United States or Syria ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The name of this place, Sciringes-heal, has given a great deal of trouble to former commentators on Alfred; viz. Sir John Spelman, Bussaeus, Somner, John Philip Murray, and Langebeck, who have all chosen spots totally different, in which to place Sciringes-heal. Spelman, and others, look for this place near Dantzic, where, in their opinion, the Scyres formerly resided.
Vet. Islandic. ap. Langebeck, II. 31. Forster, Hist. of Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 50. Voyages of Ohthere to the White Sea and the Baltic, in the Ninth Century.
Langebeck is for carrying Sciringes-heal to Konga-hella, on the Guatelf, near Marstrand; and insists, that the name, in Alfred's account of the voyage, ought to have been written Cyninges-heal instead of Sciringes-heal.
If the word had only once occurred, I might have allowed Langebeck to be right; but we meet with it five times in the space of a few lines, and always without the slightest variation in orthography. 2dly, The voyage from Halgoland to Konga-hella is not of sufficient extent to have employed a month in the passage. 3dly, Konga-hella is too near Jutland to have required five days for the voyage between it and Haethum.
These people, also, have the means of producing a very severe cold; by which, the dead body continues so long above ground without putrefying; and by means of which, if any one sets a vessel of ale or water in the place, they contrive that the liquor shall be frozen either in winter or summer . Alfred's Orosius, by Barrington, p. 16. Langebeck, Scrip. Dan.
Anglo-Saxon Version of Orosius, by Alfred the Great, translated by Daines Barrington, p. 9. Langebeck, Script. Dan. Forster, Voy. and Disc. in the North, p. 53.
Word Of The Day