“Those who are acquainted with these regions also declare that some have reached as far as Græcia [i.e., Russia] by land from Sueonia [Sweden]. But the barbarous people, who live in the intervening parts, are a hindrance to this journey, wherefore they rather attempt this dangerous route by sea.”
Adam of Bremen’s geographical idea of the countries and islands
of the North, as represented by A. A. Björnbo (1910)
But he nevertheless speaks of the countries of the North as islands, and he seems to draw no sharp distinction between island and peninsula. Kurland and Esthonia he seems to regard as true islands.
The entrance to the Baltic, he says [iv. 11], “between Aalborg, a headland of Denmark [i.e., the Skaw], and the skerries of Nortmannia [Norway], is so narrow that boats easily sail across it in one night.”
The Land of Women
There are in the Baltic [iv. 19] “many other islands, all full of savage barbarians, and therefore they are shunned by sailors. On the shores of the Baltic Sea the Amazons are also said to live in the country which is now called the Land of Women (‘terra feminarum’).”
This designation is a translation of the name “Kvænland,” which was thought to be formed of the Old Norse word for woman: “kvæn” or “kván” (chiefly in the sense of wife; modern English “queen”); and it is very possible that the name was really derived from this, and not from the Finnish “Kainulaiset.” We have seen that Alfred called it in Anglo-Saxon “Cwên-Land” or “Cwêna-Land,” which also means woman-land. Here it is probably Southern Finland. Adam probably took the idea from earlier authors.[181] To him this name is a realisation of the Greeks’ Amazons, who have been moved northward to the Gulf of Bothnia, just as the Scandinavians become Hyperboreans. In this way ancient geographical myths come to life again and acquire new local colour. Of these Amazons, he says:
Cynocephali