The Old English text is part of King Alfred's translation of the fifth-century historian Paulus Orosius' world history. To supplement Orosius' descriptions of southern Europe, King Alfred added contemporary accounts of northern Europe by the travellers Ohthere (along the coast of Norway) and Wulfstan (in the Baltic). Ohthere's account is the earliest existing description of Norway.






























It is generally held that Ohthere lived in Senja, in what is now Lenvik.






























The first six days' sailing took Ohthere as far as Nordkapp (or Nordkinn, a little further east). He then sailed for four days along the coast of what is now Finnmark and Murmansk province to the northeast corner of the Kola peninsula. He then sailed south for five days into the White sea.






























The Terfinna land seems to be echoed in a modern placename (which I must admit I only know of from the Encyclopedia Britannica, s.v. Kola peninsula): "The low cliffs of the Tersky coast at the eastern end of the peninsula overlook the narrow entrance to the White Sea, known as the Gorlo (Throat)."






























The medieval English ell was, according to most sources, the equivalent of 45 inches (114.3 cms). The Anglo-Saxon ell, however, corresponded to the ancient Roman cubitus and comprised 18 inches (45.7 cms). The length of a walrus is then, according to Ohthere, 3.2 metres, which is strikingly accurate: the Encyclopedia Britannica gives the length of a male walrus as 3.3 metres. The whales that Ohthere claims to have caught in great numbers in the waters off Senja thus measured 22-23 metres. This would agree with the size (18-24 metres, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica) of the fin whale (Balænoptera physalus, N. finnhval), which is still found in the northern Atlantic. "It is a commercially valuable species but has been substantially reduced in numbers by overhunting." (E.B.) Apparently, Ohthere started the overhunting.






























Ohthere's description of norêmanna land makes sense only if we interpret it to mean 'the arable lowland regions of Norway'. The wilde moras mentioned in the next sentence will then correspond to both the mountain regions on the Swedish border (wiî èastan) and regions such as Hardangervidda and Dovrefjell within Norway (wiî uppon).






























Ohthere's Scìringes hèal, Old Norse Skíringssalr, was located in the neighbourhood of modern Larvik.






























The broadest part of norêmanna land, which is said to lie 'towards the east' (èasteweard), is the agricultural district in southeastern Norway (Østlandet); sixty miles (or a little wider) corresponds to the distance from Sperillen in the west to Glomma in the east. The middle region (middeweard) will then be Trøndelag, more specifically the acricultural areas along the inner Trondheim fiord (Innherred); thirty miles is the distance from Frosta to Verdalsøra along the fiord.















The status of this negation is doubtful. In the only manuscript which includes this passage, the verb phrase was first written m mihte ©ese©lian; the m was later changed to ne, which makes sense, but need not be correct. It may have been that the scribe started writing mihte, but was interrupted after the m. When he started writing again, he forgot that he already written m and started mihte afresh.
   According to one interpretation, dæ© here is a measure of distance, namely the distance that could be covered in a day's rowing along the coast, 36 nautical miles. The distance from Senja to Larvik (Skíringssalr) corresponds to 28 such "day-journeys"; in other words, it would make best sense to have Ohthere say that it was possible to sail to Skíringssalr in a month (where a month would be 28 days, the time from one full moon to the next). I owe this interpretation to Mr. Sivert Fløttum (private communication).































This passage was convincingly interpreted by W.C. Stokoe in an article from 1952: what Ohthere describes are not the locations of the various countries and islands, but the points at which he would leave the Norwegian coast to sail to those places. Thus, the safest sea-route to Ireland would be north of Shetland, which would mean leaving the coast earlier than he would if he was to say to England, for example. 'This country' (êis land) is (southern) England; 'the islands between Ireland and this country' are Orkney. Again this makes good sense in terms of the sea-routes involved. Stokoe's article contains an excellent map of Ohthere's southern voyage which for copyright reasons cannot be shown here.































The great sea that Ohthere mentions here is the Skagerrak, possibly including the adjacent waters between Denmark and Sweden, the Kattegat and the Sound.































Sillende has been variously interpreted as Zealand (Da. Sjælland) or some unidentified region in southern Jutland, possibly Schleswig. Which interpretation we choose will depend on which sea-route we believe Ohthere followed to Hedeby (not mentioned in this extract of the text): if he went down the Sound from the Kattegat, he would have Zealand to starboard, whereas if he went through the Little or Great Belt, he would have Zealand to port, and Sillende must be located in Jutland. However, as this map clearly shows, unless Ohthere squeezed through the Little Belt west of Funen (Da. Fyn) (which seems highly unlikely to me), he would not be anywhere near the coast of Jutland until he actually reached Hedeby: if he went through the Great Belt, Funen and a number of other islands would be between him and Jutland. Consequently, I find it more plausible that he went down through the Sound, which means that Sillende would be Zealand (off the right edge of the map).































REFERENCES:

Stokoe, William C. 1952. 'On Ohthere's Steorbord'. Speculum 32.299-306. Back