Alfred the Great : $b containing chapters on his life and times
History
Alfred the Great : $b containing chapters on his life and times
Alfred, King of England, 849-899; Great Britain -- History -- Alfred, 871-899
Oht-here calls the country between the Gulf of Bothnia and the Arctic
Sea, Terfinna land, _Ter_ being the ancient name of the Kola peninsula.
Terfinna therefore means the Finns in Ter. He describes it as entirely
waste and uninhabited, except where the Laplanders were encamped for
hunting or fishing. He was told many tales respecting their country by
the Beormas, but King Alfred did not record them, because they were only
from hearsay, and not things the explorer could testify to from personal
knowledge. Besides discovery, another object of Oht-here’s voyage was
the capture of walrus, for the sake of their hides and tusks. He calls
the walrus a horse whale, but says that it is much smaller than other
whales; thus correctly including whales, usually supposed to be fish in
ancient times, under the head of mammalia, by classing them with the
walrus. The length of a walrus is given, with approximate accuracy, at
14 feet. Oht-here told King Alfred that the great whales were from 96 to
100 feet long, and that the best whale-hunting was off his own country
of Halgoland. The skill and energy of those old Norsemen must have been
most remarkable, for Oht-here says that his was one of six vessels which
killed sixty whales in two days. The ships must have had very large
crews, and a considerable number of boats for each ship, to have achieved
such an unequalled feat, probably without a rival in the whole history of
whaling. But it is more likely that Oht-here alluded to walrus or “horse
whales.”
Oht-here also described to the king a voyage to the south from Halgoland,
along the coast of Norway, to Denmark and Slesvig. He said that with a
fair wind, and anchoring each night, the voyage from Halgoland to a port
he calls Sciringesheal, might be made in a month. Sciringesheal is in
old Norwegian _Scirings-salr_, which, in the ninth century, was a town
on the shores of a small bay in Larviks-fjord, called Viks-fjord. In
the English of Alfred the termination _salr_ (a large room) is changed
into _heal_ (a hall). On the _bæc-bord_ is Norway, and on the starboard
side is Iraland and other islands. He then describes a great sea running
inland, the Kattegat and the Baltic, with Jutland and Zeeland on the
other side. The Baltic, he adds, runs several hundred miles up into the
land. Oht-here sailed from Sciringesheal southwards, through the Danish
islands to the coast of Slesvig, and reached the port of Haddeby. Alfred
adds the interesting fact that the Angles dwelt in these lands round
Haddeby before they came into England.
Oht-here made a present of walrus ivory to King Alfred; but he was not
the only adventurous seaman who brought welcome information to the king.
A Dane named Wulfstan gave him an account of a voyage in the Baltic from
Haddeby to Truso, in what is now Eastern Prussia, and described to him
the manners and customs of the people he visited.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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