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"The Land of the Norwegians is the Last in the World": A Mid-Eleventh-Century Description of the Nordic Countries From the Pen of Adam of Bremen1
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“THE LAND OF THE NORWEGIANS IS THE LAST IN THE WORLD”: A MID-ELEVENTH-CENTURY DESCRIPTION OF THE NORDIC COUNTRIES FROM THE PEN OF ADAM OF BREMEN 1 Torstein Jørgensen INTRODUCTION In his discussion of the lands of the North, Adam of Bremen’s first reference to Norway stresses that “…Nortmannia is the farthest country of the world”. The country stretches, he says, “…with its main ridge bent toward the uttermost North…” and it “…has its bounds in the Rhiphaean Mountains where the tired world also comes to an end.”2 “Beyond Norway…”, he continues, “…you will find no human habitation, nothing but ocean, terrible to look upon and limitless, encircling the whole world.”3 It is in the fourth chapter of his book about the archbishopric of HamburgBremen4 that Adam makes a change in his scope. Whereas the first three chapters are composed as a historical account, the fourth and last chapter5 renders an outward view of the wide and vast lands of his archdiocese with its fringing borders towards a reality vanishing into the unknown. The liminality that Adam ascribes to Norway is, however, not only a geographical one. It pertains also to the quality of the land. The country is, according to him, “the 1 English quotations are in this article taken from History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen: Adam of Bremen, transl. F. J. Tschan, new introduction by T. Reuter (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002) (hereafter AB). Latin quotations in footnotes are taken from Adam af Bremen: Beskrivelse af øerne i Norden, transl. A. A. Lund (Højberg: Wormianum, 1978). For Nordic readers we refer also to Adam av Bremen: Beretningen om Hamburg stift, erkebiskopenes bedrifter og øyrikene i Norden transl. and ed. B. T. Danielsen and A. K. Frihagen (Oslo: Aschehoug, 1993). 2 AB IV, xxxi, p. 210 f.: Nortmannia sicut ultima orbis provintia est …. quod longitudine sua in extremam septentrionis plagam extenditur …. tandem in Ripheis montibus limitem facit ubi et lassus deficit orbis. 3 AB IV, xxxv, p. 215: Post Nortmanniam … nihil invenies habitacionis humanae nisi terribilem visu et infinitum occeanum, qui totum mundum amplectitur. 4 Historia Hammarburgensis ecclesiae. 5 Descriptio insularum Aquilonis. “THE LAND OF THE NORWEGIANS” 47 most unproductive of all countries, suited only for herds,”6 which perhaps is an indication of Adam’s astonishment that this land was not completely and totally barren. And as we shall see later, when Adam turns his eyes to Norway he finds himself looking into a land in which the orderly world meets its cosmic foundations, in which the known world faces the unknown and in which reality passes over into fantasy and fiction. Given that Adam was a learned theologian, his description is of particular importance as it contains eschatological perspectives indicating that the view towards this particular edge of the earth also opens a window from the present world into the next. GENERAL POINTS REGARDING ADAM OF BREMEN AND HIS WORK Before going into the details of Adam’s perspectives on Norway, some general notes concerning his life and his work are necessary. About himself personally, Adam reveals little. Among the few particulars he does mention is that he arrived as a stranger to Bremen in the 24th year of Adalbert’s archiepiscopate,7 which means that his career there started sometime in the year 1066 or 1067. He also refers to himself in his epilogue as a magister. And when addressing archbishop Liemar, to whom his work was dedicated, and appealing for him to look with benevolence on his “juvenile efforts,”8 this is perhaps not only a phrase of courtesy, but may also be a true pointer to a person of a younger age. An exact dating of Adam’s work is uncertain, but one can speculate with a reasonable degree of certainty that his text was completed sometime between 1075 and 1076. His reference to the Danish king, Sven Estridsson, in Chapter Two of Adam’s book first refers to him as the one “who now rules in Denmark,”9but later in the same chapter Sven is referred to as a deceased “long-to-be-remembered king”.10 The report of the King’s death in 1074 must have been known to Adam while writing his second chapter. A further indication of the certainty of the dating of his text is found at the very end of the book where the author makes mention of archbishop Liemar’s role as a mediator, which is a likely...