nherited duty of obedience, have set
my heart on fighting for thee, if it be only with all the forces of
my mind; my father and grandfather being known to have served thy
illustrious sire in camp with loyal endurance of the toils of war.
Relying therefore on thy guidance and regard, I have resolved to begin
with the position and configuration of our own country; for I shall
relate all things as they come more vividly, if the course of this
history first traverse the places to which the events belong, and take
their situation as the starting-point for its narrative.

The extremes, then, of this country are partly bounded by a frontier of
another land, and partly enclosed by the waters of the adjacent sea. The
interior is washed and encompassed by the ocean; and this, through the
circuitous winds of the interstices, now straitens into the narrows of a
firth, now advances into ampler bays, forming a number of islands. Hence
Denmark is cut in pieces by the intervening waves of ocean, and has but
few portions of firm and continuous territory; these being divided
by the mass of waters that break them up, in ways varying with the
different angle of the bend of the sea. Of all these, Jutland, being the
largest and first settled, holds the chief place in the Danish kingdom.
It both lies fore-most and stretches furthest, reaching to the frontiers
of Teutonland, from contact with which it is severed by the bed of the
river Eyder. Northwards it swells somewhat in breadth, and runs out to
the shore of the Noric Channel (Skagerrak). In this part is to be found
the fjord called Liim, which is so full of fish that it seems to yield
the natives as much food as the whole soil.

Close by this fjord also lies Lesser (North) Friesland, which curves in
from the promontory of Jutland in a cove of sinking plains and shelving
lap, and by the favour of the flooding ocean yields immense crops of
grain. But whether this violent inundation bring the inhabitants more
profit or peril, remains a vexed question. For when the (dykes of the)
estuaries, whereby the waves of the sea are commonly checked among that
people, are broken through by the greatness of the storm, such a mass
of waters is wont to overrun the fields that it sometimes overwhelms not
only the tilled lands, but people and their dwellings likewise.

Eastwards, after Jutland, comes the Isle of Funen, cut off from the
mainland by a very narrow sound of sea. This faces Jutland on the west,