VOYAGES IN THE POLAR SEA 



go there with reindeer. The trade in furs was then, as in an- 

 tiquity, the powerful incentive; it was that too which chiefly at- 

 tracted the Norwegians to Bjarmeland. 



It is not likely that the Arabs themselves reached North 

 Russia; one would suppose rather that traveling Jews assisted 

 as middlemen in the trade with these regions. But the finding 

 of Arab coins on the Pechora would point to Arab trade having 

 penetrated through intermediaries to the shores of the Polar 

 Sea.i 



THE POLAR EXPEDITION OF THE FRISIAN NOBLES AND KING 

 HAROLD'S VOYAGE TO THE WHIRLPOOL 



Among mediaeval voyages to the North there remain 

 yet to be mentioned Harold Hardrade's expedition ^ and the 

 voyage of the Frisian nobles, related by Adam of Bremen 

 in the descriptions already given (Vol. I, pp. 195, f.). That 

 the latter voyage must be an invention, and cannot contain 

 much of historical value, is obvious (cf. Vol. I, p. 196). The 

 whole description of the abyss or maelstrom is taken from 

 Paulus Wamefridi (as will be seen by a comparison of the 

 descriptions on pp. 157 and 195, Vol. I); the Cyclopes of 

 marvelous stature, as well as the treasures of gold that they 

 guard, are originally derived from classical literature, although 

 Adam may have taken them from earlier mediaeval authors, 

 and northern ideas about the giants in the north in Jotunheim 

 may have helped to localize the story.^ The great darkness, the 

 stiffened sea, chaos, and the gulf of the abyss at the uttermost 

 end of the world or of the ocean are all classical conceptions, 



1 Cf. Peschel, 2nd ed., 1877, p. 107. There has also been found a metal 

 mirror with an Arabic inscription of the tenth or eleventh century at Samarovo 

 in the land of the Ostyaks, where the Irtish and the Ob join. 



2 Cf. on this subject G. Storm, 1890, pp. 340 f.; A. A. Bjornbo, 1909, pp. 

 234 f. 



8 Saxo also has conceptions of half-awake or half-dead (" semineces ") 

 giants in the underworld in the North as guardians of treasures (cf. Gorm's 

 and Thorkel's voyage). Moltke Moe thinks they may be derived from ancient 

 notions of the giants as the evil dead, who guard treasures. 



147 



