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quote a passage containing a description of a
voyage from Halogaland to the North Cape and
the mouth of the Dwina on the White Sea. The
Norseman Ottar, who left Norway about the year
870, said to his lord king Alfred of England, that
he dwelt among the most northerly of all the
Norwegians, on the Western Sea, but that the land
stretched much farther towards the north; that
here all was a waste: only the Finns sometimes
made a stay in certain places, for the chase in
winter, and the fishery in summer. Once he resolved
to search how far the land extended towards the
north, and whether men dwelt beyond this
wilderness. Then, he sailed towards the north along
the land, having the desert country the whole
way on the starboard (to the right), the open sea
on the larboard (to the left), till after three days
he arrived as far northwards as whale fishers ever
used to pass. He sailed yet three days to the
north; there the land bent along with the sea to
the East, for which reason he was obliged here to
wait for a north-west wind, and then he sailed four
days to the East along the coast. Here he waited
for a due north wind, since the land and sea now
curved towards the south, and in this direction he
sailed five days along the land, till he and his
followers came to a great stream. Beyond this, the
whole country appeared to be cultivated, and this
was the first inhabited land they had met with since
their departure from home, for the whole intervening
coast lay waste, and they observed only some
hunters, sea-fowl catchers, and fishers, who were
all Finns. This was the condition of the wilderness
of the Terfinns; but upon the great flood dwelt
the Biarmers, in a well-settled country. Ottar
did not dare to land there, but some of the
inhabitants came on board to him. Their speech seemed
to him like that of the Finns,—which he therefore
understood,—and the Biarmers told him much,
both of their own and the surrounding countries;
how much of it was true he knew not, because he
had not himself seen it. He had visited the country,
partly from a desire to see it, but chiefly on
account of the walruses, whose tusks furnished the
finest bone, and of these he gave some to king
Alfred. Their skins were very useful for ships’
ropes, and this whale fish was much smaller than
others, not above seven ells long. But in Ottar’s
own land was the best whale fishery; there, whales
were found forty-eight ells long, and the largest
fifty ells. Of such he said, that with six ships he
had killed sixty in two days. He was rich in such
possessions as were their wealth, that is in the wild
animals called reindeer. When he came to the
king he had 600 unbought tame reindeer, and
among them six decoys, on which the Finns, who
caught wild deer with them, set a high value. He
was one of the first men of his country, yet he had
no more than twenty cows, twenty sheep, and
twenty swine, and he ploughed a small piece of
arable land with horses. The greatest means which
those of the country possessed, consisted in the
tribute paid by the Finns, in skins and feathers,
whalebone and cordage, the latter prepared from
the whales’ hides and seal skins. Every one paid
according to his substance; the chief men paid
fifteen martens’ skins, five reindeers’, one bear’s
hide, ten sacks of feathers, and besides, a jerkin of
bear or otter skin, with two ships’ ropes, one of
morse hide, the other of seal skin.
If we substitute the salmon and seal fishery for
that of whales, we observe also in this description
the Norrland peasant of former times on the gulf of
Bothnia, his manner of life, pursuits, and the
relations in which he stood to the Lapps. The kings of
Norway, since the time of Harald the Fair-haired,
claimed exclusively the produce of the tributes and
trade of Finnmark, and were able to maintain this
claim along the coast [1]. The Biarmers were a
Fennic people, and, it would appear, more civilized
than their cognate tribes. The description of their
country shows that they practised agriculture. Old
Biarmaland stretched from the Dwina to the Volga
and Kama, and was the seat of an extensive trade.
Caravans from Bokhara brought thither the wares
of the east. A voyage to Biarmaland was regarded
as a very gainful enterprize in the north, partly on
account of the traffic, in which the furs of the
sable, the beaver, and the minivere were exchanged,
and partly on account of the plunder collected on
the way, for a trading voyage was often also a
piratical expedition. The sacred place of this
people was situated at the mouth of the Dwina in a
great forest; their deity was called Jumala, the
name by which the Finns and Lapps now designate
the Supreme Being. This idol had on its knee
a large silver cup full of silver money, and a costly
chain round the neck. Here too was their place of
interment, in the hillocks and soil of which much
gold and silver was stored; for when the rich were
buried, a part of their wealth was consigned to the
tomb along with them. Round the sanctuary was
a palisade with the gate closed; and six men kept
watch alternately every night.
Several other Fennic tribes are mentioned in old
accounts of the north. An inroad of the Kures
and Quens into Sweden is mentioned in the time of
Sigurd Ring, and the last-named people as well as
the Laplanders, were neighbours of our forefathers
in the present Swedish Norrland. ‘The Swedes,’
says king Alfred in the ninth century, ‘have
Quenland on the north of their country beyond the
wilderness, the Scridfinns on the north-west, and
the Norsemen on the West.’ But Scridfinns and
Quens were intermingled in these Northern tracts,
for we are told of Quenland, that it lies near the
Northern part of Norway, and the Quens roamed
as far as and across the frontier. They carried
their small light boats overland to the great lakes
which lie among the hill tops, and made predatory
inroads upon the Norsemen, as these did upon them;
yet they sought help from the Norwegians against
their enemies. Faravid, prince of the Quens, about
the year 877, sent a messenger to Thorolf, the
commissioner of Harald the Fair-haired, charged with
the levy of the tributes, to entreat assistance against
the Carelians who had ravaged his country, which
was granted, Thorolf stipulating that he should
have an equal share of the booty. The law of the
Quens was, that the king should have a third part of
the plunder, and in addition as many skins of beaver,
sable, and minivere as he chose to take. Thorolf
marched eastwards towards Quenland, he with a
hundred, the king with three hundred men. They
proceeded in company to Upper Finnmark,
encountered and beat the Carelians in the mountains,
and won a very rich spoil. Thereupon Thorolf
returned to Quenland, crossed the Kölen
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