NORTHERN AUTHORITIES 



with the void outer ocean. But this view is first found in 

 the very late copy (seventeenth century) of " Gripla," and of 

 the somewhat older map of Gudbrand Torlaksson (Torlacius) 

 of 1606 [Torfaeus, 1706; pi. i. p. 21], where " Ginnunga 

 Gap " is marked as the name of 

 the strait between Greenland and 

 America. What " Ginnungagap " ' 

 really was seems never to have 

 been quite clear, different people 

 having no doubt had different 

 ideas about it; but when, as here, 

 it is used as the name of a strait 

 through which the outer ocean 

 enters, it cannot any longer be 

 an abyss; at the most it may 

 have been a maelstrom, or whirl- 

 pool, which, indeed, is suggested 

 by the whirlpool on Jon Gud- 

 mundsson's map (cf. p. 34). But 

 even this interpretation of the 

 name became effaced, and in 

 another MS. of the seventeenth 

 century (see p. 35) it is simply [Prom an Icelandic MS. of 1363] 

 used as a name for the great 

 ocean to the west of Spain (that is, the Atlantic). 



On the other hand we have seen (pp. 150 f.) that ideas of 

 whirlpools in the northern seas appear to have been widely 

 spread in the Middle Ages. There is a possibility, as already 

 hinted (Vol. I, p. 303), that when, in Ivar Bardsson's description of 

 the northern west coast of Greenland, " the many whirlpools 

 that there lie all over the sea" are spoken of, it was thought 

 that here was the boundary of the ocean and of the world, and 

 that it was formed by the many whirlpools, or abysses, in the 

 sea. In that case these cannot be regarded merely as mael- 

 stroms like the Moskenstrom, but more like the true Ginnunga- 

 gap. But this is extremely uncertain ; it may again have been one 



241 



