Appendix: Excerpts from Primary Sources he following English-language excerpts are provided to give the reader a feel for the variety of ways that the North is characterized in premod- ern texts. The passages all take up what it means to be in, of, or from Tthe North. The sources are grouped into four themes: poetic ideas of North, North as the source of nations, human character in the North, and nature in the North. While overlapping, these categories identify some of the most preva- lent ways that Northerness was understood before 1800. Many of these authors and works are cited in multiple chapters of this volume because of their wide- ranging influence, both among premodern writers and today’s scholars. While this appendix is in no way exhaustive, we hope it is instructive about visions of the premodern North. 1. Poetic Ideas of the North Pindar’s People Beyond the North Wind And traveling neither by ships nor on foot could you find the marvelous way to the assembly of the Hyperboreans. With them Perseus, the leader of the people, once feasted, upon entering their halls, when he came upon them sacrificing glorious hecatombs of asses to the god. In their banquets and praises Apollo ever finds greatest delight and laughs to see the beasts’ braying insolence. And the Muse is no stranger to their ways, for everywhere choruses of maidens, sounds of lyres, and pipes’ shrill notes are stirring. 350 APPENDIX With golden laurel they crown their hair and feast joyfully. Neither sickness nor accursed old age mingles with that holy race, but without toils or battles they dwell there, having escaped strictly judging Nemesis. Pindar, Pythian Odes, trans. by William H. Race (Cam bridge, MA: Harvard Uni ver sity Press, 1997), x.29–44. The Far North According to Romans You equally, Caesar, though we don’t yet know which cohort of the gods will soon enroll you — whether you’ll wish to keep cities safe and care for our lands, so the great circling world will take you as source of earth’s fruits and master of seasons, placing Venus’ wreath of myrtle around your temples; whether you shall come as god of the vast sea, and sailors worship only your holy spirit, Ultima Thule bow down to you, and Ocean’s wife spend every wave to buy you for her daughter. Virgil, Georgics, 1.24–31, trans. by Janet Lembke (New Haven: Yale Uni ver sity Press, 2005). This is no ordinary, no flimsy wing which will bear me, half-bird, through the liquid air, nor shall I longer remain on the earth, but, grown too large for envy, I shall leave its cities. I, who am of the blood of poor parents, I, who come at your command, my beloved Maecenas, shall not die, nor be confined by the waves of the Styx. Already, even now, rough skin is forming on my legs, my upper part is changing into a white swan and smooth feathers are sprouting along my fingers and shoulders. Excerpts from Primary Sources 351 Already more famous than Icarus, son of Daedalus, I shall visit, a harmonious bird, the shores of the moaning Bosphorus, the Gaetulian Syrtes, and the Hyperborean plains. The Colchian will know me, and the Dacian who pretends not to fear a cohort of Marsians, the Geloni at the ends of the earth, the learned Iberian, the Rhône-swigger. Let there be no dirges or squalid mourning or lamentation at my corpseless funeral. Check your cries of grief and do not trouble with the empty honour of a tomb. Horace, The Complete Odes and Epodes, 2.20, trans. by David West (Oxford: Oxford Uni ver sity Press, 2008). These days the sea has yielded, and endures all laws. No need of a boat framed by Pallas, bringing home princely rowers, a famous Argo: any little rowboat wanders over the deep. All boundaries are removed, and cities have established their walls in new lands. Nothing is left where it once belonged by a world open to access. The Indian drinks the cold Araxes, Persians the Albis and the Rhine. There will come an epoch late in time when Ocean will loosen the bonds of the world and the earth lie open in its vastness, when Tethys will disclose new worlds and Thule not be the farthest of lands. Seneca, Medea, 364–81, in Tragedies, vol. i, trans. by John G. Fitch (Cam bridge, MA: Harvard Uni ver sity Press, 2002). 352 APPENDIX Ovid’s Tale of Boreas and Orithyia — But mighty Boreas desired the hand of Orithyia, fair and lovable.—King Tereus and the Thracians were then such obstacles to Boreas the god was long kept from his dear beloved. Although the great king (who compels the cold north-wind) had sought with prayers to win her hand, and urged his love in gentleness, not force. When quite aware his wishes were disdained, he roughly said, with customary rage and violence: ‘Away with sentimental talk! […] Tremendous actions are the wine of life!— monarch of Violence, rolling on clouds, I toss wide waters, and I fell huge trees— knotted old oaks—and whirled upon ice-wings, I scatter the light snow, and pelt the Earth with sleet and hail! […]’ And now impetuous Boreas, having howled resounding words, unrolled his rustling wings— that fan the earth and ruffle the wide sea— and, swiftly wrapping untrod mountain peaks in whirling mantles of far-woven dust, thence downward hovered to the darkened world; and, canopied in artificial night of swarthy overshadowing wings, caught up the trembling Orithyia to his breast: nor did he hesitate in airy course until his huge wings fanned the chilling winds around Ciconian Walls. Ovid, Metamorphoses, trans. by Brookes More (Boston: Cornhill, 1922), Book vi.675–721. Excerpts from Primary Sources 353 The Northern Wind According to Shakespeare Poison’d,—ill fare—dead, forsook, cast off: And none of you will bid the winter come To thrust his icy fingers in my maw, Nor let my kingdom’s rivers take their course Through my burn’d bosom, nor entreat the north To make his bleak winds kiss my parched lips And comfort me with cold. I do not ask you much, I beg cold comfort; and you are so strait And so ingrateful, you deny me that. History of King John, Act v, Scene 7. King John speaking. Thou dost, and think’st it much to tread the ooze Of the salt deep, To run upon the sharp wind of the north, To do me business in the veins o’ the earth When it is baked with frost. The Tempest, Act i, Scene 2. Prospero speaking. No, believe me, ’tis very cold; the wind is northerly. Hamlet, Act v, Scene 2. Hamlet speaking. True, I talk of dreams, Which are the children of an idle brain, Begot of nothing but vain fantasy, Which is as thin of substance as the air And more inconstant than the wind, who wooes Even now the frozen bosom of the north, And, being anger’d, puffs away from thence, Turning his face to the dew-dropping south. Romeo and Juliet, Act i, Scene 4. Mercutio speaking. 354 APPENDIX 2. North as the Source of Nations Jordannes’s Idea of Scandinavia as the ‘Womb of Nations’ And at the farthest bound of its western expanse it has another island named Thule, of which the Mantuan bard makes mention: ‘And Farthest Thule shall serve thee.’ The same mighty sea has also in its artic region, that is, in the north, a great island named Scandza, from which my tale (by God’s grace) shall take its beginning. For the race whose origin you ask to know burst forth like a swarm of bees from the midst of this island and came into the land of Europe. […] Now in the island of Scandza, whereof I speak, there dwell many and divers nations, though Ptolemaeus mentions the names of but seven of them. There the honeymaking swarms of bees are nowhere to be found on account of the exceeding great cold. In the northern part of the island the race of the Adogit live, who are said to have continual light in midsummer for forty days and night, and who likewise have no clear light in the winter season for the same number of days and night. By reason of this alternation of sorrow and joy they are like no other race in their sufferings and blessings. […] Now from this island of Scandza, as from a hive of races or a womb of nations, the Goths are said to have come forth long ago under their king, Berig by name. Published as The Gothic History of Jordanes, in English Version with an Introduction and a Commentary, trans. by Charles Christopher Mierow (Princeton: Princeton Uni ver sity Press, 1915), pp. 53–57. The Multitude from the North The region of the north, in proportion as it is removed from the heat of the sun and is chilled with snow and frost, is so much the more healthful to the bodies of men and fitted for the propagation of nations, just as, on the other hand, every southern region, the nearer it is to the heat of the sun, the more it abounds in diseases and is less fitted for the bringing up of the human race. From this it happens that such a great multitude of people spring up in the north, and that that entire region from the Tanais (Don) to the west (although single places in it are designated by their own names) yet the whole is not improperly called by the general name Germany.