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1 - The Northern Part of the Ocean in the Eyes of Ancient Geographers

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 November 2020

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Summary

Abstract

The paper is devoted to ancient ideas concerning the Ocean, its origin, location, functions and especially its navigability. From archaic times until late antiquity we find a belief in the possibility of navigation through the Ocean that was thought to surround the habitable world. The situation regarding the Northern Ocean was more complicated. The heroes of epic poetry were supposed to sail through the Northern Ocean during their fantastic wanderings. Only in the Augustean epoch did the Roman navy get as far as Jutland, and it was the remotest point reached in antiquity in the Northern Ocean, which they identified with the Baltic Sea.

Keywords: antiquity, Northern Ocean, travels of ancient heroes, literary persons and militars in Northern ocean, scientific knowledge about the north of Europe

Introduction

This article is devoted to ancient ideas concerning the Ocean, its origin, location, functions, and especially its navigability. From archaic times until late antiquity we find a belief in the possibility of navigation through the Ocean that was thought to surround the habitable world. While the southern and western (Atlantic) parts of the Ocean were at an early stage explored and traversed by Phoenician, Greek, and Roman sailors from India to Britain (with the exception of the southern African seas), the eastern part of the Ocean remained unknown until the end of ancient times. The situation regarding the northern Ocean was still more complicated. The northern sea route, passing through the Arctic Ocean along Eurasia from the Atlantic to the Pacific Ocean, was discovered only in the nineteenth century; the whole northern sea route was travelled for the first time in 1878-1879 by A.E. Nordenskiöld on the barge ‘Vega’. In 1914-1915 the first Russian expedition, led by Boris Vilkitsky, navigated this route from east to west on the icebreakers Tajmyr and Vajgač. Despite these facts, we find plenty of evidence in antiquity of the belief in the possibility of navigation across the northern Ocean. The heroes of epic poetry (Odysseus, Heracles, the Argonauts) were supposed to sail through the northern Ocean during their fantastic wanderings. The possibility of navigation there was supported by cosmological and pseudo-scientific theories about the location of the Ocean (Pytheas, Poseidonius, Pomponius Mela, Pliny the Elder).

Type
Chapter
Information
Contacts and Networks in the Baltic Sea Region
Austmarr as a Northern Mare Nostrum, ca. 500–1500 AD
, pp. 29 - 48
Publisher: Amsterdam University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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