The earliest authenticated account of a fishery for whales is probably that contained in Ohthere’s voyage, by Alfred the Great. This voyage was undertaken about 890, by Ohthere, a native of Halgoland, in the diocese of Dronthein, a person of considerable wealth in his own country, from motives of mere curiosity, at his own risk, and under his personal superintendence. On this occasion, Ohthere sailed to the northward, along the coast of Norway, round the North Cape, to the entrance of the White Sea. Three days after leaving Dronthein, or Halgoland, “he was come as far towards the north as commonly the whale-hunters used to travel.” Here Ohthere evidently alludes to the hunters of the walrus, or sea-horse; but subsequently, he speaks pointedly as to a fishery for some species of cetaceous animals having been at that period practised by the Norwegians. He told the king, that with regard to the common kind of whales, the place of most and best hunting for them was in his own country, “whereof some be forty-eight ells of length and some fifty,” of which sort, he affirmed, that he himself was one of the six who, in the space of three (two) days, killed threescore. From this it would appear, that the whale-fishery was not only prosecuted by the Norwegians so early as the ninth century, but that Ohthere himself had personal knowledge of it. The voyage of Ohthere is a document of much value in history, both in respect to the matter of it, and the high character of the author by whom it has been preserved. By a slight alteration in the reading of the Saxon manuscript, as suggested by Turner, in his History of the Anglo-Saxons, it is possible to suppose that the threescore animals slain by Ohthere in two days were not whales but dolphins. This supposition removes the improbability of the exploit recorded, and does not contradict or explain away the fact of larger whales having been likewise hunted and captured. A Danish work, which there is reason to believe is of a date much earlier than that which we assign to the first fishery of the Basques, declares that the Icelanders were in the habit of pursuing the whales, which they killed on the shore, and that these islanders subsisted on the flesh of some one of the species. And Langebek does not hesitate to assert, that the fishery of the whale (_hovlfangst_, by which he probably means a species of _delphinus_,) was practised in the most northern countries of Europe in the ninth century.