south to Hedeby Ohthere's account of a journey to the Danish trading settlement of Hedeby, Old English æt hæþum "[port] at the heaths" and German Haithabu, begins with a reference to a place in the south of Norway named Sciringes heal, to which he said one could not sail [from his home in Hålogaland] in one month if one camped at night and each day had a fair [or: contrary] wind ("Þyder he cwæð þæt man ne mihte geseglian on anum monðe gyf man on niht wicode and ælce dæge hæfde ambyrne wind"). This sentence has very often been quoted in literature. Old English ambyrne (accusative singular masculine; the nominative would be ambyre) is a hapax legomenon in Old English. Since around 1600 the traditionally accepted rendering of the phrase in English has been, without ultimate proof, "fair/favourable wind" in translations and dictionaries; on the other hand only a handful of scholars have supported the meaning "contrary". In contrast to the account of his journey to the north ("He sailed north", "the land turned eastwards" etc.) and the voyage from Sciringes heal to Hedeby ("When he sailed", "before he came to Hedeby" etc.), Ohthere does not employ the past tense when he describes sailing south along the Norwegian coast; he does not report a story from his own viewpoint but speaks in general terms for an anonymous mariner: "One cannot sail", "if one camped at night", "he will sail", "to him will be at first", "until he comes". Michael Korhammer, a proponent of "contrary wind", concludes from this change of aspect that the ambyrne-wind-sentence is not about Ohthere's own travelling experience nor does it refer to normal sailing speeds in his period, as was often assumed by critics, but answers a question of King Alfred’s court (see D. Whitelock above) about distances, "how long is the North Way?", or "how long is it from your home to the south?". Korhammer claims that Ohthere here uses the worst-case scenario of a theoretical sailing voyage lasting longer than one month for a description of the very great length of the Norwegian coast-line to his Anglo-Saxon audience. This interpretation is strengthened by the immediately following sentence "and all the time he will sail be lande", and later when the mariner comes to Sciringes heal, by "and all the way on the port side North Way". While sailing along the Norwegian coast, the mariner