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"Lapland Sorcerers" 229
authority of "John a bysshoppe of Gothlande", "They are
furthermore experte inchaunters. They tye three knottes
on a strynge hangynge at a whippe ...", and so on
through the traditional account of Lapp sorcery. 34
This is the first English reference I have found to the
sorcerers of Lapland, by name. It was repeated in
R. Willes's augmented edition of Eden's work, The
History of Trauayle. . (London, 1577). Presumably
Fletcher referred to the Ziegler-Muenster-Olaus Magnus­
Eden account when he wrote, "the enchaunting of shippes
that saile along their coast (as I haue heard it reported)"
Fletcher's etymology, "they were first termed Lappes of
their bride and short speach", depends on a connection
with German lappe (which leads to the Ziegler-Muenster
reference to the Germans) and ultimately on Ziegler's
specific statement about eos qui parum idonea rei prcesenti
dicunt . . .. Fletcher did not get this from Eden's
paraphrase, for Eden blurs the point about briefness of
speech (which connects Ziegler and Fletcher at this point)
in the translation, "For the Germaynes, caule all suche
Lapones, as are simple or vnapte to thynges". Glaus
Magnus omits the etymology, so Fletcher presumably
consulted either Ziegler or Muenster.
Thus the Elizabethans knew of Lappia, Laponia and at
last Lapland through the reports of travellers from the
time of the first English exploration of the area in the
Willoughby-Chancellor voyage, through the subsequent
trade in fish, oil, tallow, wax, hemp and numerous other
commodities, and through the maintainance of supply
stations at Vardo and elsewhere on the Norwegian coast.
They knew of the sorcerers of Lapland from the works of
geographers, their translators and adaptors, from the first
half of the sixteenth century onwards. Yet the Lapland
sorcerer was not a source of literary inspiration until the
1590s, after which he continued a popular figure for over
a century. Perhaps the increased importance of the
" op, cit., fos, 268r-272v.