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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 18 January 2010
During the last half-century authors who have had occasion to write about the history of the magnetic compass have quoted extensively from The Intellectual Rise in Electricity, by Park Benjamin (New York, 1895). The wealth of references given by this writer to substantiate his statements promises a reliability which is at times sadly lacking. In one part of this book the statement is made that: ‘A single Finnish Compass has been discovered for which the people claim great antiquity, the card or scale of which is marked for a latitude where the sunrise and sunset at the summer and winter solstices differ by sixty degrees.’ For this the author gives as authority Nouvelles Annales des Voyages, Vol. xvii, page 414 (Paris, 1823), but in fact this reference contains no suggestion of the discovery of an ancient Finnish compass. All there is, is a brief reference to the ancient Finnish method of dividing the compass card which, instead of four cardinal points, had six, spaced sixty degrees apart. This information was said to be based on an article in a monthly miscellany, published in Finland under the name of Mnemosyne. Captain D. Daragan of Helsinki has been kind enough to obtain for me a copy of the original article, which was printed in Swedish, and Rektor S. Nydell has been so good as to translate it into English.
1 1 It is now probably impossible to understand the way in which the ancient Greeks and Romans fixed the positions of their points of the compass and the names of their winds. It is strange that certain plagae coeli, especially among the Romans, abound in names of winds. Between south and west (Meridies and Occidens), for example, there are Notus, Auster, Africus, Libs, Libonotus, Favonius and Zephyrus, whereas other plagae had hardly any definite winds. Between north and west there was, for instance, nothing but the indefinite Cams or Caurus, which some lexicographers translate by north-west, others by north-north-west and others by west-north-west. This seems to prove that the nation had not definitely divided the horizon, which is further borne out by the fact that the Romans mostly used the Greek names for winds.
2 It seems to me to be the same with the Esthonians' Pöhhi, Idda, Lounad, Eddal, Lads and Loed, or from other sources, Pohhi, Idda, Kak, Lounad (Eddal), Lens and Loed. Their positions and meanings are disputed in Rosenplanter's Beiträge zur Kenntniss de Ehstnischen Sprache, Volume X, page 96, with Compass, Volume XII, page 92. From this it appears that Esthonian (which developed from Finnish) cannot be completely unravelled without an intimate knowledge of Finnish. Necessary information is lacking about the language and the winds of the other Finnish peoples (those of the Sirjeuers, Permiers and others).
3 The radius of the Earth is the chord of an arc of 6o° of the horizon. If, however, one went on to say that the Finns used the same radius as a measure to settle the positions of their cardinal points and their distance from each other one would certainly be ascribing profounder mathematical knowledge to the ancient Finns than they actually possessed. One ought, however, to remember that in Tartary the Finns lived in close proximity to the ancient Indians who had a great and varied culture; and it is supposed that nearly all deeper knowledge originally came from them. In the sixth century the town of Slavensk seems to have been founded by the Slavs on the Volchov stream as they were marching to the north, and they drove the Finns away from the region of Lake Ilmen, but until then, history reports, the Finns had been in constant communication and lively commercial intercourse with Arabs, Persians and Indians, and the Permish tribe carried on these connections until the intrusions of the Mongolian races on the Volga in the thirteenth century.
4 The distance between the solstice points in Finland is 100° to 150° of the horizon. In this country ltä and Kaako, with their corresponding Luodet and Länsi would consequently have been given quite other positions if their distance apart had not been fixed before the nation moved into these northerly regions. Could this be held as a new proof that Finland is not the original home of the nation where the language was developed?
5 This wind is called Kaarna-Pohja by some Finns.
6 In the same way the Esthonians call the wind coming from the Baltic, vessi-kaar, but the one which blows from the inland part of Russia, maa-kaar. See the above-mentioned Beiträge.
7 If the older compass or the original compass points of the Finnish nation had been the same as those of the Germanic races it is quite incomprehensible why this nation, whose language is otherwise so regular and definite, should have created for itself such incomplete, incorrect and haphazard names for the winds. If, on the other hand, one supposes that the Finnish points of the compass had formerly been different from the Germanic, and that the confusion in our present names has arisen from the introduction of a foreign compass, then the cause of the irregularity referred to is easily explained.