Ohthere from Hålogaland

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Opening lines of Ohthere's Old English account, from Thorpe's edition of 1900: "Ohthere advised his lord Alfred king that he lived north-most of all the Northmen..."
Opening lines of Ohthere's Old English account, from Thorpe's edition of 1900: "Ohthere advised his lord Alfred king that he lived north-most of all the Northmen..."
"Ottars reise" - a modern map, annotated in Norwegian, showing Ohthere's reported travels. His account does not mention London; it does mention passing Ireland.
"Ottars reise" - a modern map, annotated in Norwegian, showing Ohthere's reported travels. His account does not mention London; it does mention passing Ireland.

Ohthere from Hålogaland (Norwegian: Ottar fra Hålogaland) was a Viking adventurer from Hålogaland. Around 890 AD he travelled to England, where Alfred the Great, king of Wessex, had his tales written down.

Ohthere reported that he lived "north-most of all the Northmen", and that "no-one [lived] to the north of him".[1] He spoke of his travels to the White Sea, and south to England; of the Finns (and possibly also the Sámi, since at that time the term "Finns" referred to the Sámi, as well as the people known today as Finns) and the Swedes; and of a mysterious people called the "Beormas", who spoke a language related to that of the Finns, and lived in an area of the White Sea region. This is marked on the accompanying map as "Bjarmland", and has been seen by some as a reference to people of the Old Permic culture.

Ohthere's story is the earliest known written source for the terms "Norway" and "Denmark".[2][citation needed]

Ohthere is believed to have come from Troms, probably somewhere north of Harstad, perhaps the island of Senja, where today's Lenvik is seen as a likely home; or possibly further north, for example from either of the islands of Kvaløya and Karlsøy.[citation needed]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Thorpe, The Life of Alfred The Great, pp. 249, 253. "Norðmanna": literally "North-men", a general term, but "Norwegians" is perhaps to be understood. Cf. Old English Online: Lesson 4 and Ohthere's First Voyage (Paragraph 1).
  2. ^ Thorpe, The Life of Alfred The Great, p. 253.
Wikisource has original text related to this article:
  • Ohthere's First Voyage. University of Victoria. Retrieved on May 18 2008. Excerpt only of original text; English translation.
  • Old English Online: Lesson 4. University of Texas. Retrieved on May 18 2008. Excerpt only of original text; detailed grammatical analysis, English translation.
  • Onions, C.T. (ed.), Sweet's Anglo-Saxon Reader in Prose and Verse (14th edition), Clarendon, 1959. An excerpt from Alfred's account of Ohthere's travels.
  • Thorpe, B., The Life of Alfred The Great Translated From The German of Dr. R. Pauli To Which Is Appended Alfred's Anglo-Saxon Version of Orosius, Bell, 1900, pp. 249-53. Parallel editions of King Alfred's full Old English text and a modern translation.