46 
THE VOYAGE OF THE VEGA. 
[chap. 
cloudberries and rum. Several spoonfuls are given to the 
patient daily, and a couple of quarts of the medicine is said 
to be sufficient for the complete cure of children severely 
attacked by the disease. I mention this new method of using 
the cloudberry, the old‘well-known antidote to scurvy, because 
I am convinced that future Polar expeditions, if they will avail 
themselves of the knowledge of this cure, will find that it 
conduces to the health and comfort of all on board, and that 
the medicine is seldom refused, unless it be by too obstinate 
abstainers from spirituous liquors. 
It enters into the plan of this work, as the Vega sails along, 
to give a brief account of the voyages of the men who first 
opened the route along which she advances, and who thus, each 
in his measure, contributed to prepare the way for the voyage 
whereby the passage round Asia and Europe has now at last 
been accomplished. On this account it is incumbent on me 
to begin by giving a narrative of the voyage of discovery during 
which the northernmost point of Europe was first doubled, the 
rather because this narrative has besides great interest for 
us, as containing much remarkable information regarding the 
condition of the former population in the north of Scandinavia. 
This voyage was accomplished about a thousand years ago 
by a Norwegian, Othere, from Halogaland or Helgoland, that 
part of the Norwegian coast which lies between 65° and 66° 
N. L. Othere, who appears to have travelled far and wide, came 
in one of his excursions to the court of the famous English 
king, Alfred the Great. In presence of this king he gave, in a 
simple, graphic style, a sketch of a voyage which he had under¬ 
taken from his home in Norw ay towards the north and east. The 
narrative has been preserved by its having been incorporated, 
along with an account of the travels of another Norseman, 
Wulfstan, to the southern part of the Baltic, in the first chapter 
of Alfred’s Anglo-Saxon reproduction of th6 history of Paulus 
