Note 459 — Chapter IV · THE SOURCES FOR THE PERIOD 1100–1250 A. D.

The King’s Mirror treats, among many other subjects, of the following matters of geographical interest: the moon, the ebb and flood, streams, climates, differences in the length of days and of summer and winter in northern Norway, marvels of India, marvels of Norway, snowshoes, Iceland, Greenland, whales, earthquakes and ice fields in Iceland, flora and fauna of Greenland, volcanic phenomena in Iceland and Sicily, subterranean fire in Iceland, the small extent of habitable land in Greenland, climatic phenomena, the northern lights and noises accompanying them, a cooler zone to the south of the hot equatorial zone where it is summer during our winter. This synopsis is based on portions of the King’s Mirror as given in translation in Nansen’s In Northern Mists, 1911.

Another Icelandic geographical description of the world, which probably dates from our period, besides drawing on well-known earlier authorities, also gives some idea of the Icelandic conception of geography and furnishes details of the itinerary of a certain Abbot Nicholas to Rome and the Holy Land. See above, p. 115, and also, Nansen, op. cit., vol. ii, p. 237 and reference in note 1 regarding the identity of the author of this work, probably Abbot Nikulás Bergsson of Thverá (died 1159), though believed by Storm to be an Abbot Nikulás of Thingeyre. See also K. Kålund, En islandsk vejviser for pilgrimme fra 12. århundrede, in: Aarböger for Nordisk Oldkyndighed og Historie, series 3, vol. iii, Copenhagen, 1913, pp. 51–105.