VOYAGES IN THE POLAR SEA 



It is thus extremely improbable that such hardy hunters should 

 have stopped there, and not continued to move eastward, where 

 there was such valuable prey to be secured. We must suppose 

 that at least they reached the west coast of Novaya Zemlya, 

 where there was walrus and seal in abundance. That such was 

 the case is just as probable as the reverse is improbable, and as 

 it is improbable that expeditions of this kind should have found 

 mention in the sagas. That the Norwegians knew Novaya Zem- 

 lya may perhaps be concluded from the mediaeval Icelandic ge- 

 ography (cf. Vol. I, p. 313, Vol. II, p. i), according to which the 

 land extended northward from Bjarmeland round the north of 

 Hafsbotn (the Polar Sea) as far as Greenland, making the latter 

 continuous with Europe (cf. the map, p. 2). The knowledge 

 that the west coast of Novaya Zemlya extended northward 

 into the unknown may have given rise to such an idea. It was 

 general in Scandinavia and Iceland in the latter part of the 

 Middle Ages, whilst Adam of Bremen speaks of Greenland 

 as an island, like Iceland and other islands in the northern 

 ocean. The discovery of " Svalbard " (Spitzbergen?) in 1194 

 may, as we shall see directly, have lent support to the belief in 

 this connection by land. 



Saxo Grammaticus in his Danish history, of the beginning 

 of the thirteenth century, also has mythical tales of voyages 

 to Bjarmeland. Among others, the legendary king Gorm 

 and Thorkel Adelfar on a mythical voyage to the north and 

 east came first to Halogaland, then to " Hither Bjarmeland," 

 which had steep shores and much cattle, and then to a land 

 with continual cold and heavy snow, without any warmth 

 of summer, rich in impenetrable forests, which was without 

 produce of the fields, full of beasts unknown elsewhere, and 

 where many rivers rushed through rocky beds. This land 

 was " Farther Bjarmeland." ^ If we except the forest, this 

 description suits Novaya Zemlya better than the Kola peninsula ; 

 but it is extremely doubtful whether any real knowledge of 



1 Saxo, viii. 287 f . ed. by H. Jantzen, 1900, pp. 447 f . ; ed. by P. Herrmann, 

 1901, pp. 385 f. 



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