1100.-1200.] CHRONOLOGICAL HISTORY. H 



A Danish work *, which, there is reason to sup- 

 pose, was written about the middle of the twelfth 

 century, but, at any rate, of a date much earlier 

 than that which we assign to the first fishery of 

 the Basques, declares, that the Icelanders, about 

 this period, were in the habit of pursuing the whales, 

 wliich they killed on the shore, and that these is- 

 landers subsisted themselves on the flesh of some 

 one of the species f . And Langebek does not hesi- 

 tate to assert |, that the fishery of the whale (hval- 

 fangst) was practised in the most northern coun- 

 tries of Europe, in the ninth century. 



Whether the Normans, in the different invasions 

 which they made on France, might have carried the 

 method of harpooning and capturing the whale 

 thither, or whether these processes, as I have before 

 suggested, were known and practised by tlie fisher- 

 men inhabiting the Bay of Biscay before their in- 

 cursions, is uncertain ; nevertheless it would aj)- 

 pear, that the French were not unacquainted with 

 the business at a very remote period. Under the 



* Kongs Skugg-sio, 121. 



t The whale here referred to, is probably the species of 

 Delphinus, usually called Bottle-nose, which is yet occasion- 

 ally driven on shore by the mhabitants of Shetland, Orkney, 

 Feroe, and Iceland. 



X Langebek, Rer. Dan. hist. med. cevi, ii. 108, 



