32 



attached to the northern lands on this type of map, and which 

 have proved to be pure Danish words*). A Hst of these with 

 variants from various Italian editions is found, for instance, in 

 Nordenskiöld's Periplus. With respect to the names in Green- 

 land, which are especially attached to rivers and promontories, 

 they appear to be pretty corrupt and the majority of them have 

 never been satisfactorily interpreted. The name Nice-fluvius 

 given to one of the southernmost rivers on the west coast 

 undeniably suggests the Old Norse hnisa, a porpoise (delphinus 

 phocaceus), Avhich to this day occurs in the Greenlandic Eskimo 

 language as an old Scandinavian loan-word with its original 

 meaning retained. If this is accidental or not must still remain 

 an open question. 



On the Nancy map, we read at the top to the left, in the 

 northernmost part of Greenland : '■'■Carelorum infidelium regio 

 maxime septentriorialis'\ ,,the region of the heathen Careli 

 fartherst north". Both Storm and Fischer maintain that Norden- 

 skiöld was wrong when he assumed this to refer to the Finnish 

 Careli. For they had already before the end of the 13'^ C. 

 been converted to Christianity by Thorgil Knutson, so that the 

 expression "heathen" would no longer apply to them, to say 

 nothing of the fact that their land lay elsewhere. The heathen 

 Careli in Greenland cannot be anything but the Eskimo. 



Claudius Clavus knew more about them than what has 

 been adopted in the Nancy Codex. He is especially mentioned 

 in Schoner's and Irenicus's geographical works from the 

 16'^ С as their authority**) for their accounts of Greenland. 



Thus for instance the rivers from Lifland and farther north: fursta П., 

 avenus fl., trediena fi., fierdas fl. (i. e. first, second, third, fourth river). 

 These two unique passages deserve to be quoted here: 



Franciscus Irenicus: Germaniae exegeseos volumina XII. Hage- 

 noae (i. e. Hagenau in Elsass) 1518: "Grolandiae praeterea insulae 

 Œersonesus dependet a terra inaccessibili a parte versus septentrionem 

 vel ignota propter glaciem. Proficiscuntur tamen CaroU infidèles 

 quotidie cum exercitu in Grolandiam et hoc absque dubio ex altera 



