From Paris to Poland via the Arctic: The Origin and Transmission of a Cosmological Theory

"From Paris to Poland via the Arctic: The Origin and Transmission of a Cosmological Theory." The Polish author of the short mid-thirteenth-century geographical tractate called De ortu Tartaronum (or Descripciones terranum) reported that a Danish acquaintance had told him of a miraculous "superterranean dawn" which in midwinter darkness illuminated the Arctic sky of northern Norway. A source analysis of this Dane's account reveals him to have been a well-read man with possible connections to the schools of Paris. An unexpected result of this analysis is the discovery that he had also read the Old Norse Konungs skuggsjá (King’s Mirror), which contains a description of the northern lights and theories about their origin whose formulation is also traceable to the studies of "well-informed men" at Paris. The examination of these theories opens knowledge about yet another area of physics which was being scrutinized by twelfth-century scholars and provides clues about the identity of the Dane who communicated particulars about the object of their interest to his Polish associate.