ABSTRACT
IN the last chapter you will notice that I referred briefly to the lofty rock, Hvitsark, which lies in the middle of the sea between Iceland and Greenland: it will be worthwhile if I go back and describe it in fuller detail. About the year of Our Lord 1494 two notorious pirates, Pining and Pothorst, had been totally barred from the communities of men by a very strict decree of the kings of the North for the way they conducted the most cruel brigandage in apparent scorn and contempt of all realms and their soldiers; they lived there outlawed with their fellow-rovers and inflicted many atrocities on every seafarer, whether sailing close at hand or at a distance, 1 just as in another, earlier time the more numerous and notable pirates, the Vitalians, as they were called, committed many crimes and in the end, by the combined forces of all the northern kingdoms, were removed from among the living. 2 So also in the year 1525 the men of Hamburg dragged a certain Kniphoff with seventy of his accomplices from a powerful ship known as a galleon and, after being condemned to death, these fellows were broken on the wheel. 3
Hvitsark
Pirates, Pining and Pothorst
Vitalians, on whom see Albert Krantz in Wandalia Kniphoff
