It is remarkable that already as early as in Adam of Bremen white bears (polar bears) are mentioned as occurring in Norway (cf. vol. i. pp. 191, f.). That this might be due to the connection with Iceland and Greenland, even at that time, is perhaps possible, but not very probable, as these countries are mentioned separately by Adam. The white bears in Norway may rather point to a connection with the Polar Sea and to the Norwegians having practised sealing there.
Mention of white bears in Norway
It is perhaps due to the same connection of the Norwegians with the Polar Sea that we find on the Italian Dalorto’s map of 1325 (see next chapter) and on several later maps the statement that there are white bears in northern Norway. Probably polar bears’ skins were brought to the south from Norway as an article of commerce and the Norwegians may have obtained the skins partly by their own hunting in the Polar Sea, partly by the trade with Greenland, and partly, no doubt, by that with the peoples on the north coast of Russia. The Arab Ibn Sa’id (thirteenth century) mentions white bears in the northern islands, amongst them the island of white falcons (i.e., Iceland). “These bears’ skins are soft, and they are brought to the Egyptian lands as gifts.” In the “Geographia Universalis” of the thirteenth century (see next chapter) the white bears in Iceland are described. It was a common idea in southern Europe in the Middle Ages that Greenland, and sometimes also Iceland (cf. Fra Mauro’s map), lay to the north of Norway, or they were made continuous with it, and even a part of it.
The Venetian Querini, who was wrecked on Röst Island and travelled south through Norway in 1432, says that he saw a perfectly white bear’s skin at the foot of the Metropolitan’s chair in St. Olaf’s Church at Trondhjem.[160] As Greenland was under the jurisdiction of the Archbishop of Trondhjem, this skin may have been a gift from pious Greenlanders, as perhaps were also the Eskimo hide-canoes mentioned by Claudius Clavus (cf. [p. 85]). In Norse literature polar bears are always connected with Icelanders or Greenlanders, who sometimes brought them alive as gifts to kings.
Decline of the Norwegians’ sea-hunting
We may thus conclude from what has been advanced above that the hunting of whales, seals, and particularly walrus was of great importance to the Norwegians in ancient times, and for the sake of the last they certainly made extended expeditions in the Arctic Ocean. It may therefore be difficult to understand how it came about that this sea-hunting declined to such an extent in more recent times that we hear nothing about the Norwegians’ hunting in the Polar Sea, while in the sixteenth century fleets from the northern coasts of Russia were engaged in fishing and walrus-hunting; and Peder Claussön Friis is able to say of whaling in Norway (about 1613):
“In old time many expedients or methods were used in these lands [i.e., Norway] for catching whales ... but on account of men’s unskilfulness they have fallen out of use, so that they now have no means of hunting the whale unless he drifts ashore to them.”
This seems to show that the Norwegians’ whaling in open sea had really gone out of practice, for otherwise this author must have known of it; on the other hand, whale-hunting in the fjords, which were closed by nets, has continued to our time. Walrus-hunting (as well as sealing) appears to have been still carried on in Finmark in Peder Claussön Friis’s time.
His description of the animal and its hunting is in part accompanied by stories similar to those in Olaus Magnus and Albertus Magnus (see [p. 163]), and he mentions the great strength of walrus-hide ropes, and their use “for clappers in hanging bells, item for shore-ropes and other ropes, and for the screws on the quay at Bergen, with which the dried fish is screwed into barrels, and for such other uses as no hawser or cable can so well serve for.” This shows that these ropes must have been widely employed and that there must have been considerable hunting of walrus. According to an order of Christian IV., dated from Bergenhus Castle, July 6, 1622, fifteen walrus-hides were to be bought yearly for the King’s service,[161] and from K. Leem’s description it seems that walrus was still hunted in Finmark in his time (1767). He says too [1767, p. 302] that “even the Sea-Lapps of the Varanger-Fiord formerly practised whaling, using for that purpose appliances invented and made by themselves.” To this is added in a note by Gunnerus: “The same thing may also be said in our time of the Lapps in Schjerv-island and of a few peasants in Nordland, especially in Ofoten.”
But in none of these accounts is there any hint that the Norwegians carried on their hunting beyond the limits of the country, as Ottar did in the ninth century.