[Illustration: The oldest known picture of a ski-runner (from the Hereford map's representation of Norway, thirteenth century)]
"And not far from the shore which we before spoke of [by the cave] on the west, where the ocean extends without bounds, is that very deep abyss of the waters which we commonly call the ocean's navel. It is said twice a day to suck the waves into itself, and to spew them out again; as is proved to happen along all these coasts, where the waves rush in and go back again with fearful rapidity. Such a gulf or whirlpool is called by the poet Virgil Caribdis, and in his poem he says it is in the strait by Sicily, as he says:
'Scilla lies on the right hand and the implacable Caribdis on the left. And three times it sucks the vast billows down into the abyss with the deep whirlpool of the gulf, and it sends them up again into the air, and the wave lashes the stars.'
"By the whirlpool of which we have spoken it is asserted that ships are often drawn in with such rapidity that they seem to resemble the flight of arrows through the air; and sometimes they are lost in this gulf with a very frightful destruction. Often just as they are about to go under, they are brought back again by a sudden shock of the waves, and they are sent out again thence with the same rapidity with which they were drawn in. It is asserted that there is also another gulf of the same kind between Britain and the Gallician province" [i.e., northern Spain], whereupon there follows a description of the tides on the south coast of France and at the mouths of the rivers, after which there is a highly coloured account of the horrors of the Ebudes, where they can hear the noise of the waters rushing towards a similar Caribdis.
Paulus Warnefridi evidently had a very erroneous idea of ski-running, which he made into a leaping instead of a gliding motion. He may have imagined that they jumped about on pieces of wood bent like bows. That the abyss of waters or navel of the sea is thought to be in the North may be due to reports either of the current in the Pentland Firth or of the Mosken-ström or the Salt-ström, which thus make their appearance here in literature, and which were afterwards developed into the widespread ideas of the Middle Ages about maelstroms and abysses in the sea, perhaps by being connected with the ancient Greek conception of the uttermost abyss (Tartarus, Anostus, Ginnungagap; see pp. 11, 12, 17), and as here with the description of the current in the Straits of Messina.