But the mediæval learned idea of the Outer Ocean surrounding the whole disc of earth also asserts itself in the North, and appears in Snorre’s Heimskringla and in the “King’s Mirror,” amongst other works. This ocean went outside Greenland, which was connected with Europe, and made the former into a peninsula. In the work already referred to, “Gripla” (only known in a late MS. in Björn Jónsson of Skardsá, first half of the seventeenth century), we read, in continuation of the passage already quoted ([p. 35]): “Between Wineland and Greenland is Ginnungagap, it proceeds from the sea that is called ‘Mare oceanum,’ which surrounds the whole world.” Since Wineland [i.e., the Insulæ Fortunatæ], as already stated ([pp. 1, ff.]), was by some, evidently through a misunderstanding, made continuous with Africa,[238] it is clear that the Outer Ocean must be supposed to go completely round both Greenland and Wineland (cf. the illustration, [p. 2]). Thus it was also natural to suppose that there was an opening somewhere between these two countries, through which the Outer Ocean was connected with the inner, known ocean between Norway, Greenland, etc.[239]
Ginnungagap
At least as old as the Norsemen’s conceptions of countries beyond the ocean in the North was probably the idea of the great abyss, Ginnungagap, which there forms the boundary of the ocean and of the world, and which must be derived from the Tartarus and Chaos of the Greeks (cf. [p. 150]). When the Polar Sea (Hafsbotn) was closed by the land connection between Bjarmeland and Greenland, it was natural that those who tried to form a consistent view of the world could no longer find a place for the abyss in that direction; and G. Storm [1890] is certainly right in thinking that it was for this reason that Ginnungagap was located in the passage between Greenland and Wineland; since, no doubt, the idea was that this “gap” in some way or other was connected with the void Outer Ocean. But this view is first found in the very late copy (seventeenth century) of “Gripla,” and of the somewhat older map of Gudbrand Torlaksson [Torlacius] of 1606 [Torfæus, 1706; Pl. I., p. 21], where “Ginnunga Gap” is marked as the name of the strait between Greenland and America. What Ginnungagap really was seems never to have been quite clear, different people having no doubt had different ideas about it; but when, as here, it is used as the name of a strait through which the Outer Ocean enters, it cannot any longer be an abyss; at the most it may have been a maelstrom or whirlpool, which, indeed, is suggested by the whirlpool on Jón Gudmundsson’s map (cf. [p. 34]). But even this interpretation of the name became effaced, and in another MS. of the seventeenth century (see [p. 35]) it is simply used as a name for the great ocean to the west of Spain (that is, the Atlantic).
From an Icelandic MS. of 1363
On the other hand we have seen ([pp. 150, ff.]) that ideas of whirlpools in the northern seas appear to have been widely spread in the Middle Ages. There is a possibility, as already hinted (vol. i. p. 303), that when in Ivar Bárdsson’s description of the northern west coast of Greenland “the many whirlpools that there lie all over the sea” are spoken of, it was thought that here was the boundary of the ocean and of the world, and that it was formed by the many whirlpools, or abysses in the sea. In that case these cannot be regarded merely as maelstroms like the Moskenström, but more like the true Ginnungagap. But this is extremely uncertain; it may again have been one of those embellishments which were often used in speaking of the most distant regions.
Saxo
Saxo Grammaticus (first part of the thirteenth century) in the preface to his Danish history gives geographical information about Scandinavia and Iceland, to which we have already referred several times. He does not mention Greenland. He says himself that he has made use of Icelandic literature to a large extent; but he has also mingled with it a good deal of mythical material from elsewhere.
The King’s Mirror, circa 1240 ?
Beyond comparison the most important geographical writer of the mediæval North, and at the same time one of the first in the whole of mediæval Europe, was the unknown author who wrote the “King’s Mirror,”[240] probably about the middle of the thirteenth century.[241] If one turns from contemporary or earlier European geographical literature, with all its superstition and obscurity, to this masterly work, the difference is very striking. Even at the first appearance of the Scandinavians in literature, in Ottar’s straightforward and natural narrative of his voyage to King Alfred, the numerous trustworthy statements about previously unknown regions are a prominent feature, and give proof of a sober faculty of observation, altogether different from what one usually meets with in mediæval literature. This is the case to an even greater degree in the “King’s Mirror,” and the difference between what is there stated about the North and what we find less than two hundred years earlier in Adam of Bremen is obvious. Apart from the fact that the whole method of presentation is inspired by superior intelligence, it shows an insight and a faculty of observation which are uncommon, especially at that period; and in many points this remarkable man was evidently centuries before his time. Although well acquainted with much of the earlier mediæval literature, he has liberated himself to a surprising extent from its fabulous conceptions. We hear nothing of the many fabulous peoples, who were still common amongst much later authors, nor about whirlpools, nor the curdled and dark sea, but instead we have fresh and copious information about the northern regions, and it comes with a clearness like that which already struck us in Ottar. We have a remarkably good description of the sea-ice, its drift, etc. (cf. vol. i. pp. 279, f.); we have also a description of the animal world of the northern seas to which there is no parallel in the earlier literature of the world (cf. [pp. 155, ff.]). No less than twenty-one different whales are referred to fully. If we make allowance for three of them being probably sharks, and for two being perhaps alternative names for the same whale, the total corresponds to the number of species that are known in northern waters. Six seals are described, which corresponds to the number of species living on the coasts of Norway and Greenland. Besides these the walrus [“rostung”] is very well described. But even the author of the “King’s Mirror” could not altogether avoid the supernatural in treating of the sea. He describes in the seas of Iceland the enormous monster “hafgufa,” which seems more like a piece of land than a fish, and he does not think there are more than two of them in the sea. This is the same that the Norwegian fishermen now call the krake, and certainly also the same that appears in ancient oriental myths, and that is met with again in the Brandan legend as the great whale that they take for an island and land on (cf. [p. 234]). In the Greenland seas the “King’s Mirror” has two kinds of trolls, “hafstrambr”