IN NORTHERN MISTS 



of the draughtsman), have been designated in the Nancy text 

 by Latin numerals (Primum, Secundum, etc.), or are 

 simply named after each other (in Iceland), a sure sign that 

 Clavus neither knew nor had heard anything about these 

 coasts. 



On his later map, Clavus has made up for the want of names 

 in an astonishing way. On some of the coasts he has continued 

 to use Latin numerals for bays, etc., but side by side with this 

 on the shores of the Baltic and in Sweden he has used Danish 

 numerals, such as, " Forste aa fluuii ostia" (First river, 

 river-mouth), " Anden aa " (Second river) . . . , etc. The 

 southerners, who did not understand Danish, of course regarded 

 these as names, and subjected them to all sorts of corruptions. 

 Matters became worse when, in Gotland and Norway, he used 

 as the names of headlands and rivers the words of a meaning- 

 less rigmarole : " Enarene," "apocane," " uithu," *' wultu," 

 " segh," " sarlecrogh," etc. (evidently corresponding to chil- 

 dren's rigmaroles like " Anniken, fanniken, fiken, foken," etc.).^ 

 In Iceland he used the names of the runic characters for head- 

 lands and rivers; but most remarkable of all are his names in 

 Greenland, alternately for headlands and the mouths of rivers ( !). 

 If, as shown by Bjornbo and Petersen, these are read continu- 

 ously from the most northern headland on the east coast round 

 the south of the country, the following verse in the dialect of 

 Fiinen is the result : 



"Thaer boer eeynh manh secundum [ = ij?]2eyn Gronelandsz aa, 

 ooc Spieldebedh mundhe hanyd heyde; 

 meer hawer han aff nidefildh, 

 een hanh hawer flesk hinth feyde. 

 Nordh um driuer sandhin naa new new." 



1 Cf. Axel Olrik, Danske Studier, 1904, p. 215. 



2 This "secundum" in the MS. must doubtless have been inserted by a 

 copyist. Bjornbo and Petersen think the original had "ij," which the copyist 

 took for a Roman numeral and replaced by " secundum." As it might seem 

 strange that the man lived "'in' a river of Greenland," Axel Olrik thought 

 that the word might have been " wit " (" by," or " near ") ; but then it becomes 

 more difficult to understand how and why the word should have been re- 

 placed by " secundum," unless the copyist had some knowledge of Danish. 

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