Various
Notes and Queries, Number 42, August 17, 1850
NOTES
ALFRED'S OROSIUS
The two exceedingly valuable elucidations which the geography of King Alfred relating to Germany (intercalated in the royal author's translation of Orosius), has received from your learned contributors MR. R.T. HAMPSON (Vol. i., p. 257.) and MR. S.W. SINGER (Vol. i., p. 313.) induce me to offer some new views on the same subject. From my having passed a long series of years in the countries described, and read and examined all that continental authors, as well as Englishmen, have written or conjectured on the subject, I trust that my opinions, though differing from all hitherto received, may not be unworthy the attention of these gentlemen, and of your other numerous subscribers. I shall, however, at present, not to exceed the necessary limitation of your articles, restrict myself to a consideration of the very disputed Cwenas and the Cwen-sae, which both the gentlemen have not alluded to.
The universal agreement amongst the commentators (with the two solitary exceptions I shall hereafter mention), by which this sea is taken for the White Sea, is diverting, and has been the primary source of many of their errors, and of that most monster one, by which Othere's narrative has been made the relation of a voyage round the North Cape to Archangel. It is difficult to say who may have first broached the brilliant idea. Spelmann's annotators, his alumni Oxonienses of University College, seem to have left the matter without much consideration, in which they were pretty servilely followed by Bussæus, though not so much so as to justify Professor Ingram's remark, "that his notes were chiefly extracted thence." (Pref. viii.) Professor Murray of Göttingen (1765), and Langebeck, in his Scriptores Rerum Danicarum (1773), make no mention of these arctic discoveries; and the latter is satisfied that the Cwenas are the Amazons of Adam of Bremen:—
"De Quenorum priscis Sedibus et Quenlandiæ situ, vide Torfæus, Hist. Norweg. i. 140. Adamus Bremens, pp. 58, 59. 61., per Amazones et terram Foeminarum voluit Queuones et Quenladiam intelligi."
and it remains, therefore, to the next commentator, John Reinhold Forster (the companion navigator with Sir Joseph Banks), to have been the first to whom we owe the important error. He was praised by Daines Barrington, for whose edition he gave the notes afterwards reproduced in his Northern Voyages of Discovery; but still with certain reservations. The honourable translator found some negative evidences which seemed to militate against the idea that the voyage could have extended into the arctic circle; for, in such a case, Othere would hardly have refrained from mentioning the perpetual day of those regions; the northern lights, which he must have experienced; to which we add, the perpetual snows, and many other very striking peculiarities, so new and seemingly inexplicable to a southern traveller or listener.
Succeeding writers seem to have had fewer scruples, and to have admitted the idea without consideration. Thorkelin, the Dane, (when in England to copy out the poem of Beowulf for publication at Copenhagen), gave a very flattering testimony to Forster's notes, in Bibliotheca Topographica, vol. ix. p. 891. et seq., though I believe he subsequently much modified it. Our own writers who had to remark upon the subject, Sharon Turner, and Wheaton, in his History of the Northmen, may be excused from concurring in an opinion in which they had only a verbal interest. Professor Ingram, in his translation of Othere's Voyage (Oxford, 1807, 4to. p. 96. note), gives the following rather singular deduction for the appellation: Quenland was the land of the Amazons; the Amazons were fair and white-faced, therefore Cwen-Sae the White Sea, as Forster had deduced it: and so, having satisfied himself with this kind of Sorites, follows pretty closely in Forster's wake. But that continental writers, who took up the investigation avowedly as indispensable to the earliest history of their native countries, should have given their concurrence and approval so easily, I must confess, astonishes me.
Dahlman, whilst Professor of History at Kiel, felt himself called upon by his situation to edit and explain this work to his countrymen more detailedly than previously, and at vol. ii. p. 405. of the work cited by Mr. Singer gives all Alfred's original notices. I shall at present only mention his interpretation of Quen Sae, which he translates Weltmeer; making it equivalent to the previous Garseeg or Oceanus. He mentions the reasonings of Rask and Porthan, of Abo, the two exceptions to the general opinion (which I shall subsequently notice), without following, on this point, what they had previously so much more clearly explained. The best account of what had previously been done on the subject is contained in Beckmann's Litteratur der alten Raisen (s. 450.); and incidental notices of such passages as fall within the scope of their works, are found in Schlözer's Allgemeine nordische Geschichte, Thummann's Untersuchungen, Walch's Allgemeine Bibliothek, Schöning's Gamle nordishe Geographie, Nyerup's Historisk-statistik Skildering i aeldre og nyere Tider, in Sprengel's Geschichte, and by Wörbs, in Kruse's Deutsche Alterthümer. Professor Ludw. Giesebrecht published in 1843, at Berlin, a most excellent Wendische Geschichte, in 3 vols. 8vo., but his inquiries concerning this Periplus (vol. iii. p 290) are the weakest part of his work, having mostly followed blindly the opinions to which the great fame and political importance of Dahlman had given full credence and authority. He was not aware of the importance of Alfred's notices for the countries he describes, and particularly for the elucidation of the vexed question of Adam of Bremen's Julin and Helmold's Veneta, by an investigation of Othere's Schiringsheal, and which I endeavoured to point out in a pamphlet I published in the German language, and a copy of which I had the pleasure of presenting, amongst others, to Professor Dahlman himself at the Germanisten Versammlung at Lübeck in 1847. To return, however, to the Cwena land and sae, it is evident that the commentators, who are principally induced by their bearings to Sweon land to look upon the latter as the White Sea, have overlooked the circumstance that the same name is found earlier as an arm of the Wendel or Mediterranean Sea; and it is evident that one denomination cannot be taken in a double meaning; and therefore, when we find Alfred following the boundaries of Europe from Greece, "Crecalande ut on þone Wendelsae Þnord on þone Garsaege pe man Cwen sae haet", it is certain that we have here an arm of the Wendel Sea (here mistaken for the ocean) that runs from Greece to the north, and it cannot also afterwards be the White Sea. It will be necessary to bring this, in conformity with the subsequent mention of Cwen-Sae, more to the northward, which, as I have just said, has been hitherto principally attended to.
In Welsh topography no designation scarcely recurs oftener than Gwent (or, according to Welsh pronunciation, and as it may be written, Cwent) in various modifications, as Gwyndyd, Gwenedd, Gynneth, Gwynne, &c. &c.; and on the authority of Gardnor's History of Monmouthshire (Appendix 14.), under which I willingly cloak my ignorance of the Welsh language, I learn that Gwent or Went is "spelt with or without a G, according to the word that precedes it, according to certain rules of grammar in the ancient British language, and that Venedotia for North Wales is from the same root." The author might certainly have said, "the same word Latinized." But exactly the same affinity or identity of names is found in a locality that suits the place we are in search of: in an arm of the Mediterranean stretching from Greece northwards; viz. in the Adriatic, which had for its earliest name Sirus Venedicus, translated in modern Italian into Golfo di Venezia.
Of the multitudes of authorities for this assumption I need only mention Strabo, who calls the first settlers on its northern end (whence the whole gulph was denominated) [Greek: Everoi]; or Livy, who merely Latinizes the term as Heneti, lib. i. cap. i., "Antenorem cum multitudine Henetum." With the fable of Antenor and his Trojan colony we have at present no further relation. The name alone, and its universality at this locality, is all that we require. I shall now show that we can follow these Veneti (which, that it is a generic name of situation, I must now omit to prove, from the compression necessary for your miscellany) without a break, in an uninterrupted chain, to the north, and to a position that suits Alfred's other locality much more fitting, than the White Sea. The province of Vindelicia would carry us to the Boden See (Lake of Constance), which Pomponius Mela, lib. iii. cap. i. ad finem, calls Lacus Venedicus. This omitting the modern evidences of this name and province in Windisch-Grätz, Windisch-Feistriz, &c. &c., brings us sufficiently in contact with the Slavonic and Wendic people of Bohemia to track the line through them to the two Lausitz, where we are in immediate proximity to the Spree Wald. There the Wends (pronounce Vends) still maintain a distinct and almost independent community, with peculiar manners, and, it is believed, like the gypsies, an elected or hereditary king; and where, and round Lüchow, in Hanover, the few remnants of this once potent nation are awaiting their final and gradual absorption into the surrounding German nations. Whenever, in the north of Germany, a traveller meets with a place or district ending in wits, itz, pitz, &c., wherever situate, or whatever language the inhabitants speak, he may put it down as originally Wendish; and the multitude of such terminations will show him how extensively this people was spread over those countries. Itzenplitz, the name of a family once of great consequence in the Mark of Brandenburg is ultra-Wendish. It will, therefore, excite no wonder that we find, even in Tacitus, Veneti along their coasts and Ptolemy, who wrote about a century and a half later than Strabo or Livy, seems to have improved the terminology of the ancients in the interval; for, speaking of the Sarmatian tribes, he calls these Veneti [Greek: Ouenedai par holon ton Ouenedikon kolpon]. Here we find the truest guide for the pronunciation, or, rather, for the undigammaising of the Latin V and the Welsh W, as Ouenetoi, which is proved in many distant and varying localities. St. Ouen, the Welsh Owen and Evan, and the patron saint of Rouen, no doubt had his name (if he ever existed at all) coined from the French Veneti of Armorica, amongst which he lived; and when foreigners wish to render the English name Edward as spoken, they write Edouard and Robert the Wizzard, the Norman conqueror of Sicily and Apulia, has his name transformed, to suit Italian ears, into Guiscard, and as William into Gulielmi. Thus, therefore, the whole coast of Prussia, from Pomerania, as far, perhaps, as known, and certainly all the present Prussia Proper, was the Sinus Venedicus, Ptolemy's [Greek: kolpon]; and this was also Alfred's Cwen-Sae, for the north. I admit that when Alfred follows Orosius, he uses Adriatic for the Golfo de Venezia, but when he gives us his independent researches, he uses an indigenous name. Professor Porthan, of Abo in Finland, published a Swedish translation, with notes, of the Voyages of Othere and Wulfstan in the Kongl. Vitterhets Historie och Antiquitet Academiens Handlingar, sjette Delen. Stockholm, 1800, p. 37-106., in which he expressly couples Finland with Cwenland; and, in fact, considering the identity of Cwen and Ven, and the convertibility of the F and V in all languages, Ven and Fen and Cwen will all be identical: but I believe he might have taken a hint from Bussæus, who, in addition to his note at p. 13., gives at p. 22. an extract from the Olaf Tryvassons Saga, where "Finnland edr Quenland" (Finland or Quenland) are found conjoined as synonyms. Professor Rask, who gives the original text, and a Danish translation in the Transactions of the Shandinavish Litteratur Selkskab for 1815, as "Otter og Wulfstans Korte Reideberetninger," &c., though laudatory in the extreme of Porthan, and differing from him on some minor points, yet fully agrees in finding the Cwen-Sea within the Baltic: and he seems to divide this inland sea into two parts by a line drawn north and south through Bornholm, of which the eastern part is called the Cwen or Serminde, or Samatian Sea.
Be that as it may, the above is one of a series of deductions by which I am prepared to prove, that as the land geography of Germany by Alfred is restricted to the valleys of the Weichsel (Wisle), the Oder, the Elbe, and the Weser, so the sea voyages are confined to the debouchures of such of these rivers as flow into the Baltic. This would give a combined action of purpose to both well suited to the genius of the monarch and the necessities of an infant trade, requiring to be made acquainted with coasts and countries accessible to their rude navigation and limited commercial enterprise. So prudent a monarch would never have thought of noting down, for the instruction and guidance of his subjects and posterity, the account of a voyage which even now, after an interval of ten centuries of continued nautical improvements, and since the discovery of the compass, is not unattended with danger, nor accomplished in less than a year's time wasted.
WILLIAM BELL, Phil. Dr.
British Archeological Association.