In this poem and in Adam of Bremen Iceland is mentioned for the first time in literature,[179] in both works as a country that was known, but of which strange things were told, which is natural enough, since it lay near the borders of the unknown. The pious Reginbrecht may have travelled to Iceland as a missionary or clerical emissary, which would not be unnatural, as the country was under the archbishopric of Hamburg. On the other hand, it is surprising that people as early as that time sailed thither from Germany with meal, wine and wood. But as these articles must have been precisely those which would be valuable in Iceland, with its lack of corn and poverty in trees, it points to knowledge of the facts, and does not seem improbable. That there should be great wealth there does not agree with Adam’s description, which tends in the contrary direction; but as immediately afterwards abundance of provisions is spoken of, it is probable that the rich fisheries were meant, and perhaps the breeding of sheep, which was already developed at that time.
Europe on the Anglo-Saxon Map of the World, “Cottoniana” (eleventh century ?)
The strange idea that the ice becomes so hard that it can be made to glow, which occurs again in another form in Adam of Bremen, is difficult to understand. Can it have arisen, as Professor Torp has proposed to me, from a misunderstanding of statements that the Icelanders heated stones for their baths? In some parts of Norway red-hot stones are also used for heating water for brewing and cooking [cf. A. Helland: Hedemarkens Amt]. Perhaps tales of their sometimes using melted ice for drinking water may also have contributed to the legend (?). In any case, as Adam’s account shows still better, diverse statements about ice, fire (volcanoes), and steam (boiling springs ?), etc., may have been confused to form these legends about the ice in Iceland.
Adam of Bremen, about 1070
The first author after King Alfred to make valuable contributions to the literature of the North is Adam of Bremen, who not only gives much information about the Scandinavian North and its people, but mentions Iceland, and for the first time in literature also Greenland and even Wineland, as distant islands in the great ocean. Of the life of the learned magister Adam we know little more than that he came to Bremen about 1067 and became director of the cathedral school, and that he spent some time at the court of the enlightened Danish king Svein Estridsson. This king, who had spent twelve years campaigning in Sweden, “knew the history of the barbarians by heart, as though it had been written down,” and from him and his men Adam collected information about the countries and peoples of the North. On his return to Bremen he wrote his well-known history of the Church in the North under the archbishopric of Bremen and Hamburg (“Gesta Hammaburgensis,” etc.), which in great part seems to have been completed before the death of Svein Estridsson in 1076. In the fourth book of this work is a “description of the islands [i.e., countries and islands] in the North” (“Descriptio insularum aquilonis”). Adam’s most important literary geographical sources seem to have been the following: besides the Bible, Cicero and Sallust, he has used Orosius, Martianus Capella, Solinus, Macrobius and Bede; he was also acquainted with Paulus Warnefridi’s history of the Langobards, and probably Hrabanus Maurus, possibly also with some of Isidore. In the archiepiscopal archives he was able to collect valuable materials from the missions to heathens in the North, and to these was added the verbal information he had obtained at the Danish court.
Adam’s work has thus become one of the most important sources of the oldest history of the North. It would carry us too far here to go into this side of it, and we shall confine ourselves for the most part to his geographical and ethnographical statements.
He describes Jutland, the Danish islands, and other countries and peoples on the Baltic. This too he calls [iv. 10] the Baltic Sea, “because it extends in the form of a belt (‘baltei’)[180] along through the Scythian regions as far as ‘Grecia’ [here == Russia]. It is also called the Barbarian or Scythian Sea.” He quotes Einhard’s description of the Baltic, and regards it as a gulf (“sinus”), which, in the direction of west to east, issues from the Western Ocean. The length of the gulf [eastwards] was according to Einhard unknown. This, he says,
“has recently been confirmed by the efforts of two brave men, namely Ganuz [also Ganund] Wolf, Earl (satrapæ) of the Danes, and Harald [Hardråde], King of the Norwegians, who, in order to explore the extent of this sea, made a long and toilsome voyage, perilous to those who accompanied them, from which they returned at length without having accomplished their object, and with double loss on account of storms and pirates. Nevertheless the Danes assert that the length of this sea (ponti) has frequently been explored and by many different travellers, and even that there are men who have sailed with a favourable wind from Denmark to Ostrogard in Ruzzia.”
It therefore looks as if Adam had understood that Scandinavia was connected with the continent, which also appears from his words [iv. 15]: