ABSTRACT
OVER and above these there lie off the shores of Östergötland and Svealand huge rocks, some visible, some lurking hidden, in a very long ridge like benches fitted together by skill or hard work, named in the vulgar tongue Idö bänkar, on which unfortunate shipwrecked mariners are regularly stranded. 1 These rocks were ready to have me, too, if, during a great storm in the year of the Lord 1517, God had not lent His aid. 2 My ship was being driven by the violence of the winds onto those submerged reefs, whose long line resembles the sloping walls of towns or camps. Those who strike these rocks, either through carelessness or an unavoidable tempest, especially enemy fleets bent on realizing their greed for plunder at the expense of the coastal population (who are not without wealth), are surely to be considered the most wretched of all men, since they are surrounded by foes, both on land and sea, in a more daunting way than if they were in prison. Because the natives flee with their flocks, herds, and household goods in the face of this sudden enemy incursion, on land they will be very swiftly consumed by famine, the worst foe of all, and with cold, which is a greater agony than any torture. At sea, too, they will be destroyed because, as I have said, the weather there is generally of the harshest kind; even if they should try to extricate themselves by skill and toil, it will in no way avail them to withstand Nature’s ferocity. For everywhere, besides the onslaught of the wind mentioned above, there is the danger presented by the boulders, or rocks, which rise to a sharp point, like spires. These are betrayed by the spray, so that through quick perception and steering a bending, flexible, and indirect course, they may be circumvented. 3
Ido bankar
Danger for the author
Walls lurking under the water
Famine on land
Storm at sea
Perilous rocks
