304 IVORY AND THE ELEPHANT
to secure horsevael ("horsewhales") "which have in their teeth bones of great price and excellence."*
In
the fourteenth century the Scandinavian saga of Kroka, the crafty, who
lived in the tenth century, makes the statement that the three most
precious things that Gunner, prefect of Greenland, could obtain in the
island, when he sought to propitiate King Harald Hardraad of Norway, in
1050 A. D. by the bestowal of the most valuable gifts at his disposal,
were a white bear, a set of chessmen carved out of walrus ivory, and a
gold-inlaid skull of a walrus with the teeth still in place.f A curious
specimen of such a chessman in the British Museum, carved from this
kind of ivory, closely resembles the pieces of a nearly complete set
found in 1831 in the Scotch Island of Lewis.
Touching
the use of walrus ivory in the Middle Ages it has been noted that in
northern Europe, in Germany, and in the Netherlands, for example, while
elephant ivory was freely and principally used during the ninth and
tenth centuries, a large proportion of the carvings executed there
during the eleventh and twelfth centuries were of walrus ivory 4
In
"Hakluyt's Voyages" we read that when Jacques Cartier discovered the
Isle of Romea, in 1534, he reported the finding there of "very great
beasts" as large as men, and having " two great teeth in their mouths
like unto Elephant's teeth." Hakluyt, after giving the Latin names boves marini and vaccœ marinœ, says
they were called, in the Russian tongue, " morsses." These teeth were
sold in England " to the combe and knife-makers at 8 groats and 3
shillings the pound weight," while elephant ivory only brought half as
much;
*In the first chapter of King Alfred's edition of the "De Miseria Mundi" of Paulus Oroshis. See Laufer, op. cit., p. 25.
tWilliam
Maskell, "Ivories Ancient and Medieval," London, 1875, p. 80, citing a
paper read before the Society of Antiquaries in 1882 by Sir Frederick
Madden.
JM. Digby Wyatt, "Notices on Sculpture in Ivory," London, 1856, pp. 10,11.
