If we compare these various utterances of such eminent authorities, it appears to me that there are paramount reasons for regarding the Russian-Finnish name for walrus as of Norse origin. But in that case it also becomes probable that the Norwegians were the pioneers in walrus-hunting along the coasts of the Polar Sea, and that both the Finnish peoples and the Russians learned from them.
It will doubtless be difficult to find a natural explanation of the peoples on the northern coasts of Russia having from the first developed their arctic sea-hunting with large craft, unless we suppose that they learned it from the Norwegians, and that it is thus a continuation of the methods of the latter. It should also be remembered that the Kola peninsula as far as the White Sea itself was reckoned a tributary country of Norway (cf. p. 135), and that the name of the Murman coast means simply the Norwegians' coast. None of the peoples on the north coast of Russia can have been a seafaring people very far back, as is shown by their boats and appliances; and it is difficult to believe that they should have been able to develop independently a system of navigation on a coast presenting such unfavourable conditions; no doubt they could have done so with small boats, originally river-boats,[159] but not with larger craft; this they must most probably have learned from their nearest seafaring neighbours, the Norwegians, who were masters at sea.
It is remarkable that already as early as in Adam of Bremen white bears (polar bears) are mentioned as occurring in Norway (cf. vol. i. pp. 191, f.). That this might be due to the connection with Iceland and Greenland, even at that time, is perhaps possible, but not very probable, as these countries are mentioned separately by Adam. The white bears in Norway may rather point to a connection with the Polar Sea and to the Norwegians having practised sealing there.
[Sidenote: Mention of white bears in Norway]
It is perhaps due to the same connection of the Norwegians with the Polar Sea that we find on the Italian Dalorto's map of 1325 (see next chapter) and on several later maps the statement that there are white bears in northern Norway. Probably polar bears' skins were brought to the south from Norway as an article of commerce and the Norwegians may have obtained the skins partly by their own hunting in the Polar Sea, partly by the trade with Greenland, and partly, no doubt, by that with the peoples on the north coast of Russia. The Arab Ibn Sa'id (thirteenth century) mentions white bears in the northern islands, amongst them the island of white falcons (i.e., Iceland). "These bears' skins are soft, and they are brought to the Egyptian lands as gifts." In the "Geographia Universalis" of the thirteenth century (see next chapter) the white bears in Iceland are described. It was a common idea in southern Europe in the Middle Ages that Greenland, and sometimes also Iceland (cf. Fra Mauro's map), lay to the north of Norway, or they were made continuous with it, and even a part of it.