in the Norwegian notices; it may even at that time have been to some extent fish, which in later times was the most important article of export to North Russia from the north of Norway.

As G. Storm [1894, p. 100] has pointed out, the Russian chronicles tell of many hostile expeditions by sea between Norway and the White Sea in the fifteenth century. In 1412 the inhabitants of “Savolotchie” (the countries on the Dvina) made a campaign against the Norwegians. A complaint from Norway of 1420 shows that the attack was directed against northern Hálogaland, without informing us whether it was made by land or by sea. Some years later, in 1419, the Norwegians made a campaign of reprisal and came

This will be sufficient to show that the White Sea voyage remained familiar in Norway. This communication increased about the beginning of the sixteenth century, and this had a decisive influence on the so-called rediscovery of the White Sea by the English.

In reading Otter’s narrative and the earliest Norse accounts of voyages to Bjarmeland it must strike us that the Bjarmas we hear about seem to have possessed a surprisingly high degree of culture. As Professor Olaf Broch has also pointed out to me, this may be an indication that a comparatively active communication had existed long before that time along the Dvina and the Volga between the people of the White Sea and those on the Caspian and the Black Sea (by transport from the Volga to the Don). In those early times, before the Russians had yet established themselves in the territory of the upper Volga, this communication may have passed to the east of the Slavs through Finnish-speaking peoples the whole way from the lower Volga and the Finnish Bulgarians (cf. the Mordvin tribes of to-day).

It appears to me that various statements in Arabic literature may indicate such a connection.[111] The Arabs received information about northern regions through their commercial communications with the Mohammedan Finnish nation of the Bulgarians, whose capital Bulgar lay on the Volga[112] (near to the present town of Kazan), and was a meeting-place for traders coming up the river from the south and coming down the river from the north. Special interest attaches to the mention of the mysterious people “Wîsu,” far in the north. This is evidently the same name as the Russian Ves[113] for the Finnish people who, according to Nestor[114] (beginning of the twelfth century), lived by Lake Byelo-ozero (the white lake) in 859 A.D. They are mentioned together with Tchuds, Slavs, Merians and Krivitches, and were doubtless the most northerly of them, possibly spreading northwards towards the White Sea. They are probably the same people that Adam of Bremen [iv., c. 14, 19] calls “Wizzi” (see vol. i. p. 383; vol. ii. p. 64), and possibly those Jordanes calls “Vasinabroncæ,”[115] who together with “Merens” (Merians ?) and “Mordens” (Mordvins ?) were subdued by Ermanrik, king of the Goths. But the Arabic Wîsu seems sometimes to have been a common name for all Finnish (and even Samoyed) tribes in North Russia and on the coast of the Polar Sea.

According to Jaqût,[116] Ahmad Ibn Fadhlân (about 922 A.D.)[117] stated in his work that

Jaqût (ob. 1229) in his geographical lexicon[118] has an article on

Al-Qazwînî (ob. 1283) says:[120]

Ibn Batûta (1302-1377) has no name for this people, any more than Abu’lfeda; but he calls their country “the Land of Darkness,” and has an interesting description of the journey thither.[121]

Of special interest for our subject is the following statement in Abû Hâmid (1080-1169 or 1170) which may point to the peoples on the shores of the Polar Sea having obtained steel for their harpoons and sealing weapons from Persia:

It is not credible that the swords which rang in this way were harpoons, as Jacob thinks. We must rather suppose that they were rough (“unpolished”) steel blades, which were used for making harpoons and lances (for walrus-hunting and whaling). The blades having water poured over them must doubtless mean the tempering of the steel, through which, when it was afterwards hung up by a cord, it came to give the true ring. Although Abû Hâmid is no trustworthy writer, it seems that there must be some reality at the base of this statement; and we here have information about some of the wares that the traders carried to Wîsu, and that were derived from their commercial intercourse with Arabs and Jews. The people to whom the inhabitants of Wîsu or Vesses took the steel blades must have been fishermen on the shore of the Polar Sea, who carried on seal- and walrus-hunting, and perhaps also whaling, and this is what is referred to by the fish that Allâh sends up. They may have been Samoyeds (on the Pechora), Karelians, Tver-Finns, and even Norwegians. It might be objected that sables cannot be supposed to have been obtained from the last-named; but this is doubtless not to be taken too literally. Ibn Ruste (circa 912 A.D.) thus says that the Rûs (Scandinavians, usually Swedes) had no other occupation but trading in sables, squirrel and other furs, which they sold to any one who would buy them.

It seems to result from what may be trustworthy in these statements that there was fairly active commercial intercourse from Bulgar with the Vesses and with the peoples on the White Sea, and perhaps in districts near the Polar Sea. A shortest night of one hour would take us to a little north of the mouth of the Dvina. In the land of the Vesses by Lake Byelo-ozero there was an easy way across from the Volga’s tributary Syexna to Lake Kubenskoye, which has a connection with the Dvina; and there was also transit to the river Onega. There was thus easy communication along the great rivers; but besides this the traders seem also to have travelled overland with dogs; this was probably when going north to Yugria and the country of the Pechora, in the same way as traders in our time generally go there with reindeer. The trade in furs was then, as in antiquity, the powerful incentive; it was that too which chiefly attracted the Norwegians to Bjarmeland.

It is not likely that the Arabs themselves reached North Russia; one would suppose rather that travelling Jews assisted as middlemen in the trade with these regions. But the finding of Arab coins on the Pechora would point to Arab trade having penetrated through intermediaries to the shores of the Polar Sea.[124]

THE POLAR EXPEDITION OF THE FRISIAN NOBLES AND KING HAROLD’S VOYAGE TO THE WHIRLPOOL

Among mediæval voyages to the North there remain yet to be mentioned Harold Hardråde’s expedition[125] and the voyage of the Frisian nobles, related by Adam of Bremen in the descriptions already given (vol. i. pp. 195, f.). That the latter voyage must be an invention, and cannot contain much of historical value, is obvious (cf. vol. i. p. 196). The whole description of the abyss or maelstrom is taken from Paulus Warnefridi (as will be seen by a comparison of the descriptions on pp. 157 and 195, vol. i.); the Cyclopes of marvellous stature, as well as the treasures of gold that they guard, are originally derived from classical literature, although Adam may have taken them from earlier mediæval authors, and Northern ideas about the giants in the north in Jotunheim may have helped to localise the story.[126] The great darkness, the stiffened sea, chaos and the gulf of the abyss at the uttermost end of the world or of the ocean are all classical conceptions, and the description itself of the dangers of the voyage, of the darkness that could scarcely be penetrated by the eyes, etc., is just what we find in classical literature, and in many points bears great resemblance to the poem of Albinovanus Pedo, for example (see vol. i. p. 82). It is possible, of course, that there may be thus much historical truth in the story, that some Frisian nobles made a voyage to the Orkneys or perhaps to Iceland, but even this is doubtful, and the rest is demonstrably invention. In spite of this Master Adam asserts that Archbishop Adalbert in person had told him all this, and that it happened in the days of his predecessor, Archbishop Alebrand, who had the story from the travellers’ own lips; for they returned to Bremen and brought thank-offerings to Christ and to their saint “Willehad” for their safety. One might suppose that these nobles themselves had invented the story and told it to the archbishop;[127] but it does not seem likely that they were acquainted with Paulus Warnefridi’s description of the maelstrom, and the Cyclopes with their treasures in the north seem also to be learned embroidery; they might have heard oral tales about them, but in any case we may doubtless suppose that the story has been much “improved” by Adam. There is a mediæval folk-song about the dangers of sailors at sea which may also be supposed to have contributed to the description.

Be that as it may, this story must weaken our confidence in Adam’s credibility, or rather in his critical sense. If his narrative of a voyage which started from his own adopted town of Bremen not long before his time is so untrustworthy, what are we to think of his statement about the experienced Norwegian king Harold’s expedition to explore the extent of the ocean? No doubt it may appear as though he had his information about this voyage from the Danish king Svein, who is mentioned as his authority for the statements immediately preceding, and so far this information might have a good source; but it has received precisely the same decoration as the other voyage, with the mist or darkness that shuts out the uttermost end of the world, and the vast gulf of the abyss which was narrowly escaped. This is certainly of older origin, and he has not even given himself the trouble to make a little alteration in the dangers of the two stories. Another thing that weakens our confidence in his statements is his saying that the Danish king had told him that all the sea beyond the island of Winland was filled with intolerable ice and immeasurable darkness. It may doubtless be supposed that classical conceptions had even at that time created superstitions of this kind in the North, and thus King Svein may have told him this; but it must be more probable that all these ancient book-learned ideas are due, not to the unlearned and travelled monarch, but to the well-read magister, who moreover himself quotes in the same connection Marcianus’s words about the congealed sea beyond Thule.

It would be entirely in Adam’s vein if some accidental resemblance or association had given him an opportunity of making use in this way of ideas he had from his learned reading, just as the name of Kvænland gave him the chance of bringing in the myths of the Amazons, Cynocephali, etc. (cf. vol. i. p. 383). It was pointed out earlier (vol. i. pp. 195, 197) that the statements about the sea “beyond this island” and about Harold’s voyage are possibly a later addition by Adam himself, which has been inserted in the wrong place; “this island” might then mean Thyle (Iceland) and not Winland. Whether we regard the latter as a newly discovered country in America or as the Insulæ Fortunatæ, it is difficult to understand why precisely the sea on the other side of this island should be particularly associated with the ancient conceptions of the dark or misty, and the congealed or ice-filled sea; ice and darkness are nowhere connected in this way with Wineland in later authorities. It is true that in Arabian myth there are islands in the west near the Sea of Darkness (cf. chapter xiii.) and that the Promised Land in Irish myth is surrounded by darkness (== fog) like the Norwegian huldrelands and the Icelandic elflands; but if Adam got his ideas in this way, it would only show more conclusively how mythical his narrative is. If Adam confused the names of Vinland and Finland (i.e., Finmark) (cf. vol. i. pp. 198, 382; vol. ii. p. 31), it would also be natural for him to imagine that beyond it were ice and darkness.

The view has been held that the whirlpool in which King Harold and the Frisian nobles were nearly drawn down was of Scandinavian or Germanic origin [cf. S. Lönborg, 1897, pp. 173, f.]. It seems undoubtedly to correspond to the Norse “Ginnungagap” [cf. G. Storm, 1890, pp. 340, ff.]; but it is a question how early this idea arose. I have already (vol. i. pp. 11, 12, 17) pointed out the probable connection between it and the Greek Tartaros (and Anostos) or Chaos, and have shown (vol. i. pp. 158, f.) that Paulus Warnefridi took his whirlpool from this source, and called it Chaos. But now it is evident, as we have seen, that Adam took his description of the whirlpool from Paulus, and thus we have the full connection. It may also be mentioned as curious that Lucian in his Vera Historia tells of just such an abyss:

Although, as already mentioned (vol. i. p. 362), Lucian does not seem to have been read in western Europe before the fourteenth century, I cannot get away from the impression that in some oral way or other (cf. vol. i. pp. 362, f.) there must be a connection between the Irish tale (written down long before Adam of Bremen’s work) and the above-mentioned fable (as well as many others) which Lucian reproduces, whether the connection be with Lucian himself or with the authors he parodies. But then it will not be rash to conclude further that there may also be a connection between the cleft in the sea or profound abyss of Lucian or of Greek fable, from which mariners escaped with difficulty, and Adam’s whirlpool, which King Harold avoided by turning back.

But it is also conceivable that the various currents in northern waters may have furnished food for these constantly recurring ideas about maelstroms and whirlpools. Such maelstroms appear also in Irish legends. In the “Imram Brenaind” [cf. Zimmer, 1889, p. 134] it is related that:

The Historia Norwegiæ places “Charybdis, Scylla, and unavoidable whirlpools” in the north in “Hafsbotn” (cf. later). This must have been a general idea in Norway; for about one hundred years later, in 1360, the Englishman, Nicholas of Lynn, who travelled in Norway in the middle of the fourteenth century, wrote his lost work, “Inventio Fortunata,” on the northern countries and their whirlpools from 53° to the North Pole; but unfortunately we do not know its contents.[128] The conceptions of these whirlpools may doubtless be connected with reports of dangerous currents in the north. The Moskenström by the Lofoten Islands may in particular have given rise to much superstition at an early time. In winter with a westerly wind it runs at a rate of as much as six miles an hour, and with a rising tide it may be altogether impassable. It may set up a high topping sea, which breaks over the whole current so that it can be heard three or four miles off.[129] In later times there are terrifying descriptions of this dangerous current. Thus Olaus Magnus (1555) says that between Roest and Lofoten

The Englishman, Anthony Jenkinson, who made a voyage to the White Sea in 1557, writes of it:[130]

Schönnerböl in 1591 gives a more detailed description of the current, in which the same things are reported

Peder Claussön Friis gives a similarly exaggerated description of the current (circa 1613), sometimes using the same expressions as the authors quoted. The resemblance between these various descriptions is so great that it cannot easily be explained merely by their reporting the same oral tradition; what they have in common must rather be derived from an older written source (Nicholas of Lynn ?), which again has adopted ancient mythical conceptions. It is strange how few more recent ideas have been added even in Schönneböl, who was sheriff of Lofoten and Vesterålen for at least twenty years (from 1570), and must have had plenty of opportunity for gathering information on the spot; but it is the usual experience that everything that could be got from old books was preferred. That stories of the Moskenström may have been known in Adam of Bremen’s time is highly probable, perhaps even Paulus Warnefridi had heard of it (cf. vol. i. p. 158).

When we have shorn Adam’s tale of all borrowed features, is there enough left to make it possible that the Norwegian king Harold undertook a voyage out into the ocean? It is not easy to form a definite opinion on this, but the probability must be that King Svein or the Danes told some such story, which was then adorned by Master Adam. As the voyage was supposed to have taken place recently, it must be Harold Hardråde who was intended, otherwise one might be led to think of Harold Gråfeld’s celebrated voyage to Bjarmeland.[132] What the object may have been, and what direction the voyage took, we do not know. As Adam says it was to explore “the breadth of the northern ocean” (“latitudinem septentrionalis oceani”), one must suppose that in his opinion it set out from Norway northward or north-westward over the ocean towards its uttermost limit, since according to the maps and ideas of that time he imagined the ocean as surrounding the disc of the earth like a ribbon (see vol. i. p. 199), and he may then have sailed across this to find out its extent.[133] But it is quite possible, as P. A. Munch [1852, ii. pp. 269, ff.] suggested, that Master Adam may have heard something about a northward voyage undertaken by Harold, during which he had been exposed to some danger in the Saltström or the Moskenström;[134] or if it was a voyage to Bjarmeland (Harold Gråfeld’s ?) that he heard of, then it might be the current at Sviatoi Nos or Straumneskinn, often spoken of in the sagas, that Adam has made into the whirlpool.

WHALING AND SEALING VOYAGES OF THE NORWEGIANS IN THE POLAR SEA

The skill of the Norwegians as fishermen, whalers and sealers had, of course, a great deal to do with the development of their seamanship and ability to travel and support themselves along unknown and uninhabited shores. The accurate knowledge of the many species of seals and whales shown in the “King’s Mirror,” to which no parallel is met with earlier in the literature of the world, proves how important the hunting of these animals must have been; for otherwise so much attention would not have been paid to them.[135] When in speaking of the greater whales a distinction is made between those that are shy and keep away from the hunters, and those that are tamer and easier to approach, and when the longest of all (“reyðr”) is mentioned as being specially tame and easily caught, we can only regard this as showing that whaling was also carried on in the open sea; that is, not in a merely accidental fashion, as when the whales entered narrow fjords where they could be intercepted, or when they ran aground.

Cutting up a whale
(from an Icelandic MS. of the fourteenth century
of Magnus Lanabóter’s Icelandic Land Law)

From Ottar’s statement to King Alfred (cf. vol. i. p. 172)—that “in his own land [i.e., Norway] there is the best whaling. They are forty-eight cubits long, and the largest are fifty cubits long”—we may conclude that the Norwegians, and perhaps the Lapps also, hunted the great whales as early as the ninth century, and doubtless long before that time, while King Alfred does not seem to have known of any such whaling being practised in England.[136] We are not told in what way the whale was caught in those days, but from statements elsewhere it is probable that the Norwegians had several methods of taking whales, as is the case even to the present day in Norway: one way was with the harpoon and harpoon-line in open waters, that is, without cutting off the whale’s escape with nets.

The Arab cosmographer, Qazwînî (of the thirteenth century), quoting the Spanish-Arabic writer Omar al-’Udhrî[137] (of the eleventh century), says that the Norsemen in Irlânda (Ireland).

This is, clearly enough, a layman’s naive description of whaling with harpoon and harpoon-line in open waters, a method which had therefore already been introduced into Ireland by the Norwegians at that time. It may consequently be regarded as certain that the Norwegians were acquainted with harpooning. That this was very usual appears also from the “King’s Mirror” and the ancient Norwegian laws, where whaling and whale-harpoons (“skutill”) are often mentioned.

Cutting up a whale (from an Icelandic MS.)

On the west coast of Norway, in the neighbourhood of Bergen, there is still practised to-day another method of catching whales which must be very ancient. When the great whales enter certain fjords which have a narrow inlet, their escape is cut off by nets, and they are shot with poisoned arrows from bows which entirely resemble the crossbows of the Middle Ages. The arrows used are old and rusty, and convey bacteria from one whale to another. When the whale has been hit by these arrows it is rapidly weakened from blood-poisoning, so that it may easily be harpooned and then killed by lances, after which it is cut up and divided among the inhabitants of the fjord, according to ancient, unwritten rules. In spite of the blood-poisoning, the whale’s flesh and blubber are eaten, and are regarded as very valuable provisions. I have myself often taken part in this kind of whaling. Possibly Peder Claussön Friis [cf. Storm, 1881, p. 70] refers to a similar method of whaling when he says that

They had “a spear with sharp irons, so that it could not be pulled out again.” This was hurled into the whale, which died in a short time, or became so weakened that it could be drawn to land;

We must suppose that this iron was poisoned with bacteria from former whales, in a similar way to the arrows mentioned above, whereby the animal’s wound was infected. However, Peder Claussön’s description of the hunt is evidently taken in great measure from older literary sources, since similar descriptions are found as early as in Albertus Magnus (ob. 1280) [De animalibus, xxiv. 651], and in Vincent of Beauvais [Speculum universalis, i. 1272]. In all three authors the whale dives after being struck, and tosses about on the bottom or rubs itself against it, thereby driving the spear farther in; but in Peder Claussön it does so in order to “get rid of the shot,” while in Albertus it is on account of salt water getting into the wound, and in Vincentius the salt water penetrates and kills the wounded whale. As the descriptions of Albertus and Vincentius evidently refer to ordinary harpoon-whaling, it may be doubtful whether Peder Claussön’s statement really relates to a method of catching different from the usual one with harpoon and line, although one is disposed to believe that it does. He also mentions in the same place other whales that they could “pursue with boats and drive into bays and small fjords, and kill them there with hand-shot and bow-shot.” This may be supposed to refer to a method similar to that mentioned above, with poisoned arrows; but, on the other hand, it may relate to a third method of taking small whales, which was certainly practised from very early times in Norway, and which consists in schools of small whales being driven into bays and inlets, where they are intercepted with nets and driven ashore.

The method of whaling with poisoned arrows or throwing-spears must, as has been said, be very ancient. Whether it was invented by the Norwegians themselves, or whether they did not rather learn it from the older hunter-people of Norway, the “Finns,” is difficult to determine. Nor do we know how ancient whaling in general may be in the North; it may date from early times, though Ottar’s mention of it is the earliest known in literature.