VOYAGES IN THE POLAR SEA 



who is mentioned as his authority for the statements immedi- 

 ately preceding, and so far this information might have a good 

 source; but it has received precisely the same decoration as the 

 other voyage, with the mist or darkness that shuts out the ut- 

 termost end of the world, and the vast gulf of the abyss which 

 was narrowly escaped. This is certainly of older origin, and 

 he has not even given himself the trouble to make a little al- 

 teration in the dangers of the two stories. Another thing that 

 weakens our confidence in his statements is his saying that the 

 Danish king had told him that all the sea beyond the island of 

 Winland was filled with intolerable ice and immeasurable 

 darkness. It may doubtless be supposed that classical con- 

 ceptions had even at that time created superstitions of this 

 kind in the North, and thus King Svein may have told him 

 this; but it must be more probable that all these ancient book- 

 learned ideas are due, not to the unlearned and traveled mon- 

 arch, but to the well-read magister, who moreover himself quotes 

 in the same connection Marcianus's words about the congealed 

 sea beyond Thule. 



It would be entirely in Adam's vein if some accidental 

 resemblance or association had given him an opportunity of 

 making use in this way of ideas he had from his learned 

 reading, just as the name of Kvaenland gave him the chance 

 of bringing in the myths of the Amazons, Cynocephali, etc. 

 (cf.. Vol. I, p. 383). It was pointed out earlier (Vol. I, pp. 195, 

 197) that the statements about the sea "beyond this island" 

 and about Harold's voyage are possibly a later addition by Adam 

 himself, which has been inserted in the wrong place ; " this 

 island " might then mean Thyle (Iceland) and not Winland. 

 Whether we regard the latter as a newly discovered country in 

 America or as the Insulae Fortunatae, it is difficult to understand 

 why precisely the sea on the other side of this island should be 

 particularly associated with the ancient conceptions of the 

 dark or misty, and the congealed or ice-filled sea; ice and 

 darkness are nowhere connected in this way with Wineland 

 in later authorities. It is true that in Arabian myth there 



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