IN NORTHERN MISTS 



must be that their armies came marching by the land route, 

 which, of course, is an impossibility, which, if he had been in 

 Greenland, would make him a worse romancer than if we 

 suppose his " ut uidi " to mean that he had seen something 

 of the sort stated in a narrative; but even this may be doubtful. 

 In the Bruges itinerary [cf. Storm, 1891, p. 20] or some similar 

 older authority, which we know he may have used, he may 

 have seen " Kareli " beyond Greenland spoken of as " in 

 truth a populus monstrosus." We have already said that on 

 the maps accompanying Marino Sanudo's work he may have 

 seen " Kareli infideles " marked on the mainland to the north- 

 east of Norway, or even on an island out in the northern sea, 

 and he would then naturally have connected the Karelians of 

 the itinerary with these Karelians north of Norway. If we add 

 to this that, on the Medicean map of the world, he saw the mass 

 of the continent extending from Scandinavia and the peninsula 

 corresponding to Greenland, northward into the unknown, and 

 that in the " Rymbegla " tract he saw mention of land at the 

 North Pole — then, indeed, his whole statement seems to admit 

 of a perfectly natural explanation. 



His lack of knowledge of the conditions in Greenland 

 appears again in his speaking of Pygmies and Karelians as two 

 different peoples, one apparently on the sea, and the other 

 marching in armies on land; and in his mentioning hide-boats 

 as something peculiar to the former in the fabulous northern 

 country, while he does not say that the Karelians in Greenland 

 had boats or went to sea. If he had only spoken to people 

 who had been in Greenland, he could hardly have avoided hear- 

 ing of the Skraslings, who come to meet every traveler in their 

 hide-boats. 



It is an important difference between Clavus's first and 

 second maps (and also between his first and second texts) that, 

 on the latter, Greenland is given a west coast. Its form bears 

 an altogether striking resemblance to the west coast of the 

 corresponding peninsula on the Medicean mappamundi, so 

 that there can be no doubt that this coast is copied from 

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