Arctic Travel and Warfare in the Sixteenth Century

Extract

In Rome in the year 1555 a book, written by Olaus Magnus, the Archbishop of Upsala, and Primate of Suetia and Gothia, was published to the world with a fine resounding title. It claimed to be “A History of the Northern Peoples, their different states, conditions, manners, ceremonies, superstitions, training, mode of life, diet, methods of warfare, buildings, tools, mines, and marvels, and also of nearly all the animals that dwell in the North and of their nature. A work, which while varied and crammed with information on many subjects, with examples drawn from other countries and with printed pictures of native affairs, is also full of delight and entertainment, easily flooding the mind of the reader with the greatest pleasure. With a very full index.”—full indeed, for it extends over sixty-five pages. The writer of this remarkable volume, Olaus Magnus, was born at Linköping in 1490, and knew his northern countries well, as became a former canon of Upsala. But already the Reformation was beginning to disturb those parts, and from 1527 onwards Olaus spent most of his time in Rome, so that his Archbishopric of Upsala and Primateship were titular only. This may serve to explain some references to the Lutheranorum detestabilis impostura or to the temeraria praesumptio of the Lutherans, whom he regards as the “spreaders of every kind of crime and impurity”.