THE KING'S MIRROR 19 



where in Norway. He gives three theories to account 

 for these phenomena: some ascribe them to a girdle of 

 fire which encircles the earth beyond the outer ocean; 

 others hold that the lights are merely rays of the sun 

 which find their way past the edges of the earth while 

 the sun is coursing underneath; but his own belief is 

 that frost and cold have attained to such a power in the 

 Arctic that they are able to put forth light.* In his 

 opinion cold is a positive force as much as heat or any 

 other form of energy. To the men of the author's time 

 there was nothing strange in this belief: it seems to 

 have been held by many even before the thirteenth 

 century that ice could under certain conditions produce 

 heat and even burn.f 



Among the author's scientific notions very little that 

 is really original can be found. It is Riant's belief that 

 he drew to some extent from Oriental sources, the lore 

 of the East having come into the North as the spoil of 

 crusaders or as the acquisitions of Norwegian pilgrims .{ 

 It may be doubted, however, whether the Saracenic 

 contribution is a real one: almost everything that the 

 author of the Speculum Regale presents as his belief can 

 be found in the Latin scientific manuals of the middle 

 ages. He alludes to the writings of Isidore of Seville, and 

 * C. xix. 



t Thus Solinus (pp. xxxiv, xxxvii, 236) says " the sea-ice on this island ig- 

 nites itself on collision, and when it is ignited it burns like wood." See Nan- 

 sen, In Northern Mists, I, 193. Adam von Bremen (Gesta Hammaburgensis 

 Ecclesiae Pontificum, iv, 34) writes: " they report this remarkable thing 

 about it that this ice appears so black and dry that, on account of its age, it 

 burns when it is kindled." Ibid. The same belief appears in a German poem 

 Meregarto: " Thereby the ice there becomes so hard as crystal, that they 

 make a fire above it till the crystal glows." Ibid., I, 181. 

 t Riant, Expeditions el Pelerinages des Scandinavcs en Terre Sainte, 440-441. 



