If we compare this with the "Rymbegla" tract already mentioned [1780, p. 466], we see that these are much the same ideas as there expressed. We read there
"that it is the report of the same men that the sea is full of eternal ice to the north of us and under the pole star, where the arms of the Outer Ocean meet...."
"those shores [under the pole star] hinder the ring of the ocean from coming together [i.e., round the earth]" ... and "that one can go on foot ... from Greenland to Norway" [cf. above, p. 239],
this is evidently something similar to what Clavus says; but the latter's words as to the voyage which he attributes to Mandeville from the Indian Seres to Norway being more probable because there is land at the North Pole are somewhat incomprehensible.
John Mandeville's book about a voyage through many lands to the far east and China dates from between 1357 and 1371, and is put together from various accounts of voyages, with the addition of all kinds of fables. Mandeville does not himself claim to have made any such voyage from China to Norway; on the other hand, he has much to say, in chapter xvii., about the possibility of sailing round the world, which he declares to be practicable, and if ships were sent out to explore the world, one could sail round the world, both above and below. He says that when he was young he heard of a man who set out from England to explore the world, and who went past India and the islands beyond it where there are more than five thousand islands, and so far did he travel over sea and land that he finally came to an island where he heard them calling to the ox at the plough in his own language, as they did in his own country. This island afterwards proved to be in Norway.[262]
Clavus's assertion that he himself saw ("ut uidi") Karelians in Greenland is impossible. As it is expressly stated that there was land at the North Pole, and as it is not mentioned that these Karelians had hide-boats like the Pygmies, the meaning must be that their armies came marching by the land route, which, of course, is an impossibility, which, if he had been in Greenland, would make him a worse romancer than if we suppose his "ut uidi" to mean that he had seen something of the sort stated in a narrative; but even this may be doubtful. In the Bruges itinerary [cf. Storm, 1891, p. 20] or some similar older authority, which we know he may have used, he may have seen "Kareli" beyond Greenland spoken of as "in truth a populus monstrosus." We have already said that on the maps accompanying Marino Sanudo's work he may have seen "Kareli infideles" marked on the mainland to the north-east of Norway, or even on an island out in the northern sea, and he would then naturally have connected the Karelians of the itinerary with these Karelians north of Norway. If we add to this that on the Medicean map of the world he saw the mass of the continent extending from Scandinavia and the peninsula corresponding to Greenland, northwards into the unknown, and that in the "Rymbegla" tract he saw mention of land at the North Pole--then, indeed, his whole statement seems to admit of a perfectly natural explanation.