THIS CHAPTER PROVIDES a brief survey of all available sources where Beormas/ Bjarmar and Biarmia/ Bjarmaland occur; firstly, to show that different groups of Old Norse sources had different ethno-geographical nomenclature; secondly, to explain how and why the meaning of the place-name Bjarmaland changed; and finally, to describe the position of Bjarmaland between Norway and Old Rus’.

Bjarmaland, a mysterious land in the north of Europe, is mentioned in a number of Old Norse sources (cf. Tiander 1906). But before data concerning this land were put in writing by medieval Icelanders, the Anglo-Saxon king Alfred, in the late ninth century, added to his translation of the Historiae adversum Paganos by Paulus Orosius a record of a report of a certain traveller Ohthere, who had reached a land named Biarmia from the place of his habitation in the north of Norway, in Hålogaland. Ohthere's story is of vital importance within the context of Biarmia/ Bjarmaland studies, as an account of his voyage gives a detailed description of the northbound route from Hålogaland to the land of the Beormas.