Erich Pontoppidan

I am very far from defining to relate or establish marvellous things, merely to excite the admiration of the reader. On the contrary I hope endeavoured to rectify the erroneous idea which many even among the learned have for want of better information formed of several, in themselves very wonderful natural phoenomena, here in Norway, such as a bottomselfs sea abyss growing in the Moskoe-Strom, penetrating quite thro’ the globe, on ducks growing on trees; of a water on Sundmoer, which in a short time turns wood into stone, and many other such things, which, some who have had no opportunity of enquiring further, or others who were not disposed to it, have received as undoubted facts. The reader will meet with many strange, singular, and unexpected things here, but all of them strictly true, some of them not discovered before, others confirmed, and, to the best of my ability, in some measure accounted for, and illustrated.