VOYAGES IN THE POLAR SEA 



As will be seen, Svalbard is spoken of, here and in the 

 annals, as a land that is known. It is also mentioned in 

 Icelandic legendary sagas of the later Middle Ages. 



The " Historia Norvegiae " says of a country in the north : ^ 



"but in the north on the other side of Norway towards the east there ex- 

 tend various peoples who are in the toils of heathendom (ah, how sad), namely 

 the Kiriali and Kwasni, horned Finns 2 and both Bjarmas. But what people 

 dwell beyond these we do not know for certain, though when some sailors 

 were trying to sail back from Iceland to Norway and were driven by contrary 



Countries and seas discovered by the Norwegians and Icelanders. The 



shaded coasts were probably all known to them. The scale gives 



" doegr "-sailing, reckoning 2° (or 120 geographical miles) to each 



" doegr's " sail 



winds to the northern regions, they landed at last between the Greenlanders 

 and the Bjarmas, where they asserted that they had found people of extraor- 

 dinary size and the Land of Virgins [' virginum terram '] who are said to 

 conceive when they taste water. But Greenland is separated from these by 

 ice-clad skerries [' scopulis ']." 



the aforesaid Hornns it is two days' and two nights' sail to Sualberde in 

 haffsbaane (or haffsbotnen)." [F. Jonsson, 1899, p. 323.] 



1 Monumenta hist. Norv., ed. G. Storm, 1880, pp. 74 f., 79. 



2 In the "Rymbegla" [1780, p. 350] is mentioned, together with other 

 fabulous beings in this part of the world, " the people called * Hornfinnar,' they 

 have in their foreheads a horn bent dovmwards, and they are cannibals." 



167 



