of Gothland with a gulf of some
width; while its lower channel, passing the northern sides of Gothland
and Norway, turns eastwards, widening much in breadth, and is bounded
by a curve of firm land. This limit of the sea the elders of our race
called Grandvik. Thus between Grandvik and the Southern Sea there lies
a short span of mainland, facing the seas that wash on either shore;
and but that nature had set this as a boundary where the billows almost
meet, the tides of the two seas would have flowed into one, and cut off
Sweden and Norway into an island. The regions on the east of these
lands are inhabited by the Skric-Finns. This people is used to an
extraordinary kind of carriage, and in its passion for the chase strives
to climb untrodden mountains, and attains the coveted ground at the cost
of a slippery circuit. For no crag juts out so high, but they can reach
its crest by fetching a cunning compass. For when they first leave the
deep valleys, they glide twisting and circling among the bases of the
rocks, thus making the route very roundabout by dint of continually
swerving aside, until, passing along the winding curves of the tracks,
they conquer the appointed summit. This same people is wont to use the
skins of certain beasts for merchandise with its neighbours.

Now Sweden faces Denmark and Norway on the west, but on the south and on
much of its eastern side it is skirted by the ocean. Past this eastward
is to be found a vast accumulation of motley barbarism.

That the country of Denmark was once cultivated and worked by giants, is
attested by the enormous stones attached to the barrows and caves of
the ancients. Should any man question that this is accomplished by
superhuman force, let him look up at the tops of certain mountains and
say, if he knows how, what man hath carried such immense boulders up to
their crests. For anyone considering this marvel will mark that it is
inconceivable how a mass, hardly at all or but with difficulty movable
upon a level, could have been raised to so mighty a peak of so lofty
a mountain by mere human effort, or by the ordinary exertion of human
strength. But as to whether, after the Deluge went forth, there existed
giants who could do such deeds, or men endowed beyond others with bodily
force, there is scant tradition to tell us.

But, as our countrymen aver, those who even to-day are said to dwell
in that rugged and inaccessible desert aforesaid, are, by the mutable
nature