IN NORTHERN MISTS 



occupation the knowledge of which they had not brought with 

 them from their native land. 



The Normans also took with them the knowledge of whaling 

 as far as the Mediterranean. In Guillelmus Appulus's descrip- 

 tion (of about 1099-1111) of the Norman conquest of southern 

 Italy it is related ^ that when Robert Guiscard comes to the town 

 of Regina in Calabria he hears 



"the rumor that there is a fish not far from the town in the waves of the 

 Adriatic, a great one with an immense body, of an incredible aspect, which the 

 people of Italy had not seen before. The winds of spring, on account of the 

 fresh water, had driven it thither. It was captured by the ingenuity of the 

 leader [i.e., Robert] by means of various arts. It swam into a net made of 

 fine ropes and when it was completely entangled in the nets with the heavy 

 iron, it dived down to the depths of the sea, but at last it was hit by the sea- 



Cutting up a whale [from an Icelandic MS. of the sixteenth century]. 



men in various projecting places, and with much pains dragged ashore. There 

 the people look at it as a strange monster. Then it is cut in pieces by order 

 of the leader. Thereof he obtains for himself and his men much food, and 

 also for the people who dwelt on the coasts of Calabria. And the Apulian 

 people also have a share of it." 



It looks as though the author's view was that the whale was 

 caught with nets and killed by the throwing of lances, which is 

 not impossible; but it may also be supposed that the poetical 

 description is somewhat misleading, and that the " nets with the 

 heavy iron" were the harpoon with its line (?). 



It may be regarded as doubtful whether the harpooning 

 of great whales in open waters was ever so actively carried on 

 and brought to such perfection during the Middle Ages in 

 Norway, Iceland, and Greenland as was evidently the case 

 in Normandy and especially among the Basques, from whom, 



iMuratori: Script, rer. Ital., v. p. 265. Cf. also Joh. Steenstrup. 1876, 

 i, p. 188. 

 162 



