Part 2 — CHAPTER XII REGIONAL GEOGRAPHY (continued 3)

Apparently Giraldus did not associate Iceland with the Thule of the ancients, an isle which he was at a loss to identify.^[1615] In regard to the latter, he remarked that it was strange that this island, the nature of which was so well known to the Orientals, should remain unknown to the people of the West. After quoting what Solinus and Isidore had written about it, he added that no island familiar to the men of the Occident partook of the qualities which these writers attributed to Thule and that consequently it must either be fabulous—as well as famous, he naively remarks—or else hidden away in the far corners of the Boreal Ocean under the Arctic Pole.

The Emperor Frederick II in his treatise on falconry says that the gerfalcons come from a certain island between Norway 346and Gallandia (Greenland) called in Teutonic “Islandia,” which may be translated as “frozen” or “region of ice.”^[1616]

Iceland in Icelandic Literature

Long prior to the beginning of our period Iceland had become the home of an enterprising and cultivated Scandinavian people. From its shores pilgrims found their way to Italy and the Holy Land, and navigators sailed westward into the more mysterious recesses of the ocean. The Sagas give us data regarding these voyages and incidentally throw light on the geographical concepts in the minds of the Northern peoples concerning the seas and islands of the North. The Ílendingabók of Ari Frodhi, dating from shortly after 1134, tells of the first Norse visit to Iceland in 870 by Ingolf. Ari mentions it as significant that “at that time Iceland was clothed with forest from the mountains to the strand,” and that “there were Christian men here, whom the Norsemen called Papar” (Nansen’s translation).^[1617] It was supposed that these men came from the British Isles because here were found Irish books, bells, and crooks. In the Historia de antiquitate regum Norwagiensium of the monk Theodricus we are told that certain merchants in the time of Harold Fairhair had sailed to the Faroes but were driven out to sea by storms and came “to a far distant land, which some think to have been the island of Thule; but I cannot either confirm or deny this, as I do not know the true state of the matter. They landed and wandered far and wide; but although they climbed mountains, they nowhere found trace of human habitation” (Nansen’s translation).^[1618] In the Historia Norwegiae, dating probably from the thirteenth century, we are told that “next, to the west, comes the great island which by the Italians is called Ultima Tile; but now it is inhabited by a considerable multitude, while formerly it was waste land, and unknown to men, until the time of Harold Fairhair” (Nansen’s translation).^[1619] In the Landnámabók, of about 1200, we have a vivid account of the first Norwegian discoverers’ ascent of a high mountain in this remote land. They “looked around them, whether they could see smoke or any sign that the land was inhabited, and they saw nothing.... As 347they sailed from the land much snow fell upon the mountains, and therefore they called the land Snowland” (Nansen’s translation).^[1620]

Greenland

Greenland had been discovered about the year 900. In our period the southwestern coast had become the seat of two small settlements, the ruins of which may be seen at the present time.^[1621] The population was not great (less than two thousand), and yet this far outpost of European civilization was large enough to be constituted an independent bishopric about the year 1110. From its settlements, certainly during and after the thirteenth century and probably in the course of our period as well, regular summer seal-hunting expeditions were made to the north along the coast, perhaps as far as Baffin’s Bay. The icebound east coast of Greenland, on the other hand, was avoided by the Scandinavian seafarers, although we read of frequent shipwrecks there. There is also a report of a seal-hunting trip to this coast made in 1129. From the mid-thirteenth century dates the work called the King’s Mirror, which gives us a vivid account of the ice floes and icebergs that beset the inhospitable eastern shore.

“Now in that same sea [i.e. the Greenland Sea] there are yet many more marvels, even though they cannot be accounted for by witchcraft [skrimslum]. So soon as the greater part of the sea has been traversed, there is found such a mass of ice as I know not the like of anywhere else in the world. This ice [i.e. the ice-floes] is some of it as flat as if it had frozen on the sea itself, four or five cubits thick, and lies so far from land [i.e. from the east coast of Greenland] that men may have four or five days’ journey across the ice [to land]. But this ice lies off the land rather to the northeast (landnorr) or north than to the south, southwest, or west; and therefore anyone wishing to make the land should sail round it [i.e. round Cape Farewell] in a southwesterly and westerly direction, until he is past the danger of [encountering] all this ice, and then sail thence to land. But it has constantly happened that men have tried to make the land too soon, and so have been involved in these ice-floes; and some 348have perished in them; but others again have got out, and we have seen some of these and heard their tales and reports.... These ice-floes are strange in their nature; sometimes they lie as still as might be expected, separated by creeks or large fjords; but sometimes they move with as great rapidity as a ship with a fair wind, and when once they are under way they travel against the wind as often as with it. There are, indeed, some masses of ice in that sea of another shape, which the Greenlanders call ‘fall-jökla.’ Their appearance is that of a high mountain rising out of the sea, and they do not unite themselves to other masses of ice, but keep apart” (Nansen’s translation).^[1622]

Polar Seas

In the boreal parts of the Atlantic the Northern writers of our period placed great whirlpools and fabulous countries peopled by monsters. Adam of Bremen tells of the explorations of certain noblemen of Friesland during the time of the predecessor of archbishop Adalbert of Bremen. Sailing beyond Iceland “towards the extreme axis of the north ... they suddenly glided into the misty darkness of the stiffened ocean, which can scarcely be penetrated by the eye” (Nansen’s translation).^[1623] Here they were caught by a terrible current and were almost sucked into the vortex of the deep, only to be thrown forth away from danger by a reverse tidal current. Thence they came to an island, fortified like a town, where they found a race of giants whom they called Cyclopes and from whom they barely were able to make their escape. Saxo Grammaticus, writing about 1200, tells of the voyage of a legendary King Gorm of Denmark and an Icelander Thorkill to an even more mysterious region called “Farther Biarmaland,” north of Norway.^[1624] Here too were loathsome monsters, a river dividing the land of men from the land of spirits, and many other wonders. In the Historia Norwegiae we are also told of a fabulous coast in the North Atlantic upon which sailors had landed when on the way from Iceland to Norway. This country lay “between the Greenlanders and the Bjarmas,” and the sailors “asserted that they had found people of extraordinary size and the land of virgins [‘virginum terram’] 349who are said to conceive when they taste water. But Greenland is separated from these by ice-clad skerries [‘scopulis’]” (Nansen’s translation).^[1625] Yet more full of color is another description in the same work. Beyond Norway “there is the very deep and northerly gulf which has in it Charybdis, Scylla, and unavoidable whirlpools; there are also ice-covered promontories which plunge into the sea immense masses of ice that have been increased by heaving floods and are frozen together by the winter cold; with these traders often collide against their will, when making for Greenland, and thus they suffer shipwreck and run into danger” (Nansen’s translation).^[1626]

Possibly these accounts in the Historia Norwegiae refer to Svalbard, “the country of the cold coasts,” mentioned in the Landnámabók.^[1627] The discovery of Svalbard was placed by the Icelandic Annals in 1194,^[1628] and it may well be that sailors in that year were driven out of their course and landed on the inhospitable shores of Spitsbergen.^[1629]

Wineland the Good

The voyages of Leif Ericsson and others to the coasts of America, though they had taken place over a century earlier, were doubtless remembered by the Icelanders of the period we are studying. Ari Frodhi in the Íslendingabók, written about 1134, refers to Wineland and to the Skraelings as if they were entirely familiar to his contemporaries.^[1630] There is also a record in the Icelandic Annals, under the date 1121, that the Bishop Eric of Greenland actually sought Wineland, though we are not told whether his search was successful or whether he made any important discoveries in prosecuting it.^[1631] The detailed stories of the Wineland voyages which were current in oral tradition during the eleventh century were undeniably put into written form long before 1250, although the versions in which we now have them, the Saga of Eric the Red and the Flatey Book, are of later date.^[1632]

The true position of Wineland has for many years been a matter of acrimonious dispute among historians and geographers, but it is beyond our province to enter upon this controversy. On the other hand, it is of interest to point out that the Icelanders themselves 350or some of them, at least, must have believed that Wineland lay in relatively southern latitudes, for an Icelandic geographical description of the world,^[1633] dating perhaps from our period, contains the following remark: Not far from Markland is “Wineland the Good, which some affirm extends from Africa; and, if this is so, an arm of the sea separates Wineland and Markland.”^[1634] In Europe outside of the Scandinavian countries practically nothing was known of Wineland. The earliest mention of it is in the pages of Adam of Bremen’s description of the North, where we read the following brief passages: “Moreover he [King Svend Estridsson] spoke of an island in that ocean discovered by many, which is called Wineland, for the reason that vines grow wild there, which yield the best of wine. Moreover, that grain unsown grows there abundantly is not a fabulous fancy, but from the accounts of the Danes we know to be a fact” (Reeves’s translation).^[1635] Ordericus Vitalis in his Historia ecclesiastica includes Wineland in a list of countries made subject to the king of the Norsemen but gives no details.^[1636]

Adam of Bremen or a later interpolator^[1637] adds to the passage just quoted a description of the Northern Ocean, which he erroneously places beyond Wineland. He says: “Beyond this island, it is said that there is no habitable land in that ocean, but all those regions which are beyond are filled with unsupportable ice and boundless gloom, to which Marcian thus refers: ‘One day’s sail beyond Thile the sea is frozen.’ This was essayed not long since by that very enterprising Northmen’s prince, Harold, who explored the extent of the Northern Ocean with his ship but was scarcely able by retreating to escape in safety from the gulf’s enormous abyss, where before his eyes the vanishing bounds of earth were hidden in gloom” (Reeves’s translation).^[1638]

Fabulous Isles

Until modern times the Atlantic has been an ocean filled by the imaginations of the coast-dwelling peoples of the Old World with fabulous and fantastic isles. In the De imagine mundi we read of the Isle of the Gorgons and of the Hesperides,^[1639] “among which was that great land described by Plato as having been 351submerged beneath that part of the sea now coagulated—an isle greater in extent even than Africa and Europe.” In this story we recognize the old legend of Atlantis which had been the subject of speculation and discussion ever since the time of Plato. The De imagine mundi then goes on to speak of “Perdita,” or the Lost Island, which far exceeded all the surrounding countries in the delightfulness and fertility of all things to be found therein. Though as a general rule unknown to man, this isle was sometimes to be found by hazard, though never found when looked for. Hence it was called “Perdita,” or “Lost.” To it St. Brandan was said to have gone in the course of his wanderings.

St. Brandan’s Isles

For a full account of the islands visited by St. Brandan we must look to the famous narration of his voyages. Ernest Renan poetically characterizes this legend as follows: “In the midst of these dreams there appears with surprising truth a feeling for the picturesque in polar navigations: the transparence of the sea, the aspects of the ice floes and icebergs melting in the sun, the volcanic phenomena of Iceland, the playing of the cetaceans, the characteristic appearance of the fiords of Norway, the sudden fogs, the milklike sea, green islands covered with grass which overhangs into the waves....”^[1640] In the most widely known Latin version, which was translated into English and French during our period,^[1641] we are told^[1642] that Brandan, the abbot of a large monastery in Munster, received information from a certain Barinthus of marvelous isles that the latter had visited in the western seas and in particular of the “Terra repromissionis sanctorum,” or Saints’ Land of Promise. Taking seven companions, the saint set out in a ship built especially for the voyage and wandered for seven years from one marvelous isle to another. After forty days’ sailing in a northerly direction they came to an islet, where they entered into a narrow harbor between high and precipitous rocks. This harbor mouth, just wide enough to admit a ship, was typical of the ragged western coasts of Ireland and Scotland and was doubtless suggested to the poet by some bleak cove among the rocks of St. Kilda or the Outer Hebrides. 352After leaving the islet the wanderers reached an isle covered with sheep—perhaps a reminiscence of the Faroes, the sheep of which had long before been described by Dicuil.^[1643] Beyond this they came to a smooth islet lacking verdure and with no sand upon it; this turned out to be a sea monster, which dived beneath the waves when the saint and his companions tried to light a fire upon its back. Their fortunate escape from the monster was followed by wanderings that brought them to an isle full of birds in such numbers and of such brilliant plumage that the voyagers could scarce see the branches of the trees. Some of the birds could talk; and one spoke words of prophecy foretelling the future course of Brandan’s journeys. Thence they came to yet another isle, where they entered a port with a narrow entrance and found a monastery; then to an isle with a fresh-water spring which put each brother to sleep for a period corresponding to the number of cups he drank. After that they made their way still farther north, where the sea was coagulated, and then returned to many of the isles already visited in the course of their earlier sailings and also to fresh marvels—seas of miraculous clearness, terrible volcanoes, Judas’s rock, the islet of Paul the hermit.^[1644] Finally, after seven whole years, they attained a broad and spacious country full of trees bearing apples as if it were the autumn of the year, a land where no night was ever known. Here a youth greeted Brandan and said that this was the country for which he had been seeking. Then Brandan sailed back to Ireland, where he lived out the remainder of his earthly life, and, after his death, returned forthwith to this “land of promise of the saints,” or Paradise, which for so long had been his goal.

353