[iv. 39.] “Archbishop Adalbert, of blessed memory, likewise told us that in his predecessor’s days certain noblemen from Friesland, intending to plough the sea, set sail northwards, because people say there that due north of the mouth of the river Wirraha [Weser] no land is to be met with, but only an infinite ocean. They joined together to investigate this curious thing, and left the Frisian coast with cheerful song. Then they left Dania on one side, Britain on the other, and reached the Orkneys. When they had left these behind on the left, and had Nordmannia on the right, they reached after a long voyage the frozen Iceland. Ploughing the seas from this land towards the extreme axis of the north, after seeing behind them all the islands already mentioned, and confiding their lives and their boldness to Almighty God and the holy preacher Willehad, they suddenly glided into the misty darkness of the stiffened ocean, which can scarcely be penetrated by the eye. And behold! the stream of the unstable sea there ran back into one of its secret sources, drawing at a fearful speed the unhappy seamen, who had already given up hope and only thought of death, into that profound chaos (this is said to be the gulf of the abyss) in which it is said that all the back-currents of the sea, which seem to abate, are sucked up and vomited forth again, which latter is usually called flood-tide. While they were then calling upon God’s mercy, that He might receive their souls, this backward-running stream of the sea caught some of their fellows’ ships, but the rest were shot out by the issuing current far beyond the others. When they had thus by God’s help been delivered from the imminent danger, which had been before their very eyes, they saved themselves upon the waves by rowing with all their strength.
[iv. 40.] “And being now past the danger of darkness and the region of cold they landed unexpectedly upon an island, which was fortified like a town, with cliffs all about it. They landed there to see the place, and found people who at midday hid themselves in underground caves; before the doors of these lay an immense quantity of golden vessels and metal of the sort which is regarded by mortals as rare and precious; when therefore they had taken as much of the treasures as they could lift, the rowers hastened gladly back to their ships. Then suddenly they saw people of marvellous height coming behind them, whom we call Cyclopes, and before them ran dogs which surpassed the usual size of these animals. One of the men was caught, as these rushed forward, and in an instant he was torn to pieces before their eyes; but the rest were taken up into the ships and escaped the danger, although, as they related, the giants followed them with cries nearly into deep sea. With such a fate pursuing them, the Frisians came to Bremen, where they told the most reverend Alebrand everything in order as it happened, and made offerings to the gentle Christ and his preacher Willehad for their safe return.”
As will be seen, Adam obtained from the people of Scandinavia much new information and fresh ideas about the geography of the North, which add considerably to the knowledge of former times; but unfortunately he confuses this information with the legends and ancient classical notions he has acquired from reading the learned authors of late Roman and early mediæval times; and this confusion reaches its climax in the last tale, which is chiefly of interest to the folk-lorist. The first part of it (section 39) is made up from Paulus Warnefridi’s description of the earth’s navel, to some extent with the same expressions (see above, p. 157); the second part (section 40) is based upon legends on the model of the Odyssey, of which there were many in the Middle Ages. While his description gives a fairly clear picture of his views regarding the countries on the Baltic, it is difficult to get any definite idea of the relative position of the more distant islands; but it is probable, as proposed by Gustav Storm, that he imagined them as lying far in the north.
Wineland
As Wineland is mentioned last, and as it is added that beyond this island there is no habitable land in this ocean, but that all is full of ice and mist, it might be thought that this is regarded as lying farthest out in a northern direction. But this would not agree with Adam’s earlier statement [iv. 10], where Iceland and Greenland are given as the most distant islands, and “there this ocean, which is called the dark one, forms the boundary.” The explanation must be that, as already remarked ([p. 195]), his statement about the ocean beyond Wineland is probably a later addition, though possibly by Adam himself. It is obviously inserted somewhat disconnectedly, and perhaps has been put in the wrong place, and this is also made probable by the quotation from Marcianus about Thyle, which has nothing to do with Wineland, but refers on the contrary to Iceland (cf. p. 193).[196] Omitting this interpolation, the text says of the geographical position merely that the King of the Danes also mentioned the island of Wineland, as discovered by many in that ocean, i.e., the outer ocean, and so far as this goes it might be imagined as lying anywhere. That no importance is attached to the order in which the islands are named appears also from the fact that Halagland is put after Iceland and Greenland, although it is expressly stated that it lay nearer Norway. That Adam, after having described the last-named country a long while before, here gratuitously mentions Halagland (Hálogaland) as an island by itself[197] together with Iceland and Greenland, shows how deficient his information about the northernmost regions really was.
As will be further shown in the later chapter on Wineland, Adam’s ideas of that country, of the wine and the corn there, must be derived from legends about the Fortunate Isles, which were called by the Norsemen “Vínland hit Góða.” This legend must have been current in the North at that time, and possibly it may already have been connected with the discovery of countries in the west. But it is, perhaps, not altogether accidental that Wineland should be mentioned immediately after Halagland. For as the latter name was regarded as meaning the Holy Land,[198] it may be natural that Wineland or the Fortunate Isles, originally the Land of the Blest, should be placed in its neighbourhood. To this the resemblance in sound between Vinland and Finland (or, more correctly, Finmark, the land of the Finns or Lapps) may, consciously or unconsciously, have contributed; later in the Middle Ages these names were often confused and interchanged.[199] Finns and Finland were sometimes spelt in German with a V; and V and F were transposed in geographical names even outside Germany, as when, in an Icelandic geographical tract attributed to Abbot Nikulás Bergsson of Thverá (ob. 1159), Venice is transformed by popular etymology to “Feneyjar” [cf. F. Jónsson, 1901, p. 948]. It is particularly interesting that the Latin “vinum” (wine) became in Irish legendary poetry “fín,” and the vine was called “fíne,” as in the poem of the Voyage of Bran [Kuno Meyer, 1895, vol. i., pp. xvii., 9, 21].
The so-called St. Severus version, of about 1050, of the Beatus map (eighth century)
Conception of the earth and the ocean
It is not clear from Adam’s description whether he altogether held the conception of the earth, or rather the “œcumene,” as a circular island or disc divided into three, surrounded by the outer ocean (the Oceanus of the Greeks, see [p. 8]), as represented on the wheel-maps of earlier times (cf. [p. 151], and the Beatus map); but his expression that the Western Ocean extends northwards from the Orchades “infinitely around the circle of the earth” (“infinites orbem terræ spaciis ambit”) may point to this. It is true that immediately afterwards he has an obscure statement that at Greenland “ibi terminat oceanus qui dicitur caligans,” which has usually been translated as “there ends the ocean, which is called the dark one” (?); but it is difficult to get any sense out of it. One explanation might be that he imagined Greenland as lying out on the extreme edge of the earth’s disc, near the abyss, and that thus the ocean (which in that region was called dark ?) ended here in that direction (i.e., in its breadth), while in its length it extended farther continuously around “the circle of the earth.” This view would, no doubt, conflict with his statement in another place that the earth was round, which can only be understood as meaning that it had the form of a globe. But this last idea he took from Bede, and he has scarcely assimilated it sufficiently for it to permeate his views of the circle of the earth and the universal ocean, as also appears from his mention of the gulf at its outer limit. If we had been able to suppose that Adam really thought the Western Ocean on the north flowed past the Orchades, and thence infinitely towards the west around the globe of the earth (instead of the circle of the earth), this would better suit the statement that Ireland lay to the left, Norway to the right, and Iceland and Greenland farther out (also to the right ?). This would agree with the statement that Norway was the extreme land on the north, and that beyond it (i.e., farther north ?) there was no human habitation, but only the infinite ocean which surrounds the whole world, and in which opposite (“ex adverso”) Norway lie many islands, etc. According to this, these islands must be imagined as lying to the west, and not to the north of Norway. But besides the fact that such a view of the extent of the ocean towards the west would conflict with the prevailing cartographical representation of that time, it is contradicted by his assertion that Greenland lies farther out in the ocean (than Iceland) and opposite the mountains of Suedia and the Riphean range, which must be supposed to lie on the continent to the north-east of Norway; this cannot very well be possible unless these islands are to be placed out in the ocean farther north than Norway, and there is thus on this point a difficult contradiction in Adam’s work. The circumstance that Hálogaland is spoken of as an island after Iceland and Greenland is also against the probability that the ocean, in which these islands lay, was imagined to extend infinitely towards the west; the direction is, in this manner, given as northerly. The same thing appears from the description of the voyage of the Frisian noblemen: when they steered northward with the Orkneys to port and Norway to starboard they came to the frozen Iceland, and when they proceeded thence towards the North Pole, they saw behind them all the islands previously mentioned. Dr. A. A. Björnbo has suggested to me that according to Adam’s way of expressing himself “terminat” must here mean “forms the boundary,” whereby we get the translation given above ([p. 192]), which seems to give better sense; but in any case Adam’s description of these regions is not quite clear.