IN NORTHERN MISTS 



and one with women, in the extreme northern ocean [Seippel, 

 1896]. Qodama Ibn Gafar (ob. 948 or 949 A.D.) says of the 

 encircling ocean (the Oceanus of the Greeks) in which the 

 British Isles lie that 



"it is impossible to penetrate very far into this ocean, the ships cannot get 

 any farther there; no one knows the real state of this ocean." [Cf. De Goeje 

 in Ibn Khordadbah, 1889, p. 174.] 



Abu All Ahmad Ibn Ruste, about 912 A.D., says of the 

 Russians (" Rus," that is, Scandinavians, usually Swedes) 

 that they live on an island, which is surrounded by a sea, is 

 three days' journey (about seventy-five miles) long, and is 

 covered with forest and bogs; it is unhealthy and saturated 

 to such a degree that the soil quakes where one sets foot on it. 

 They come in ships to the land of the Slavs and attack them, etc. 

 They have neither fixed property, nor towns, nor agriculture; 

 their only means of support is the trade in sable, squirrel, and 

 other skins, which they sell to anyone who will buy them. 

 They are tall, of handsome appearance, and courageous, etc.^ 

 Probably there is here a confusion of various statements; the 

 ideas about the unhealthy bog-lands are doubtless connected 

 with northern Russia, and the trade in sables can scarcely be 

 referred to the Swedes on the Baltic.^ 



The well-known historian, traveler, and geographer, Abu'l 

 Hasan 'All al-Mas'udi (ob. 956), in his book (allegorically 

 entitled " Gold-washings and Diamond-mines ") repeats certain 

 Arab astronomers who say : 



"that at the end of the inhabited world in the north there is a great sea, of 

 which part lies under the north pole, and that in the vicinity of it there is a 

 town [or land] which is called Tulia, beyond which no inhabited country is 

 found." He mentions two rivers in Siberia: "the black and the white Irtish; 

 both are considerable, and they surpass in length the Tigris and Euphrates; 

 the distance between their two mouths is about ten days. On their banks the 

 Turkish tribes, Kaimak and Ghuzz, have their camps winter and summer." 



He also states that the black fox's skin, which is the most 

 valuable of all, comes from the country of the Burtasians 



1 Cf. V. Thomsen, 1882, p. 34. 



2 As to the trade in furs, etc., see above, pp. 144 f. 

 198 



