"Ohthere and Wulfstan", by Helen Appleton
The accounts of journeys undertaken in northern waters by the seafarers Ohthere and Wulfstan contains the earliest textural record of a number of places and peoples in the north. They are preserved in Book 1 of the Old English Orosius, a translation of Paulus Orosius’s fifth-century Latin work Historiarum adversum Paganos Libri Septem (Seven Books of History Against the Pagans). The two accounts, conventionally treated together as Ohthere and Wulfstan, are evidently an interpolation into the geographical section of the Old English Orosius, but this addition must have occurred early in the Old English Orosius’s history. Ohthere’s account is partially preserved in the oldest surviving Old English Orosius manuscript, the early tenth-century London, British Library, Additional 47967. A significant lacuna in the manuscript begins part way through Ohthere’s account, but the early eleventh-century London, British Library MS Cotton Tiberius B.i contains a complete text of both seafarers’ narratives. The accounts of Ohthere and Wulfstan interrupt the Orosian geography of the world immediately after the description of Scandinavia, which is logical enough given their focus, but the accounts’ perspective, language and style is noticeably different from the main text of the Old English Orosius, and also from each other. The effect is a sudden reorientation of the text’s worldview from Rome to late ninth-century Wessex, where Ohthere is addressing King Alfred.
Ohthere and Wulfstan opens with the statement that: Ohthere sæde his hlaforde, Ælfrede cyninge, þæt he ealra Norðmonna norþmest bude (‘Ohthere said to his lord, King Alfred, that he lived northmost of all the Norsemen’). Presumably this conversation took place at the West Saxon royal court where scribes were on hand to record it. Wulfstan’s account follows directly on from Ohthere’s without any introductory context — just Wulfstan sæde þæt he gefore of Hæðum (Wulfstan said that he sailed from Hedeby) — so it is unclear whether the two men were at court simultaneously, or even if Wulfstan were there at all. The two men seem to be traders, travelling both for interest and economic opportunity. Ohthere and Wulfstan likely began as independent records made of the seafarers’ information by court scribes, and these were then added to the geographical section of the Old English Orosius because it was a (mostly) suitable repository for information on the lands and peoples of the north. The two accounts are stylistically and linguistically distinct, reflecting the differing origins of the two travellers. Ohthere explains that he comes from Hålogaland in northern Norway, but it is unclear whether he was still residing there at the time of his account, or if he had moved more permanently to England — Ohthere is an anglicised version of the Norse name ‘Ottar’. Wulfstan’s origins are unstated; his name is English, and his vocabulary suggests he’s Anglian, but he speaks as if based in the major Viking-age trading port of Hedeby in southern Jutland (the Schleswig-Holstein region of modern Germany). It is possible Ohthere spoke in English or Norse; his account contains a number of anglicised Norse words, likely borrowed for what must have been unfamiliar things to a West Saxon audience (e.g. hranas, 'reindeer'), and there are hints of confusion at points. Ohthere’s account reads like responses to audience questions, allowing readers to infer what the West Saxon court was keen to discover about northern Norway and where they struggled to comprehend Ohthere’s initial answer. Wulfstan’s account is much more fluent in style but also hints at English perspectives and interests.
Ohthere and Wulfstan commences with Ohthere’s account of the geography of Hålogaland. Ohthere then describes his voyage north and east along the coast to the White Sea (now in north-western Russia), to explore the remote region and to look for walruses. Ohthere describes the land he passes as largely waste, occupied only by hunters in temporary camps. Some brief ethnographic and linguistic observations about the peoples of the White Sea region are offered, before Ohthere describes the characteristics and utility of walruses (horshwalas, lit. horse-whales) — hie habbað swiþe æþele ban on hiora toþum […] ond hiora hyd bið swiðe god to sciprapum (‘they have very noble bones in their teeth […] and their hide is very good for ship ropes’) — he has even brought some tusks as a gift to King Alfred.
A Walrus
Ohthere’s account then moves from recording his voyage to an explanation of his high economic standing in Hålogaland; we are told that: he wæs swyðe spedig man on þæm æhtum þe heora speda on beoð, þæt is on wildrum (‘he was a very wealthy man in those possessions of which their wealth consists, that is in wild deer’). In implicit contrast to what would make one wealthy in Wessex (the extensive agricultural land Ohthere’s home lacks), Ohthere’s fortune is chiefly in his large herd of reindeer and animal skin tributes received from the Saami.
A reindeer herd. Ohthere says his numbers 600.
Ohthere then discusses the geography of Hålogaland and conflict between the Norse and the Cwenas (Kvens). He then explains how to sail from Hålogaland to the port of Skiringssalr (to listen to a recording of this passage, click here):
Þyder he cwæð þæt man ne mihte geseglian on anum monðe, gyf man on niht wicode ond æle dæg hæfde ambyrne wind; ond ealle ða hwile he sceal seglian be lande; ond on þæt steorbord him bið ærest Iraland, ond þonne ða igland þe synd betux Iralande ond þissum lande; þonne is þis land oð he cymð to Scrincgesheale, ond ealne weg on þæt bæcbord Norðweg…. (ed. Bately)
[He said that one might just sail there in a month if you camped at night and had an adverse wind all day; and all the while you must sail along the coast; and on the starboard is first Ireland, and then the islands that are between Ireland and this land; and then this land, until you come to Skiringsshal; and all the way Norway is to port.]
The reference to þissum lande here is to Britain, reflecting the location of his audience. Ohthere concludes by describing the sailing route onwards to the south, to the great trading centre of Hedeby.
Hedeby serves as a pivot between the two accounts, as Wulfstan’s narrative begins at this point. He recounts a weeklong voyage from Hedeby to the trading centre of Truso on the Baltic coast, near the mouth of the Vistula (close to the modern city of Elbląg, in northern Poland). Wulfstan lists the lands his ship passes, and then describes the Vistula river system, leading to an account of the culture and customs of Estland (roughly where modern Kaliningrad is located). The text records the political structure and drinking habits of the Ests. Wulfstan states that: se cyning ond þa ricostan men drincað myran meolc, ond þa unspedigan ond þa þeowan drincað medo. Þær bið swyðe mycel gewinn betweonan him (the king and the richest men drink mares’ milk, and the poor and the slaves drink mead. There is a great deal of fighting between them). As mead was a comparatively expensive product in Early Medieval England, this arrangement, leading to a drunken, quarrelsome workforce, must have struck Wulfstan’s audience as quite bizarre. Yet Wulfstan had a greater shock in store for the West Saxons: ‘ne bið ðær nænig ealo gebrowen mid Estum’ (there is no ale brewed among the Ests).
Wulfstan then gives a lengthy explanation of the funerary customs of the Ests, who share out the deceased’s wealth through feasting, gambling and horse racing. This distribution process takes six months, throughout which the corpse remains in the house, marvellously preserved with ice. Ohthere and Wulfstan breaks off after the description of the funeral in Estland, and the Old English Orosius’s geographical description of the world resumes with Constantinople.
Postscript
King Alfred famously states in his Preface to the Pastoral Care that he is commissioning aestels (manuscript pointers). In the 1980s excavations of an important chieftain’s site at Borg in northern Norway unexpectedly unearthed a ninth-century English æstel made of gold; might this have belonged to Ohthere?
Manuscripts
London, British Library MS Cotton Tiberius B.i
London, British Library, Additional 47967
Editions
Bately, Janet, ed., The Old English Orosius (London: Early English Text Society, 1980)
Godden, Malcolm, ed. and trans, The Old English History of the World: an Anglo-Saxon Rewriting of Orosius (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2016).
Criticism
Allport, Ben, ‘Home Thoughts of Abroad: Ohthere’s Voyage in its Anglo-Saxon Context’, Early Medieval Europe 28 (2020), 256–88.
Bately, Janet, ‘Old English Prose Before and During the Reign of Alfred’, Anglo-Saxon England 17 (1988), 93–138.
——— and Anton Engler, eds, Ohthere’s Voyages: A Late 9th-Century Account of Voyages Along the Coasts of Norway and Denmark and Its Cultural Context (Roskilde: Viking Ship Museum, 2007).
Cragie, W. A., ‘The Nationality of King Alfred’s Wulfstan’, Journal of English and Germanic Philology 24 (1925), 396–97.
Fell, Christine E., ‘Some Questions of Language’, in Two Voyagers at the Court of King Alfred: The Ventures of Ohthere and Wulfstan, Together with the Description of Northern Europe from the Old English Orosius, edited by Niels Lund (York: William Sessions, 1984), pp. 56–63.
Englert, Anton and Athena Trakadas, eds, Wulfstan’s Voyage: The Baltic Sea Region in the Early Viking Age as Seen from Shipboard (Roskilde: Viking Ship Museum, 2009).
Hines, John, ‘Wulfstan in Truso: Old English Text, Baltic Archaeology, and World History’, in Global Perspectives on Early Medieval England, ed. by Karen Louise Jolly and Britton E. Brooks (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2022), pp. 115–35.
Hinton, David A., The Alfred Jewel: And Other Late Anglo-Saxon Decorated Metalwork (Oxford: Ashmolean Museum, 2008).
Korhammer, Michael, ‘Ambyrne Wind, Amberlice and Byre in the DOE Online’, Anglo-Saxon England 46 (2017), 97–114.
———, ‘Ohthere’s Northern Voyage: A Close Reading and Practical Interpretation’, Viking and Medieval Scandinavia 18 (2022), 113–47.
Munch, Gerd Stamsø, Olav Sverre Johansen and Else Roesdahl, eds. Borg in Lofoten. A Chieftain’s Farm in North Norway (Tapir Academic Press, Trondheim, 2003).
Townend, Matthew, Language and History in Viking Age England: Linguistic Relations Between Speakers of Old Norse and Old English (Turnhout: Brepols, 2002).
Tristram, Hildegard L. C., ‘Ohthere, Wulfstan und der Aethicus Ister (Ohthere, Wulfstan and the Aethicus Ister)’, Zeitschrift für deutsches Altertum und deutsche Literatur 111 (1982), 153–68.
Valtonen, Irmeli, The North in the Old English Orosius: A Geographical Narrative in Context (Helsinki: Société néophilologique, 2008).
Helen Appleton is currently Departmental Lecturer in Old English at the University of Oxford. She has published widely on Old English literature, including on homilies and hagiography, and has also worked on cartography in Early Medieval England.
