^6 Norivay and the N'orivegians 



earth. For here ['in the Suiones' land'] the light of the 

 setting sun lingers on till sunrise bright enough to dim 

 the light of the stars. More than that, it is asserted 

 that the sound of his rising is to be heard, and the 

 forms of the gods and the glory round his head may be 

 seen. Only thus far — and here rumour seems truth — 

 does the world extend.' 



Here, is indeed, a picture whicli might excite the 

 imagination of a Roman of those days. We have 

 reached the very edge of the world, so near the place 

 where the sun goes down for his night's rest or emerges 

 again to make the day, that his light still hovers about 

 the place all night, and it is said (the paragraph is a 

 little obscure) that you get so near the blazing chariot 

 that you can distinguish the figure of the godlike 

 charioteer, and that the sound of his rising,' is to be 

 heard. Beyond this is the part where the earth seems 

 but half created out of the primal chaos in which there 

 was no distinction between land and sea. The sea is 

 sluggish or almost stagnant, and this is, like the Oceanus 

 of Homer's verse, the stream which encircles the whole 

 earth. One would say that the travellers who brought 

 back to Eome this picture of the north, and reported 

 how the light of sunset lingered on till dawn could 

 have been there only in summer weather. And yet in 

 this almost stagnant sea there seems to linger a picture 

 of the frozen, or half-frozen, ocean in winter time. Per- 

 haps the two most remarkable features of the north, the 

 twenty-four hours' day of midsummer and the frozen 

 sea of midwinter are here confounded in the account of 

 Tacitus. 



Here, at anyrate, is a beam, though a faint one, of 



