I.] OTHERE'S ARCTIC EXPEDITION. 41 



Beorraas had well cultivated their country, but they (Othere 

 and his companions) did not dare to enter it. And the Ter- 

 finna ^ land was all waste, except where hunters, fishers, or 

 fowlers had taken up their quarters. 



" The Beormas told him many particulars both of their own 

 land and of other lands lying around them ; but he knew not 

 what was true because he did not see it himself It seemed to 

 him that the Fins and the Beormas spoke nearly the same lan- 

 guage. He went thither chiefly, in addition to seeing the 

 country, on account of the walruses,^ because they have very 

 noble bones in their teeth, of which the travellers brought some 

 to the king ; and their hides are very good for ship-ropes. 

 These whales are much less than other whales, not being longer 

 than seven ells. But in his own country is the best whale-hunt- 

 ing. There they are eight-and-forty ells long, and the largest 

 are fifty ells long. Of these he said he and five others had killed 

 sixty in two days.^ He was a very wealthy man in those pos- 

 sessions in which their wealth consists, that is, in wild deer. He 

 had at the time he came to the king, six hundred unsold tame 

 deer. These deer they call rein-deer, of which there were six 



1 By Fins are here meant Lapps ; by Terfins the inhabitants of the 

 Tersk coast of Russian Laphind. 



2 Walruses are still captured yearly on the ice at the mouth of the 

 White Sea, not very far from the shore (cf. A. E. Nordenskiold, Redogor- 

 elsefor en expedition till mynningen af Jenisej och Sibirien ar 1875, p. 23 ; 

 Bihang till Vetenshaps-Ahad . Handl. B. iv. No. 1). Now they occur there 

 indeed only in small numbers, and, it appears, not in the immediate neigh- 

 bourhood of land ; but there is scarcely any doubt that informer days they 

 were common on the most northerly coasts of Norway. They have evidently 

 been driven away thence in the same w-ay as they are now being driven 

 away from Spitzbergen. With what rapidity their numbers at the latter 

 jilace are yearly diminished, may be seen from the fact that during my 

 many Arctic journeys, beginning in 1858, I never saw walruses on Bear 

 Island or the west coast of Spitzbergen, but have conversed with hunters 

 who ten years before had seen them in herds of hundreds and thousands. 

 I have myself seen such herds in Hinloopen Strait in July 1861, but when 

 during my journeys in 1868 and 1872-3 I again visited the same regions, 

 I saw there not a single walrus. 



^ As it appears to be impossible for six men to kill sixty great whales 

 in two days, this passage has caused the editors of Othere's narrative 

 much perplexity, which is not wonderful if great whales, as the Balcena 

 mi/sficeius, are here meant. But if the narrative relates to the smaller 

 species of the whale, a similar catch may still, atthe present day, be made 

 on the coasts of the Polar countries. For various small species go together 

 in great shoals ; and, as they occasionally come into water so shallow that 

 they are left aground at ebb, they can be killed with ease. Sometimes, 

 too, a successful attempt is made to drive them into shallow w^ater. That 

 whales visit the coast of Norway in spring in large shoals dangerous to 

 the navigator is also stated by Jacob Ziegler, in his work, Quce intus conti- 

 neiifur Si/ria, Palest'ma, Arabia, jEgyptus, Hchondia, &c. Argentorati, 

 1532, p. 97. 



