MEDIiEVAL CARTOGRAPHY 



knots on them, and tell them to untie three or more knots of the ball, accord- 

 ing to the strength of wind that is desired. By making magic with these 

 [the knots] through their heathen practices, they set the demons in motion, 

 and raise a greater or less wind, according as they loosen more or fewer knots 

 in the thread, and sometimes they bring about such a wind that the unfortu- 

 nate ones who place reliance on such things perish by a righteous judgment." 



It is possible that the name " Winlandia " itself is a 

 confusion of Finland (i.e., the land of the Finns [Lapps], 

 Finmark) with Vinland (cf. above, p. 31); although the 

 description of the country must refer to the former. It may be 

 supposed that a misunderstanding of the name was the origin 

 of the myth of selling wind being connected with it. The idea 

 persisted, and the same myth is given so late as by Knud Leem 

 [1767, p. 3] from an anonymous book of travels in northern 

 Norway. 



Of Iceland the " Geographia " says : 



" * Yselandia ' is the uttermost part of Europe beyond Norway on the north. 

 ... Its more distant parts are continually under ice by the shore of the 

 ocean on the north, where the sea freezes to ice in the terrible cold. On the 

 east it has upper Scythia, on the south Norway, on the west the Hibernian 

 Ocean. ... It is called Yselandia as the land of ice, because it is said that 

 there the mountains freeze together to the hardness of ice. Crystals are found 

 there. In that region are also found many great and wild white bears, that 

 break the ice in pieces with their claws and make large holes, through which 

 they plunge down into the water and take fish under the ice. They draw 

 them up through the said holes, and carry them to the shore, and live on them. 

 The land is unfertile in crops except in a few places. . . . Therefore the 

 people live for the most part on fish and hunting and meat. Sheep cannot 

 live there on account of the cold, and therefore the inhabitants protect them- 

 selves against the cold and cover their bodies with the skins of the wild beasts 

 they take in hunting. . . . The people are very stout, powerful, and very 

 white ['alba']." 



In Higden*s " Polychronicon " Gothia is also spoken of as 

 lower Scythia, but among the provinces of Asia, although it is 

 said that it lies in Europe; it has on the north Dacia and the 

 northern ocean. But the geographical confusion in this work 

 is greater; as already mentioned (p. 31) the countries of the 

 Scandinavians are described together with the Insulae For- 

 tunatae, Wyntlandia, etc., as islands in the outer ocean. The 

 disagreement between Higden's text and his map gives us an 



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