42 



THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 



[chap. 



decoy rein-deer, which are very valuable among the Fins, because 

 they catch the wild rein-deer with them. 



" He was one of the first men in that country, yet he had not 

 more than twenty horned cattle, twenty sheep and twenty swine, 

 and the little that he ploughed he ploughed with horses. But their 

 wealth consists mostly in the rent paid them by the Fins. That 

 lent is in skins of animals and birds' feathers, and whalebone, 

 and in ship-ropes made of whales' ^ hides, and of seals'. Every 

 one pays according to his birth ; the best-born, it is said, pay the 

 skins of fifteen martens, and five rein-deers, and one bear's skin, 

 ten ambers of feathers, a bear's or otter's skin kyrtle, and two ship- 

 ropes, each sixty ells long, made either of whale or of seal hide." 



NORSE SHIP OF TIIK TENTH CENTURY. 



Drawn with reference to the vessel found at Sandefjord in 18S0, under the superintendence of 

 Ingvald Uudset, Assistant at the Christiauia University's collection of Northern antiquities. 



The continuation of Othere's narrative consists of a sketch of 

 the Scandinavian peninsula, and of a journey which he under- 

 took from his home towards the south. King Alfred then gives 

 an account of the Dane, Wulfstan's voyage in the Baltic. This 

 part of the introduction to Orosius, however, has too remote 

 a connection with my subject to be quoted in this historical 

 sketch. 



It appears from Othere's simple and very clear narrative that 



1 In this case is meant by " whale " evidently the walrus, whose skin is 

 still used for lines by the Norwegian wah-us-hunters, by the Eskimo, and 

 the Chukchis. The skin of the true whale might probably be used for 

 the same purpose, although, on account of its thickness, perhaps scarcely 

 with advantage without the use of special tools for cutting it up. 



