VOYAGES IN THE POLAR SEA 



practised from very early times in Norway, and which con- 

 sists in schools of small whales being driven into bays and 

 inlets, where they are intercepted with nets and driven ashore. 



The method of whaling with poisoned arrows or by throw- 

 ing spears must, as has been said, be very ancient. Whether it 

 was invented by the Norwegians themselves, or whether they 

 did not rather learn it from the older hunter-people of Norway, 

 the " Finns," is difficult to determine. Nor do we know how 

 ancient whaling in general may be in the North; it may date 

 from early times, though Ottar's mention of it is the earliest 

 known in literature. 



It is evident that a high development of seamanship, skill 

 in hunting, and resourcefulness was required before men could 

 venture to encounter the great whales of the ocean in open 

 fight with free sea-room, where the whale was not crippled 

 by having run aground or into narrow fjords with no outlet. 

 This whaling in the open sea demanded the invention of special 

 appliances, of which the harpoon with its line was of special 

 importance. It may be possible, though it is not certain, that 

 the Norwegians were the first Europeans to practise this kind 

 of whaling, and as, from numerous documents, we may con- 

 clude that whaling was actively carried on by the Normans in 

 Normandy as early as the tenth and eleventh centuries, one is 

 inclined to suppose that it was the Normans who first intro- 

 duced the method of harpoon and line there,^ and then passed 

 it on to the Basques. But we ought not to lose sight of the fact 



1 Louis the Gentle confirms a division of the property of the abbey of St. 

 Dionysius, which the abbot Hilduien had made in 832 [cf. Bouquet, Historiens 

 de France, vi., p. 580]. He says in this document that "we give them this 

 property ... on the other side of Sequana the chapel of St. Audoenus for 

 repairing and clearing fishing-nets ... in Campiniago two houses for fish 

 . . . the water and fish in Tellis . . . and Gabaregium in Bagasinum with 

 all the manorial rights and lands attached, of which part lies in the parish of 

 Constantinus [Coutances] for taking large fish [' crassus piscis']." It is prob- 

 able that " crassus piscis " means Biscay whale (Balaena biscayensis or 

 glacialis), which at that time was common on these shores. In that case the 

 people of Cotentin would have carried on whaling as early as the beginning of 

 the ninth century, but of their methods we can form no conclusions. 



