Nature in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Times

Natural Environment in the Old English Orosius: Ohthere’s Travel Accounts in Norway

Marialuisa Caparrini

Abstract

The Old English travel accounts generally known as Ohthere’s Voyages represent – together with Wulfstan’s travel report – the main historical document and the earliest written geographical description of Northern Europe which has come down to us as interpolation in the late-ninth century Old English translation of Paulus Orosius’s Historiarum adversum Paganos Libri Septem. Ohthere describes three sea journeys, one from his homeland (Halgoland) northward to the White Sea, one southward to the Norwegian port called Sciringes heal, and the last from this port to the Danish trading settlement æt Hæþum. Ohthere’s description of ...