If the Iberian people of the western Mediterranean practised this kind of fishing, the Basques may also have been acquainted with it. But if they used the harpoon on swordfish and small whales, the further step to using it for the Biscay whale was not insuperable to these hardy seamen, and they may thus have themselves developed their methods of whaling without having learnt from the Normans, even if no evidence is forthcoming of their having been acquainted with whaling so early as the latter.[142] It may also be supposed that the Norsemen in the beginning, far back in grey antiquity, took their harpoon-fishing from the south, just as they obtained the form of their craft to some extent from the Mediterranean.
Thus, although we cannot regard it as certain that the Norwegians introduced the knowledge of whaling with the harpoon and line in Normandy, it is in any case probable that they were particularly active in practising and developing this method, and we may conclude that they must have been acquainted with whaling before they came there, since we see that the whalers of Normandy bore the Scandinavian name of “walmanni.”[143] If they had learnt their whaling in the foreign land, it goes without saying that they would also have taken the name from thence, and it is extremely improbable that they should have acquired a Scandinavian designation for an occupation the knowledge of which they had not brought with them from their native land.
The Normans also took with them the knowledge of whaling as far as the Mediterranean. In Guillelmus Appulus’s description (of about 1099-1111) of the Norman conquest of southern Italy it is related[144] that when Robert Guiscard comes to the town of Regina in Calabria he hears
“the rumour that there is a fish not for from the town in the waves of the Adriatic, a great one with an immense body, of an incredible aspect, which the people of Italy had not seen before. The winds of spring, on account of the fresh water, had driven it thither. It was captured by the ingenuity of the leader [i.e., Robert] by means of various arts. It swam into a net made of fine ropes, and when it was completely entangled in the nets with the heavy iron, it dived down to the depths of the sea, but at last it was hit by the seamen in various projecting places, and with much pains dragged ashore. There the people look at it as a strange monster. Then it is out in pieces by order of the leader. Thereof he obtains for himself and his men much food, and also for the people who dwelt on the coasts of Calabria. And the Apulian people also have a share of it.”
Cutting up a whale (from an Icelandic MS. of the sixteenth century).
It looks as though the author’s view was that the whale was caught with nets and killed by the throwing of lances, which is not impossible; but it may also be supposed that the poetical description is somewhat misleading, and that the “nets with the heavy iron” were the harpoon with its line (?).
It may be regarded as doubtful whether the harpooning of great whales in open waters was ever so actively carried on and brought to such perfection during the Middle Ages in Norway, Iceland and Greenland as was evidently the case in Normandy and especially among the Basques, from whom later the English and the Dutch learned it. As in those days there was abundance of whales to be caught on the Norwegian coast (the nord-caper was then numerous there), this kind of whaling would not tempt the Norwegians to seek better hunting-grounds along other coasts in northern waters. On the other hand, it is evident that practice in whaling must have been of great importance to them, wherever they settled in these regions.
Albertus Magnus on walrus-hunting
Albertus Magnus (ob. 1280), who gives a detailed description of the harpoon and of whaling (cf. above, [p. 158]), has also the following description of walrus-hunting: