De grönleinder fein bein undt her
Bon Thieren undt Bögelen haben see Ire tracht
Das falte lands bon winter nacht
[18] The birch which grows here is the sweet-scented birch (Betula odorata, Bechst.), not the dwarf birch (Betula nana, L.), which is found as far north as Ice Fjord in Spitzbergen (78° 7' N.L.), though there it only rises a few inches above ground.
[19] According to Latkin, Die Lena und ihr Flussgebiet (Petermann's Mittheilungen, 1879, p. 91). On the map which accompanies Engehardt's reproduction of Wrangel's Journey (Berlin, 1839), the limit of trees at the Lena is placed at 71° N.L.
[20] On the Kola Peninsula, and in the neighbourhood of the White Sea, as far as to Ural, the limit of trees consists of a species of pine (Picea obovata, Ledeb.), but farther east in Kamschatka again of birch.—Th. von Middendorff, Reise in dem äussersten Norden und Osten Sibiriens, vol. iv. p. 582.
[21] An idea of the influence exerted by the immediate neighbourhood of a warm ocean-current in making the climate milder may be obtained from the following table of the mean temperatures of the different months at 1. Tromsoe (69° 30' N. L.); 2. Fruholm, near North Cape (71° 6' N. L.); 3. Vardoe (70° 22' N. L.); 4. Enontekis and Karesuando, on the river Muonio, in the interior of Lapland (68° 26' N. L.).
Tromsoe Fruholm Vardoe Enontekis
January........... - 4.2° -2.7° -6.0° -13.7°
February.......... - 4.0 -4.7 -6.4 -17.1
March............. - 3.8 -3.2 -5.1 -11.4
April............. - 0.1 -0.9 -1.7 - 6.0
May............... + 3.2 +2.7 +1.8 + 0.9
June.............. + 8.7 +7.5 +5.9 + 8.0
July.............. +11.5 +9.3 +8.8 +11.6
August........... +10.4 +9.9 +9.8 +12.0
September......... + 7.0 +5.8 +6.4 + 4.5
October........... + 2.0 +2.5 +1.3 - 4.0
November.......... - 1.7 -1.1 -2.1 - 9.9
December.......... - 3.2 -1.9 -4.0 -11.3
The figures are taken from H. Mohn's Norges Klima (reprinted from O. F. Schubeler's Voextlivet i Norge, Christiania, 1879), and A. J. Ångström, Om lufttemperaturen i Enontekis (Öfvers. af Vet. Akad. Förhandl, 1860).
[22] Orosius was born in Spain in the fourth century after Christ, and died in the beginning of the fifth. He was a Christian, and wrote his work to show that the world, in opposition to the statements of several heathen writers, had been visited during the heathen period by quite as great calamities as during the Christian. This is probably the reason why his monotonous sketch of all the misfortunes and calamities which befell the heathen world was long so highly valued, was spread in many copies and printed in innumerable editions, the oldest at Vienna in 1471. In the Anglo-Saxon translation now in question, Othere's account of his journey is inserted in the first chapter, which properly forms a geographical introduction to the work written by King Alfred. This old Anglo-Saxon work is preserved in England in two beautiful manuscripts from the ninth and tenth centuries. Orosius' history itself is now forgotten, but King Alfred's introduction, and especially his account of Othere's and Wulfstan's travels, have attracted much attention from inquirers, as appears from the list of translations of this part of King Alfred's Orosius, given by Joseph Bosworth in his King Alfred's Anglo-Saxon version of the Compendious History of the World by Orosius. London, 1859.