Dear Salima
Bone as fuel is mentioned by the swedish archbishop Olaus Magnus in his monumental work on the life of the nordic peolples, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus printed in Rome 1555. In the twentyfirst book, chapter twenty he describes how people in the far north (i.e.north of Trondheim in western Norway), where the climate and stormy winds stopped trees from growing there, used bones from whales and dried fish heads as a substitute for wood in their fires. (Fish in OM:s vocabulary can mean smaller whales, seals as well as proper fish.) In a commentary to the text edition in swedish John Granlund writes that fresh whale bones combined with dried peat/turf were used as fuel still in the beginning of the 20th century in the Faroe Islands (Annandale 1905 p. 36 ff). Graham Clark (1947 p. 99 ff) says that this use had parallels among palaeolithic mammoth hunters.
(Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus was a monumental work by Olaus Magnus on the Nordic countries, printed in Rome 1555.[1] It was a work which long remained for the rest of Europe the authority on Swedish matters. Its popularity increased by the numerous woodcuts of people and their customs, amazing the rest of Europe. It is still today a valuable repertory of much curious information in regard to Scandinavian customs and folklore.
It was translated into Italian (1565), German (1567), English (1658) and Dutch (1665). Abridgments of the work appeared also at Antwerp (1558 and 1562), Paris (1561), Basel (1567), Amsterdam (1586), Frankfurt (1618) and Leiden (1652). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Description_of_the_Northern_Peoples)
Annandale, N., 1905. The Faroes and Iceland. Oxford.
Clark, J.G.D, 1947. Whales as an economic factor in prehistoric Europe. Antiquity XXI).
Leif Jonsson / Gothenburg, Sweden
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