The Norse voyager Ohthere of Halogaland undertook an unprecedented, hazardous voyage of exploration around the North Cape and into the White Sea, exploring the northernmost regions of Europe. Navigating an open Viking longship through the stormy, ice-choked waters of the Arctic Ocean, Ohthere and his crew endured freezing temperatures, violent winds, and uncharted coastal waters where any mistake meant certain death. He traveled to the court of King Alfred the Great in Winchester, England, to recount his harrowing journey and describe the vast, frozen wilderness, the lifestyle of the Sami peoples, and the abundance of walruses and whales he encountered.

King Alfred was so fascinated by Ohthere's accounts of extreme maritime endurance that he had them translated and inserted into his Old English translation of Orosius's historical work, creating one of the earliest written prose travelogues in the English language. This narrative injected vivid imagery of the harsh, frozen north into the Anglo-Saxon literary consciousness, reinforcing the stark, melancholic themes of cold, isolation, and exile that characterize Old English elegiac poems like 'The Wanderer' and 'The Seafarer'.