178 



NOTES AND QUERIES. 



[No. 42. 



vre add, the perpetual snows, and many other xerj 

 striking peculiarities, so new and seemingly inex- 

 plicable to a southern traveller or listener. 



Succeeding writers seem to liave had fewer 

 scruples, anil to liave admitted the idea without 

 consideration. Thorkelin, the Dane, (when in 

 England to copy out the poem o{ BeoiouJf t'ov pub- 

 lication at Copenhagen), gave a very flattering testi- 

 mony to Forster's notes, in Bihliotheca Tupogra- 

 phica, vol. ix. p. [891.] et seq.^ though I believe he 

 subsequently much modified it. Our own writers 

 who had to remark upon the subject, Sharon Tur- 

 ner, and Wheaton, in liis Histoi-y of the Northmen, 

 may be excused I'roin concurring in an opinion in 

 which they had only a verbal interest. Professor 

 Ingram, in his translation of Othe7-e\i Voyage 

 (Oxford, 1807, 4t(). p. 96. note), gives the follow- 

 ing rather singvdar deduction for the appellation : 

 Quenland was the land of the Amazons; the 

 Amazons were fair and white-faced, therefore 

 Cit'e^i-^ze the White Sea, asForster had deduced it: 

 and so, having satisfied himself with this kind of 

 Sorites, follows pretty closely in Forster's wake. 

 But that continental writers, who took up the in- 

 vestigation avowedly as indispensable to the ear- 

 liest history of their native countries, should have 

 given their concurrence and approval so easily, I 

 must confess, astonishes me. 



Dahlman, whilst Professor of History at Kiel, 

 felt himself called iipon by his situation to edit and 

 explain this work to his countrymen more detailedly 

 than previously, and at vol. ii. p. 40.5. of the work 

 cited by Mr. Singer gives all Alfred's original 

 notices. I shall at present only mention his inter- 

 pretation of Que7i Sae, which he translates Welt- 

 meer; making it equivalent to the previous Gar- 

 secg or Oceamts. He mentions the reasonings of 

 Rask and Porthan, of Abo, the two exceptions to 

 the general opinion (which I shall subsequently 

 notice), without following, on this point, what they 

 had previously so much more clearly exi)lained. 

 The best account of what had previously been 

 done on the subject is contained in Beckniann's 

 Litteratur der alten Reisen (s. 450.) ; and inciden- 

 tal notices of such passages as fall within the scope 

 of their works, are found in Schltizer's AUgemeine 

 nordische Geschichte, Thummann's Untosiichungcn, 

 Walch's AUgemeine Bihliothcl\ Sciioning's Gamli 

 nordinke Geographie, Nyerup's Historisk-statistik 

 Skildei-ing, ^-c, in Norge i addre og nyere Tider, 

 in Sprengel's Geschichte, and byWorbs, in Kruse's 

 Deutsche Altei-th inner. Professor Ludw. Giese- 

 brecht published in 1843, at Berlin, a most excel- 

 lent Wendische Geschichte, in 3 vols. Svo. ; but 

 his inquiries concerning this Periplus (vol. iii. 

 p. 290.) are the weakest part of his work, having 

 mostly followed blindly the opinions to which the 

 great fame and political importance of Dahlman 

 had given full credence and authority. He was 

 not aware of the importance of Alfred's notices for 



the countries he describes, and particularly for the 

 elucidation of the vexed question of Adam of 

 Bremen's Jidin and Helmold's Veneta, by an inves- 

 tigation of Othere's Schiringsheal, and winch I en- 

 deavoured to point out in a pamphlet I published 

 in the German language, and a copy of which I 

 had the pleasure of presenting, amongst others, to 

 Professor Dahlman himself at the Germanisten 

 Versammlung at Llibcck in 1847. To return, 

 however, to the Cicena land and sae, it is evident 

 that the commentators, who are principally induced 

 by their bearings to Sweon land to look upon the 

 latter as the White Sea, have overlooked the cir- 

 cumstance that the same name is found earlier as 

 an arm of the Wendel or ]\Iediterranean Sea; and 

 it is evident that one denomination cannot be taken 

 in a double meaning; and therefore, when we find 

 Alfred following the boundaries of Europe from 

 Greece, " Crecalande ut on J)one AVendelsae 

 pnord on hone Garsecge ■] ])e man Cwen saehaet," 

 it is certain that we have here an arm of the Wen- 

 del Sea (here mistaken for the ocean) that runs 

 from Greece to the north, and it cannot also after- 

 wards be the AVhite Sea. It will be necessary to 

 bring this, in conformity with the subsequent men- 

 tion of Cicen-Sae, more to the northward, which, 

 as I have just said, has been hitherto principally 

 attended to. 



In Welsh topography no designation scarcely 

 recurs ofiener than Gwent (or, according to Welsh 

 pronunciation, and as it may be written, Cwent) 

 in various modifications, as Gwyndyd, Gwenedd, 

 Gynneth, Gwynne, &c. &c. ; and on the authority 

 of Gardnor's History of Monjtiouthshire (Appen- 

 dix 14.), imder which I willingly cloak my igno- 

 rance of the Welsh language, I learn that Givent 

 or IVent is "spelt with or without a G, according 

 to the word that precedes it, according to certain 

 rules of grammar in the ancient British language, 

 and that Venedotia for North Wales is from the 

 same root." The author might certainly have 

 said, "the same word Latinized." But exactly 

 the same affinity or identity of names is found in 

 a locality that suits the place we are in search of: 

 in an arm of the Mediterranean stretching from 

 Greece northwards ; viz. in the Adriatic, which 

 had for its earliest name Sinus Venedicus, translated 

 in modern Italian into Golfo di Venezia. 



Of the multitudes of authorities for this assump- 

 tion I need only mention Strabo, who calls the 

 first settlers on its northern end (whence the whole 

 gulph was denominated) "Eueroi ; or Livy, who 

 merely Latinizes the term as Heneti, lib. i. cap. i., 

 "Antenorem cum multitudine Henetum." With 

 the fable of Antenor and his Trojan colony we have 

 at present no further relation. The name alone, 

 and its universality at this locality, is all that we 

 require. I shall now show that we can follow these 

 Veneti (which, that it is a generic name of situation, 

 I must now omit to prove, from the compression 



