VOYAGES IN THE POLAR SEA 



It appears to me that various statements in Arabic literature 

 may indicate such a connection.^ The Arabs received infor- 

 mation about northern regions through their commercial 

 communications with the Mohammedan Finnish nation of 

 the Bulgarians, whose capital, Bulgar, lay on the Volga ^ (near 

 to the present town of Kazan), and was a meeting-place for 

 traders coming up the river from the south and coming down 

 the river from the north. Special interest attaches to the 

 mention of the mysterious people " Wisu," far in the north. 

 This is evidently the same name as the Russian " Ves " ^ for the 

 Finnish people who, according to Nestor^ (beginning of the 

 twelfth century), lived by Lake Bielo-ozero (the white lake) 

 in 859 A.D. They are mentioned together with Tchuds, Slavs, 

 Merians, and Krivitches, and were doubtless the most northerly 

 of them, possibly spreading northward towards the White 

 Sea. They are probably the same people that Adam of Bremen 

 [iv., c. 14, 19] calls " Wizzi" (see Vol. I, p. 383, Vol. II, p. 64), 

 and possibly those Jordanes calls " Vasinabroncae," ^ who to- 

 gether with "Merens" (Merians?) and " Mordens ". (Mord- 

 vins?) were subdued by Ermanrik, king of the Goths. But the 

 Arabic " Wisu " seems sometimes to have been a common name 

 for all Finnish (and even Samoyed) tribes in North Russia and 

 on the coast of the Polar Sea. 



According to Jaqut,^ Ahmad Ibn Fadhlan (about 922 A.D.)'^ 

 stated in his work that 



1 Professor Alexander Seippel has given me valuable help in the transla- 

 tion of the Arabic authors. 



2 The Volga was often called Itil, after the town of that name, but was later 

 named after Bulgar (Bolgar = Volga). 



3 Cf. Frahn, 1823, p. 218. 



4 Chronica Nestoris, ed. Fr. Miklosisch, Vindobonae, i860, pp. 9 f.; Nestors 

 russiske Kronike, overs, og forkl. af C. W. Smith, Copenhagen, 1869, p. 29. 



5 Cf. T. Mommsen, 1882, pp. 88, 166. 



« Jacut, 1866, i. p. 113; cf. also Mehren, 1857, p. 171. 



7 Ibn Fadhlan's mission as ambassador from the Caliph al-Muktadir-Billah 

 of Bagdad to Bulgar took place, according to his own statements, reproduced 

 by Jaqut (ob. 1229), in the years 921 and 922 A.D. Ibn Fadhlan, like Jaqut, 

 was a Greek by birth. 



