20 THE KING'S MIRROR 



there can be little doubt that he was acquainted with 

 the ideas of the great Spaniard, though he does not ac- 

 cept them all. His ideas as to the shape of the earth and 

 the probable causes of earthquakes may have been de- 

 rived from the writings of the Venerable Bede, or from 

 one of his numerous followers. The divisions of time are 

 discussed in many of the scientific treatises of the middle 

 ages, but the division of the hour into sixtieths called 

 ostenta is probably not found in any manual written be- 

 fore the ninth century; so far as the writer has been able 

 to determine, ostenta, meaning minutes, first appears in 

 the works -of Rabanus Maurus.* 



The discussion of these scientific notions has its chief 

 value in showing to what extent the Norwegians of the 

 thirteenth century were acquainted with the best theo- 

 ries of the age as to the great facts of the universe. The 

 author's own contribution to the scientific learning of 

 his time lies almost exclusively in the field of geography. 

 " Beyond comparison the most important geographical 

 writer of the medieval North," says Dr. Nansen, " and 

 at the same time one of the first in the whole of medieval 

 Europe, was the unknown author who wrote the King's 

 Mirror. ... If one turns from contemporary or earlier 

 European geographical literature, with all its supersti- 

 tion and obscurity, to this masterly work, the difference 

 is very striking." f This is doubtless due to the fact that 

 pur author wfl^ riot. . Roistered mon^ who was content 

 to copy the ideas and expressions of his predecessors with 

 such changes as would satisfy a theological mind, but a 



* Rabanus Maurus died in 856. 



t Nansen, In Northern Mists, II, 242. 



