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
{178} 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 {179}
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.
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