Qwallath

A very entertaining fictional travelogue written in the first half of the 18th century by Norwegian writer Ludvig Holberg, in Latin. This is a modern Norwegian translation.

Nicholas Klim falls through a hole in the Earth and ends up on the other side, because the world is revealed to be hollow. The underworld has many different states, peoples, policies, and morals, and Klim has his own thoughts on all of the cultural differences and alternatives.

Klim is a representative of his time, and the author often seems to be ahead of that time in ethical and political matters. Particularly entertaining are the cultural descriptions of the underworldly peoples, and especially the typification by one of the underworlders of our own Europe!

A very nice example of early imaginative fiction, and interesting to lovers of cultural criticism and fantasy alike.