[212] Hakluyt: “The Principal Navigations, etc.” (1903), iii. p. 404.
[213] Gustav Storm [1881, p. 407] altered “some” to “none,” evidently thinking it would make better sense of this obscure passage; following him therefore Magnus Olsen, J. Qvigstad and A. M. Hansen have recently discussed the passage as though it read: “which none can understand.” It appears to me that “which some [i.e., a few] can understand” gives clearer sense.
[214] This passage seems somewhat confused and it is difficult to find a logical connection in it. The first part is simple; most of the Sea Finns (Fishing Lapps) speak Norwegian, but badly. Among themselves and with the Mountain Finns (Reindeer Lapps) they do not use this, but their own language. The language of the latter people must consequently have been the same, unless we are to make the improbable assumption that the Fishing Lapps had a language different from that of the Reindeer Lapps, which the latter however had learned, although they are still in our time very bad linguists, and speak imperfect Norwegian. So far there cannot be much doubt of the meaning, but it is different when we come to the statement that they had more languages than one, and that of “their languages they have however another to use among themselves.” It seems to me that the certain examples mentioned by Qvigstad [1909] of the Lapps having been in the habit of inventing jargons at the beginning of the eighteenth century give a natural explanation of this passage [cf. also Magnus Olsen, 1909]. A. M. Hansen’s interpretation [1907 and 1909], that the original mother-tongue of the Fishing Lapps (called by him “Skridfinnish”), which was quite different from that which they spoke with the Reindeer Lapps, is here meant, cannot be reconciled with the words of the text, for in that case they must have had two mother-tongues; it is expressly said that the second language was “their own,” which they spoke among themselves; if it was only the language of the Reindeer Lapps, then it was precisely not their own, nor would they have any reason to speak it among themselves. I understand the passage thus: “of their [own] language they have also another [i.e., another form, variant, or jargon] to use among themselves, which [only] some [of them] can understand.” But how it should result from this that “it is certain that they have nine languages” is difficult to explain; for even if we assume with Hansen that nine is an error for three, it does not improve matters; for in any case they did not use all three languages, including Norwegian, “among themselves.” It is probable enough, as indeed both Hansen and Magnus Olsen have assumed, that there is a reference here to the magic arts of the Lapps; and we must then suppose that this mention of the nine languages was an expression commonly understood at the time, which did not require further explanation, to be compared with the nine tongue-roots of the poisonous serpent [cf. M. Olsen, 1909, p. 91]. Nine was a sacred number in heathen times, cf. Adam of Bremen’s tale of the festivals of the gods every ninth year at Upsala, where nine males of every living thing were offered, etc. Thietmar of Merseburg mentions the sacrificial festival which was held every ninth year at midwinter at Leire, etc.
[215] Remark the resemblance between this passage and the mention of the Lapps in the “Historia Norvegiæ” (above, [p. 204]).
[216] Ottar’s statement that he owned 600 reindeer is, as pointed out by O. Solberg [1909, p. 127], evidence against the correctness of A. M. Hansen’s assumption that the Finns mentioned by Ottar had learned to keep reindeer by imitating the Norwegian’s cattle-keeping, and that they kept their reindeer on the mountain pastures in summer, but collected them together for driving home in winter; it would have been a difficult matter to manage several hundred reindeer in this fashion, unless they were divided up into so many small herds that we cannot suppose them all to have been the property of one man. Large herds of many deer must have been half wild and have been kept in a similar way to the Reindeer Lapps’ reindeer now.
[217] Gregory of Tours; “Gesta Francorum”; the Anglo-Saxon poems “Beowulf” and “Wîdsîð,” etc.
[218] Zeuss, 1837, p. 501; Müllenhoff, 1889, pp. 18 f., 95 f.; A. Bugge, 1905, pp. 10 f.
[219] Cf. H. Zimmer [1891, 1893, p. 223] and A. Bugge [1905, pp. 11 f.]. In a life of St. Gildas, on an island off the Welsh coast [“Vita Gildæ, auctore Carodoco Lancarbanensi,” p. 109], we read that he was plundered by pirates from the Orcades islands, who must be supposed to have been Norwegian Vikings. This is said to have taken place in the sixth century, but the MS. dates from the twelfth. The island of Sark, east of Guernsey, was laid waste by the Normans, according to the “Miracula Sancti Maglorii,” cap. 5. [A. de la Borderie, “Histoire de Bretagne,” Critique des Sources, iii. 13, p. 236.] This part of the “Miracula” was composed, according to Borderie, before 851; but even in the saint’s lifetime (sixth century) the “Miracula” places an attack by the “Normans” (cap. 2). It has been suggested [cf. Vogel, “Die Normannen und das Fränkische Reich,” 1896, p. 353] that this might refer to Saxon pirates; but doubtless incorrectly.
[220] Cf. Zeuss, 1837, pp. 477 f.; Müllenhoff, 1889, p. 19.
[221] What an enormous time such a development requires is demonstrated by the history of the rudder. The most ancient Egyptian boats were evidently steered by two big oars aft, one on each side. These oars were later, in Egyptian and Greek ships, transformed into two rudders or rudder oars, one on each side aft (see illustrations, [pp. 7], [23], [35], [48]). On the Viking ships we find only one of these rudders on the starboard side, but fixed exactly in the same way. Then at last, towards the end of the Middle Ages, the rudder was moved to the stern-post. But the rudder of the boats of Northern Norway has still a “styrvold” (instead of an ordinary tiller), which is a remnant of the rudder of the Viking ships.