Krzysztof Witczak

In his chronicles, Alexander Gwagnin (1534–1614) included a concise description of the walrus (Odobenus rosmarus L.) largely consistent with the description of this marine mammal, given by Oppian of Cilicia and Claudius Aelianus, two ancient authors from the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD. The probable source of both ancien accounts seems to be Pytheas’ lost work entitled On the Ocean. Pytheas od Massalia was a famous Greek traveler and sailor, who presented the islands located in the North Atlantic, including Britain and Iceland (Thule), as well as the local plants and animals. Gwagnin also characterized the subboreal and boreal fauna when describing Pechora, a geographical region located on the Arctic Ocean, which he probably did not know from personal experience, although dring his long life he visited the Baltic countries, including Prussia, Livonia and Sweden. It is suggested that he rather used earlier Latin and German sources published in the sixteenth century, among them works by Matthias Miechovita, Sigismund von Herberstein and Olaus Magnus. The similarity between the descriptions of the walrus in the Ancient Greek zoological literature and Gwagnin’s chronicles seems to be rather a coincidence, especially since Konrad Gessner’s five-volume work entitled Historia animalium, referring to the zoological knowledge of ancient authors, did not include the walrus.