OTHERE’S ARCTIC EXPEDITION 
47 
Orosius : De Miseria Mundi} This work has since been 
the subject of translation and exposition by a great number 
of learned men, among whom may be named here the 
Scandinavians, H. G. PoRTHAN of Abo, Rasmus Rask and C- 
Chr. Rafn of Copenhagen. 
Regarding Othere’s relations to King Alfred statements differ. 
Some inquirers suppose that he was only on a visit at the court 
of the king, others that he had been sent out by King Alfred 
on voyages of discovery, and finally, others say that he was 
a prisoner of war, who incidentally narrated his experience 
of foreign lands. Othere’s account of his travels runs as 
follows:—■ 
“ Othere told his lord, King Alfred, that he dwelt northmost 
of all the Northmen. He said that he dwelt in the land to the 
northward, along the West-Sea; he said, however, that that 
land is very long north from thence, but it is all waste, except 
in a few places where the Fins at times dwell, hunting in the 
winter, and in the summer fishing in that sea. He said that he 
was desirous to try, once on a time, how far that country extended 
due north, or whether any one lived to the north of the waste. 
^ Orosius was born in Spain in the fourth century after Christ, and 
died in the beginning of the fifth. He was a Christian, and wrote his 
work to show that the world, in opposition to the statements of several 
heathen writers, had been visited during the heathen period by quite as 
great calamities as during the Christian. This is probably the reason 
why his monotonous sketch of all the misfortunes and calamities which be¬ 
fell the heathen world was long so highly valued, was spread in many copies 
and printed in innumerable editions, the oldest at Vienna in 1471. In 
the Anglo-Saxon translation now in question, Othere’s account of his 
journey is inserted in the first chapter, which properly forms a geogra¬ 
phical introduction to the work written by King Alfred. This old 
Anglo-Saxon work is preserved in England in two beautiful manuscripts 
from the ninth and tenth centuries. Orosius’ history itself is now for¬ 
gotten, but King Alfred’s introduction, and especially his account of 
Othere’s and Wulfstan’s travels, have attracted much attention from in¬ 
quirers, as appears from the list of translations of this part of King 
Alfred’s Orosius, given by Joseph Bos worth in his King Alfred’s Anglo- 
Saxon version of the Compendious History of the World hy Orosius. 
London, 1859. 
