i.] EARLY EXPLORERS. 39 



educated and uneducated, rich and poor, old and young. 

 According to a statement made by a lady resident on the spot, 

 very severe attacks of scurvy are cured without fail by preserved 

 cloudberries and rum. Several spoonfuls are given to the 

 patient daily, and a coujdIc of quarts of the medicine is said 

 to be sufficient for the complete cure of children severely 

 attacked by the disease. I mention this new method of using 

 the cloudberry, the old well-known antidote to scurvy, because 

 I am convinced that future Polar expeditions, if they will avail 

 themselves of the knowledge of this cure, will find that it 

 conduces to the health and comfort of all on board, and that 

 the medicine is seldom refused, unless it be by too obstinate 

 abstainers from spirituous liquors. 



It enters into the plan of this work, as the Vega sails along, 

 to give a brief account of the voyages of the men who first 

 opened the route along which she advances, and who thus, each 

 in his measure, contributed to jirepare the way for the voyage 

 whereby the passage round Asia and Europe has now at last 

 been accomplished. On this account it is incumbent on me 

 to begin by giving a narrative of the voyage of discovery during 

 which the northernmost point of Europe was first doubled, the 

 rather because this narrative has besides great interest for 

 us, as containing much remarkable information regarding the 

 condition of the former poj)ulation in the north of Scandinavia. 



This voyage was accomplished about a thousand years ago 

 by a Norwegian, Othere, from Halogaland or Helgoland, that 

 part of the Norwegian coast which lies between 65° and Q(j° 

 N. L. Othere, who appears to have travelled far and wide, came 

 in one of his excursions to the court of the famous English 

 king, Alfred the Great. In presence of this king he gave, in a 

 simple, graphic style, a sketch of a voyage which he had under- 

 taken from his home in Norway towards the north and east. The 

 narrative has been preserved by its having been incorporated, 

 along with an account of the travels of another Norseman, 

 Wulfstan, to the southern part of the Baltic, in the first chapter 

 of Alfred's Anglo-Saxon reproduction of the history of Paulus 

 Orosius : De Miseria Mundi} This work has since been 



1 Orosius was born in Spain in the fourth century after Christ, and 

 died in the beginning of the fifth. He was a Christian, and wrote his 

 work to show that the workl, in opposition to the statements of several 

 heathen writers, had been visited during the heathen period by quite as 

 great cahimities as during the Christian. This is probably the reason 

 why his monotonous sketch of all the misfortunes and calamities which be- 

 fell the lieathen world was long so highly valued, was spread in many copies 

 and printed in umumerable editions, the oldest at Vienna in 1471. \\\ 

 the Anglo-Saxon translation now in question, Othere's account of his 

 journey is inserted in the first chapter, which properly forms a geogru- 



