of voices and a changing din of extraordinary clamour. Whence it
is supposed that spirits, doomed to torture for the iniquity of their
guilty life, do here pay, by that bitter cold, the penalty of their
sins. And so any portion of this mass that is cut off when the aforesaid
ice breaks away from the land, soon slips its bonds and bars, though it
be made fast with ever so great joins and knots. The mind stands dazed
in wonder, that a thing which is covered with bolts past picking, and
shut in by manifold and intricate barriers, should so depart after that
mass whereof it was a portion, as by its enforced and inevitable flight
to baffle the wariest watching. There also, set among the ridges
and crags of the mountains, is another kind of ice which is known
periodically to change and in a way reverse its position, the upper
parts sinking to the bottom, and the lower again returning to the top.
For proof of this story it is told that certain men, while they chanced
to be running over the level of ice, rolled into the abyss before them,
and into the depths of the yawning crevasses, and were a little later
picked up dead without the smallest chink of ice above them. Hence it
is common for many to imagine that the urn of the sling of ice first
swallows them, and then a little after turns upside down and restores
them. Here also, is reported to bubble up the water of a pestilent
flood, which if a man taste, he falls struck as though by poison. Also
there are other springs, whose gushing waters are said to resemble the
quality of the bowl of Ceres. There are also fires, which, though they
cannot consume linen, yet devour so fluent a thing as water. Also
there is a rock, which flies over mountain-steeps, not from any outward
impulse, but of its innate and proper motion.

And now to unfold somewhat more thoroughly our delineation of Norway.
It should be known that on the east it is conterminous with Sweden and
Gothland, and is bounded on both sides by the waters of the neighbouring
ocean. Also on the north it faces a region whose position and name are
unknown, and which lacks all civilisation, but teems with peoples of
monstrous strangeness; and a vast interspace of flowing sea severs it
from the portion of Norway opposite. This sea is found hazardous for
navigation, and suffers few that venture thereon to return in peace.

Moreover, the upper bend of the ocean, which cuts through Denmark and
flows past it, washes the southern side