Early connection of the Bjarmas with southern civilisation
In reading Otter’s narrative and the earliest Norse accounts of voyages to Bjarmeland it must strike us that the Bjarmas we hear about seem to have possessed a surprisingly high degree of culture. As Professor Olaf Broch has also pointed out to me, this may be an indication that a comparatively active communication had existed long before that time along the Dvina and the Volga between the people of the White Sea and those on the Caspian and the Black Sea (by transport from the Volga to the Don). In those early times, before the Russians had yet established themselves in the territory of the upper Volga, this communication may have passed to the east of the Slavs through Finnish-speaking peoples the whole way from the lower Volga and the Finnish Bulgarians (cf. the Mordvin tribes of to-day).
It appears to me that various statements in Arabic literature may indicate such a connection.[111] The Arabs received information about northern regions through their commercial communications with the Mohammedan Finnish nation of the Bulgarians, whose capital Bulgar lay on the Volga[112] (near to the present town of Kazan), and was a meeting-place for traders coming up the river from the south and coming down the river from the north. Special interest attaches to the mention of the mysterious people “Wîsu,” far in the north. This is evidently the same name as the Russian Ves[113] for the Finnish people who, according to Nestor[114] (beginning of the twelfth century), lived by Lake Byelo-ozero (the white lake) in 859 A.D. They are mentioned together with Tchuds, Slavs, Merians and Krivitches, and were doubtless the most northerly of them, possibly spreading northwards towards the White Sea. They are probably the same people that Adam of Bremen [iv., c. 14, 19] calls “Wizzi” (see vol. i. p. 383; vol. ii. [p. 64]), and possibly those Jordanes calls “Vasinabroncæ,”[115] who together with “Merens” (Merians ?) and “Mordens” (Mordvins ?) were subdued by Ermanrik, king of the Goths. But the Arabic Wîsu seems sometimes to have been a common name for all Finnish (and even Samoyed) tribes in North Russia and on the coast of the Polar Sea.
According to Jaqût,[116] Ahmad Ibn Fadhlân (about 922 A.D.)[117] stated in his work that
“the King of the Bulgarians had told him that behind his country, at a distance of three months’ journey, there lived a people called Wîsu, among whom the nights [in summer] were not even one hour long.” Once the king is said to have written to this people, and in their answer it was stated that the people “Yâǵûǵ and Mâǵûǵ [on the Ob ?] lived over three months’ journey distant from them [i.e., the Wîsu] and that they were separated from them by the sea” (?). The Yâǵûǵ and Mâǵûǵ lived on the great fish that were cast ashore. The same is told by Dimashqî (ob. 1327) about the Yâǵûǵ and Mâǵûǵ, and by Qazwînî (thirteenth century) about the people “Yura” on the Pechora.
Jaqût (ob. 1229) in his geographical lexicon[118] has an article on
“‘Wîsu’ situated beyond Bulgar. Between it and Bulgar is three months’ journey. The night is there so short that one is not aware of any darkness, and at another time of year, again, it is so long that one sees no daylight.” In his article on “Itil” Jaqût says: “Upon it [the river Itil or Volga] traders travel as far as ‘Vîsu’[119] and bring [thence] great quantities of furs, such as beaver, sable and squirrel.”
Al-Qazwînî (ob. 1283) says:[120]
“The beaver is a land- and water-animal, which dwells in the great rivers in the land of ‘Isu’ [i.e., Wîsu, cf. al-Bîrûnî], and builds a home on the bank of a river.” He further relates that “the inhabitants of ‘Wîsu’ never visit the land of the Bulgarians, since when they come thither the air changes and cold sets in—even if it be in the middle of summer—so that all their crops are ruined. The Bulgarians know this, and therefore do not permit them to come to their country.” Qazwînî also gives the information that “Wîsu” is three months’ journey beyond Bulgar, and continues: “The Bulgarians take their wares thither for trade. Each one lays his wares, which he furnishes with a mark, in a certain spot and leaves them there. Then he comes back and finds a commodity, of which he can make use in his own country, laid by the side of them. If he is satisfied with this, he takes what is offered in exchange, and leaves his wares behind; if he is not, he takes his own away again. In this way buyer and seller never see one another. This is also the proceeding, as we have related, in the southern lands, in the land of the blacks.” The same story of dumb trading with a people in the north is met with again in Abu’lfeda (ob. 1321) and Ibn Batûta (cf. also Michel Beheim, later, [p. 270]).
Ibn Batûta (1302-1377) has no name for this people, any more than Abu’lfeda; but he calls their country “the Land of Darkness,” and has an interesting description of the journey thither.[121]