The climate at Maosoe is not distinguished by any severe winter cold,[21] but the air is moist and raw nearly all the year round. The region would however be very healthy, did not scurvy, especially in humid winters, attack the population, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, old and young. According to a statement made by a lady resident on the spot, very severe attacks of scurvy are cured without fail by preserved cloudberries and rum. Several spoonfuls are given to the patient daily, and a couple of quarts of the medicine is said to be sufficient for the complete cure of children severely attacked by the disease. I mention this new method of using the cloudberry, the old well-known antidote to scurvy, because I am convinced that future Polar expeditions, if they will avail themselves of the knowledge of this cure, will find that it conduces to the health and comfort of all on board, and that the medicine is seldom refused, unless it be by too obstinate abstainers from spirituous liquors. It enters into the plan of this work, as the _Vega_ sails along, to give a brief account of the voyages of the men who first opened the route along which she advances, and who thus, each in his measure, contributed to prepare the way for the voyage whereby the passage round Asia and Europe has now at last been accomplished. On this account it is incumbent on me to begin by giving a narrative of the voyage of discovery during which the northernmost point of Europe was first doubled, the rather because this narrative has besides great interest for us, as containing much remarkable information regarding the condition of the former population in the north of Scandinavia. This voyage was accomplished about a thousand years ago by a Norwegian, OTHERE, from Halogaland or Helgeland, that part of the Norwegian coast which lies between 65 deg. and 66 deg. N.L. Othere, who appears to have travelled far and wide, came in one of his excursions to the court of the famous English king, Alfred the Great. In presence of this king he gave, in a simple, graphic style, a sketch of a voyage which he had undertaken from his home in Norway towards the north and east. The narrative has been preserved by its having been incorporated, along with an account of the travels of another Norseman, Wulfstan, to the southern part of the Baltic, in the first chapter of Alfred's Anglo-Saxon reproduction of the history of PAULUS OROSIUS: _De Miseria Mundi_.[22] This work has since been the subject of translation and exposition by a great number of learned men, among whom may be named here the Scandinavians, H.G. PORTHAN of Abo, RASMUS RASK and C-CHR. RAFN of Copenhagen.