It is evident that a high development of seamanship, skill in hunting, and resourcefulness were required before men could venture to encounter the great whales of the ocean in open fight with free sea-room, where the whale was not crippled by having run aground or into narrow fjords with no outlet. This whaling in the open sea demanded the invention of special appliances, of which the harpoon with its line was of special importance. It may be possible, though it is not certain, that the Norwegians were the first Europeans to practise this kind of whaling, and as, from numerous documents, we may conclude that whaling was actively carried on by the Normans in Normandy as early as the tenth and eleventh centuries, one is inclined to suppose that it was the Normans who first introduced the method of harpoon and line there,[140] and then passed it on to the Basques. But we ought not to lose sight of the fact that there are other possibilities, since the harpoon was probably known to and used on smaller marine animals by the neolithic people of Europe, and the taking of larger fish with harpoon and line was known in the Mediterranean in antiquity,[141] as appears, for instance, from Polybius’s description of the catching of swordfish at Scyllæum (on the Straits of Messina), which is reproduced in Strabo, i. 24:

If the Iberian people of the western Mediterranean practised this kind of fishing, 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 Norsemen in the beginning, far back in grey antiquity, took their harpoon-fishing 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

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.

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:

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 quantity of walrus-rope (“svarðreip”) through the trade with Greenland, and perhaps with North Russia, but they probably got most from their own hunting in northern waters. The quantity 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.

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 mediæval 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.

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 Hálogaland, then to “Hither Bjarmeland,” which had steep shores 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.

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: “Svalbarðs fundr” or “Svalbarði fundinn” (Svalbard was discovered); but that is all we are told; surely no great geographical discovery has ever been more briefly recorded in literature. Svalbarði means the cold edge or side, and must here mean the cold coast. In the introduction to the Landnámabók we read about this land:

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.

Countries and seas discovered by the Norwegians and Icelanders. The shaded coasts were probably all known
to them. The scale gives “dœgr”-sailing, reckoning 2° (or 120 geographical miles) to each “dœgr’s” sail

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

And in a later passage we read:

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 Norwegiæ 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.

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 Norsemen 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 passage quoted from the Landnámabók. “On the north in Hafsbotn” must mean in some northerly direction; for it is only the chief points of the compass, 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 compass 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 Landnáma’s statement (Sturlubók) that it is four “dœgr’s sea” from Snæfellsnes “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 Færder 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 Landnámabók are even less accurate than the points of the compass. From Stad in Norway to the east coast of Iceland is said to be seven “dœgr’s” sail, while from Snæfellsnes to Hvarf is four “dœgr,” from Reykjanes to Ireland three or five “dœgr,” from Langanes to Svalbard four “dœgr,” and from Kolbeins-ey to the uninhabited parts of Greenland one “dœgr.” The actual distances are, however, approximately: from Norway to Iceland 548 nautical miles, from Snæfellsnes 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 “dœgr’s” sail is given as equal to two degrees of latitude, 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 “dœgr’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 “dœgr” to Jan Mayen, and seven “dœgr” 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 Landnámabók 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 Snæfellsnes 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 Norsemen 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 Landnámabók under the name of “the uninhabited parts of Greenland,” one “dœgr’s” sail north of Kolbeins-ey (see vol i. p. 286; vol. ii. p. 166).

As has already been said, the Norwegians (cf. Historia Norwegiæ and the “King’s Mirror”) and Icelanders (cf. the mediæval 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 Hálogaland and Finmark, and northward over Dumbshav (see map, p. 34).

Thus, in Samson Fagre’s Saga [of about 1350] we read in the thirteenth chapter, “On the situation of the northern lands”:

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 Landnáma, 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 ship on the way between Iceland and Norway, as stated in the Historia Norwegiæ, being driven by storms to the north of Hafsbotn; but the mention of the country in the Landnámabók 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.

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 fishing 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 fishing- 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 quantity for their own use, and sent the rest to Tartary and Turkey. The hunting was said to proceed in a curious fashion; the walruses, which were very numerous, clambering up on to the mountain-ridges and there perishing in great numbers.[157] The Yugrians and Karelians then collected the tusks on the shore. 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 Skrælings did not venture to approach a Christian or Ruten (i.e., Russian). As he places the land of the Skrælings 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.

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 “moršša” (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 “moršša” 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.

If we compare these various utterances of such eminent authorities, it appears to me that there are paramount reasons for regarding the Russian-Finnish name for walrus as of Norse origin. But in that case it also becomes probable that the Norwegians were the pioneers in walrus-hunting along the coasts of the Polar Sea, and that both the Finnish peoples and the Russians learned from them.

It will doubtless be difficult to find a natural explanation of the peoples on the northern coasts of Russia having from the first developed their arctic sea-hunting with large craft, unless we suppose that they learned it from the Norwegians, and that it is thus a continuation of the methods of the latter. It should also be remembered that the Kola peninsula as far as the White Sea itself was reckoned a tributary country of Norway (cf. p. 135), and that the name of the Murman coast means simply the Norwegians’ coast. None of the peoples on the north coast of Russia can have been a seafaring people very far back, as is shown by their boats and appliances; and it is difficult to believe that they should have been able to develop independently a system of navigation on a coast presenting such unfavourable conditions; no doubt they could have done so with small boats, originally river-boats,[159] but not with larger craft; this they must most probably have learned from their nearest seafaring neighbours, the Norwegians, who were masters at sea.

It is remarkable that already as early as in Adam of Bremen white bears (polar bears) are mentioned as occurring in Norway (cf. vol. i. pp. 191, f.). That this might be due to the connection with Iceland and Greenland, even at that time, is perhaps possible, but not very probable, as these countries are mentioned separately by Adam. The white bears in Norway may rather point to a connection with the Polar Sea and to the Norwegians having practised sealing there.

We may thus conclude from what has been advanced above that the hunting of whales, seals, and particularly walrus was of great importance to the Norwegians in ancient times, and for the sake of the last they certainly made extended expeditions in the Arctic Ocean. It may therefore be difficult to understand how it came about that this sea-hunting declined to such an extent in more recent times that we hear nothing about the Norwegians’ hunting in the Polar Sea, while in the sixteenth century fleets from the northern coasts of Russia were engaged in fishing and walrus-hunting; and Peder Claussön Friis is able to say of whaling in Norway (about 1613):

This seems to show that the Norwegians’ whaling in open sea had really gone out of practice, for otherwise this author must have known of it; on the other hand, whale-hunting in the fjords, which were closed by nets, has continued to our time. Walrus-hunting (as well as sealing) appears to have been still carried on in Finmark in Peder Claussön Friis’s time.

But in none of these accounts is there any hint that the Norwegians carried on their hunting beyond the limits of the country, as Ottar did in the ninth century.

The decline of this productive hunting may have come about through the concurrence of many circumstances. Hostile relations with the Karelians and Russians on the east may have had some influence on it; as the latter in increasing numbers took up the same hunting in their smacks, the eastward waters may have become unsafe for the Norwegians, who, though superior in seamanship, were inferior in numbers. But a more important factor was the rapid growth of the fisheries on the home coasts in Finmark after the fourteenth century, which may have claimed all available hands, leaving none over for fishing in more distant waters. Besides which the influence of the Hanseatic League no doubt contributed; then, as later, they learned to prefer the valuable trade in dried fish to fitting out vessels for the more uncertain and dangerous hunting in the Polar Sea, which they knew nothing about. Finally came the royal edict of April 1562, which enforced Bergen’s monopoly in the trade with Finmark, whereby the dead hand was laid upon this part of the country, as formerly upon Greenland. In those days a corresponding displacement of the arctic fisheries must have taken place from Norway to north Russia, as in the last century again a displacement took place in the contrary direction, when the Russian hunting in the Arctic Ocean and Spitzbergen ceased and the Norwegians again became the only hunters in these waters.

It was a concatenation of unfortunate accidents that produced the gradual decline of the voyages of the Norwegians and of their unrestricted command of all northern waters from the White Sea, and probably also Novaya Zemlya and Spitzbergen, over all the northern islands, Shetland, the Orkneys (to some extent the Hebrides, Man and Ireland), the Faroes, Iceland, and as far as Greenland, and probably also for a time the north-east coast of America. Unfavourable political conditions had a great deal to do with this, not the least of them being the long union with Denmark, with the removal of the seat of government to Copenhagen, which was extremely unfavourable to the interests of Norwegian commerce. To this was added the growing power of the Hanseatic League in Norway, the effect of which was as demoralising to all activity in the country as it was paralysing to our navigation. But not the least destructive were the royal monopolies of trade with the so-called tributary countries of the kingdom; like all State monopolies, they laid their dead hand upon all private enterprise. In this way the Norwegian command of northern waters received its death-blow; while the mercantile fleets of other nations, especially the English, came to the fore, to a large extent by making use of Norwegian seamanship and enterprise; thus the English seaport of Bristol seems to have had many Norwegians among its citizens, who certainly found there better conditions to work under than at home.

The mass of knowledge the Norwegians had acquired about the northern regions, before their time entirely unknown, was to a great extent forgotten again; and at the close of the Middle Ages all that remained was the communication with Iceland and the knowledge of the neighbouring seas, besides the continuance of the connection between the White Sea and Norway; while the voyage to Greenland, to say nothing of America, was forgotten, at any rate by the mass of the people.

The development of humanity often proceeds with a strangely lavish waste of forces. How many needless plans and unsuccessful voyages, how much toil and how many human lives would not a knowledge of the Norwegians’ extensive discoveries have been able to save in succeeding ages? How very different, too, might have been the development of many things, if by the chances of an unlucky destiny the decline of Norwegian navigation had not come just at a time when maritime enterprise received such a powerful impetus among more southern nations, especially the Portuguese, then the Spaniards, later the French, the English and the Dutch. By their great discoveries it was these nations who introduced a new era in the history of navigation, and also in that of polar voyages. But if Norwegian seamanship had still been at its height at that time, then certainly the Scandinavians of Greenland would once more have sought the already discovered countries on the west and south-west, and the Greenland settlements might then have formed an important base for new undertakings, whereby a new period of prosperity for Norwegian navigation and Norwegian enterprise might have been introduced. This was not to be; it was only reserved for the Norwegians to be the people who showed the way to the other nations out from the coasts and over the great oceans.

CHAPTER XIII

At the beginning of the Middle Ages and down to the fifteenth century the cartography of the Greeks, which had reached its summit in the work of Ptolemy, was entirely unknown in Europe; while the early Greek conceptions (those of the Ionian school) of the disc of the earth or “œcumene” as a circle (called by the Romans “orbis terrarum,” the circle of the earth) round the Mediterranean—and externally surrounded by the universal ocean—had persisted through the late Latin authors, and probably also through Roman maps. At the same time Parmenides’ doctrine of zones (cf. vol. i. pp. 12, 123) remained prevalent owing to its enunciation by Macrobius, and maps exhibiting this doctrine were common until the sixteenth century. These two conceptions became the foundation of the learned view and representation of the world, and consequently also of the North, throughout the greater part of the Middle Ages. It was the age of speculation, not of observation. The Scandinavians were the first innovators in geography, by going straight to nature as it is, unfettered by dogmas. The Italian and Catalan sailors followed later with their portulans (sailing-books) and compass-charts.

Map of the world from Albi in Languedoc, also called
the Merovingian map (eighth century). The east is at the
top,the Mediterranean in the middle, and the universal
ocean outside, with its three bays: the Caspian Sea, the
Persian Gulf and the Red Sea