CHAPTER XII
EXPEDITIONS OF THE NORWEGIANS TO THE WHITE SEA,
VOYAGES IN THE POLAR SEA, WHALING AND SEALING
EXPEDITIONS TO THE WHITE SEA
Expeditions to the White Sea
Even if Ottar was perhaps not the first Norwegian to reach the White Sea, his voyage is in any case a remarkable exploring expedition, whereby both the North Cape and the White Sea became known, even in the literature of Europe, nearly seven hundred years before Richard Chancellor reached the Dvina in the ship “Edward Buonaventura” in 1553, from which time the discovery of this sea has usually been reckoned.
In Ottar’s time, or soon after, the Norwegian king asserted his sovereignty over all the Lapps as far as the White Sea, and in the Historia Norwegiæ it is said that Hálogaland reached to Bjarmeland. The headland Vegistafr is mentioned in the Historia Norwegiæ, in the laws, and elsewhere, as the boundary of the kingdom of Norway towards the Bjarmas (Beormas). This may have been on the south side of the Kola peninsula by the river Varzuga, already mentioned, or by the river Umba (see the map, vol. i. p. 170).[105] After Ottar’s time the Norwegians more frequently undertook expeditions, doubtless for the most part of a military character, to the White Sea and Bjarmeland. We hear about several of them in the sagas.
Harold Gråfeld’s expedition to the Dvina
Eric Blood-Axe marched northward, about 920, into Finmark and as far as Bjarmeland, and there fought a great battle and gained the victory. His son, Harold Gråfeld, went northward to Bjarmeland one summer about 965 with his army, and there ravaged the country and had a great fight with the Bjarmas on “Vinu bakka” [i.e., the river bank of the Dvina (Vina)], in which King Harold was victorious and slew many men; and then laid the country waste far and wide, and took a vast amount of plunder. Of this Glumr Geirason speaks:
“Eastward the bold-spoken king
intrepidly stained his sword red,
north of the burning town;
there I saw the Bjarmas run.
For the master of the body-guard good spear-weather
was given on this journey,
on Vina’s bank; the fame
of a young noble travelled far.”
Trollebotten