Notes and Queries, Number 42, August 17, 1850 | Page 2

must have experienced; to
which {178} we add, the perpetual snows, and many other very striking
peculiarities, so new and seemingly inexplicable to a southern traveller
or listener.
Succeeding writers seem to have had fewer scruples, and to have
admitted the idea without consideration. Thorkelin, the Dane, (when in
England to copy out the poem of Beowulf for publication at
Copenhagen), gave a very flattering testimony to Forster's notes, in
_Bibliotheca Topographica_, vol. ix. p. 891. _et seq._, though I believe
he subsequently much modified it. Our own writers who had to remark
upon the subject, Sharon Turner, and Wheaton, in his _History of the
Northmen_, may be excused from concurring in an opinion in which
they had only a verbal interest. Professor Ingram, in his translation of
_Othere's Voyage_ (Oxford, 1807, 4to. p. 96. note), gives the following
rather singular deduction for the appellation: Quenland was the land of
the Amazons; the Amazons were fair and white-faced, therefore
_Cwen-Sae_ the White Sea, as Forster had deduced it: and so, having
satisfied himself with this kind of Sorites, follows pretty closely in
Forster's wake. But that continental writers, who took up the
investigation avowedly as indispensable to the earliest history of their
native countries, should have given their concurrence and approval so
easily, I must confess, astonishes me.
Dahlman, whilst Professor of History at Kiel, felt himself called upon
by his situation to edit and explain this work to his countrymen more
detailedly than previously, and at vol. ii. p. 405. of the work cited by
Mr. Singer gives all Alfred's original notices. I shall at present only
mention his interpretation of _Quen Sae_, which he translates
_Weltmeer_; making it equivalent to the previous Garseeg or Oceanus.
He mentions the reasonings of Rask and Porthan, of Abo, the two
exceptions to the general opinion (which I shall subsequently notice),
without following, on this point, what they had previously so much
more clearly explained. The best account of what had previously been
done on the subject is contained in Beckmann's Litteratur der alten
Raisen (s. 450.); and incidental notices of such passages as fall within
the scope of their works, are found in Schlözer's _Allgemeine
nordische Geschichte_, Thummann's _Untersuchungen_, Walch's
_Allgemeine Bibliothek_, Schöning's _Gamle nordishe Geographie_,

Nyerup's _Historisk-statistik Skildering i aeldre og nyere Tider_, in
Sprengel's _Geschichte_, and by Wörbs, in Kruse's _Deutsche
Alterthümer_. Professor Ludw. Giesebrecht published in 1843, at
Berlin, a most excellent _Wendische Geschichte_, in 3 vols. 8vo., but
his inquiries concerning this Periplus (vol. iii. p 290) are the weakest
part of his work, having mostly followed blindly the opinions to which
the great fame and political importance of Dahlman had given full
credence and authority. He was not aware of the importance of Alfred's
notices for the countries he describes, and particularly for the
elucidation of the vexed question of Adam of Bremen's Julin and
Helmold's _Veneta_, by an investigation of Othere's _Schiringsheal_,
and which I endeavoured to point out in a pamphlet I published in the
German language, and a copy of which I had the pleasure of presenting,
amongst others, to Professor Dahlman himself at the Germanisten
Versammlung at Lübeck in 1847. To return, however, to the Cwena
land and _sae_, it is evident that the commentators, who are principally
induced by their bearings to Sweon land to look upon the latter as the
White Sea, have overlooked the circumstance that the same name is
found earlier as an arm of the Wendel or Mediterranean Sea; and it is
evident that one denomination cannot be taken in a double meaning;
and therefore, when we find Alfred following the boundaries of Europe
from Greece, "Crecalande ut on þone Wendelsae Þnord on þone
Garsaege pe man Cwen sae haet", it is certain that we have here an arm
of the Wendel Sea (here mistaken for the ocean) that runs from Greece
to the north, and it cannot also afterwards be the White Sea. It will be
necessary to bring this, in conformity with the subsequent mention of
_Cwen-Sae_, more to the northward, which, as I have just said, has
been hitherto principally attended to.
In Welsh topography no designation scarcely recurs oftener than Gwent
(or, according to Welsh pronunciation, and as it may be written,
_Cwent_) in various modifications, as Gwyndyd, Gwenedd, Gynneth,
Gwynne, &c. &c.; and on the authority of Gardnor's History of
Monmouthshire (Appendix 14.), under which I willingly cloak my
ignorance of the Welsh language, I learn that Gwent or Went is "spelt
with or without a _G_, according to the word that precedes it,
according to certain rules of grammar in the ancient British language,
and that Venedotia for North Wales is from the same root." The author

might certainly have said, "the same word Latinized." But exactly the
same affinity or identity of