IN NORTHERN MISTS 



erly direction it extends behind the land of the Turks, past mountains which 

 no one traverses and lands where no one dwells, to the uttermost regions of 

 the land of the Chinese, and because these are also uninhabited, and because 

 it is impossible to sail any farther upon it [the ocean], we know nothing of 

 its connection with the eastern ocean." 



Shams ad-din Abu 'Abdallah Muhammad ad-Dimashqi (1256- 

 1327) in his cosmography has little of interest about the North, 

 and his ideas on the subject are obscure. 



" The habitable part of the earth extends as far as 66 ^^ ° ; ^ the regions 

 beyond, up to 90^, are desert and uninhabited; no known animals are found 

 there on account of the great quantity of snow and the thick darkness, and the 

 too great distance from the sun. ... It is the climate of darkness." It 

 lies in the middle of the seventh climate, which surrounds it as a circular belt, 

 and " around it the vault of heaven turns like the stone in a mill. 



" The sea beyond the deserts of the Qipdjaks [southern Russia, Turkestan 

 and western Siberia] in latitude 63° has a length of eight days' journey, with a 

 breadth varying to as little as three. In this sea there is a great island [prob- 

 ably Scandinavia], inhabited by people of tall stature, with fair complexions, 

 fair hair and blue eyes, who scarcely understand hum^an speech.^ It is called 

 the Frozen Sea because in winter it freezes entirely, and because it is sur- 

 rounded by mountains of ice. These are formed when the wind in winter 

 breaks the waves upon the shore; as they freeze they are cast upon the icy 

 edges, which grow in layers little by little, until they form heights with sepa- 

 rate summits, and walls that surround them." ^ 



He has besides various strange fables about the northern 

 regions and the fabulous creatures there. Of the sea to the 

 north of Britain he says that its coasts 



"turn in a north-westerly direction, and there is the great bay that is called 

 the Varangians' Sea, and the Varangians are an inarticulate people who scarcely 

 understand human speech, and they are the best of the Slavs, and this arm of 

 the sea is the Sea of Darkness in the north." 



1 In another passage [c. i. 3] he says that " the habitable part extends . . . 

 towards the north as far as 63° or 665°, where at the summer solstice the day 

 attains a length of twenty hours" [cf. Ptolemy, Vol. I, p. 117.] But he never- 

 theless thinks (like the Greeks) that at the north pole the day was six months 

 and the night equally long. 



- An expression from the Koran, which is used of barbarous people (Gog 

 and Magog) who do not understand the speech of civilized human beings. 



y Cf. A. F. Mehren, 1874, pp. 19, 158 f., 21, 193. 

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