The following is my translation of an article called: 'Vom Walroß'. I'm not sure who the author was or why they disliked using paragraphs. (It perhaps has something to do with the printers or editing. I found one hyphen which presumably indicated a paragraph.) The article appeared in a German popular science magazine, Kosmos Handweiser für Naturfreunde 1923, Heft 7, Seiten 194-195. I'm not aware of any previous translation.
Before the curtain rises on this translation, a carpenter has asked why a walrus is sp called. The roots of the word lie in the German language, and English is predominantly Germanic. 'Wal' is German for 'whale' and 'Ross' translates well as 'stead'; the sort of horse a knight wished to ride. The walrus is a seal with a whale-like mentality to wards sized, and very wet knights may have ridden such animals at the Battle of Agincourt (had it been much further north). A 'walrus' is linguistically a 'whale horse'.
Trevor Dykes.

Of the walrus
If any animal merits the name of a monster then it must be the walrus, so wrote travellers to the North Pole, and researchers and seal hunters agree with their verdict. What for a wonder when, in the Middle Ages, the first reports arrived in Central Europe as nerve-wracking rumours. They were then termed 'sea cows' or even "monstrous pigs of the German Sea" and "shockingly roaring" animals of fable. Albertus Magnus, the famous explorer of the 13th century, wrote for example, "that in the northern seas there lives a giant whale-elephant that has downwards pointing tusks of two to three feet in length, with which it hangs onto cliffs so as to help it climb, and which knows how to use them in battle. Fishermen feed themselves from these sleeping animals, separate the fur from the flesh at the tail, tie this onto a boulder from the cliffs, and then throw stones at the animal. If it wishes to escape, then it will tear off its fur from its tail to the head, leave it where it be and then crash into the water, where it may then be found weak and half dead. Braces are made from its leather and these are in constant demand at the market of Cologne." As exaggerated as that all is, the researchers of recent times have shown that the animal really does have an unnerving appearance, with its long white tusks coming out from the upper jaw like a pair of glinting sabres. There is also a wild, bristle-haired beard, a terrible roar and, quite unlike any other seal, an immense aggression. Despite its misleading name the 'whale horse' is a seal and not a whale. The animals attain a length of 4 to 4.5 metres and a circumference of up to 3 metres. Food is slurped in and consists in the main of all kinds of lower animals, muscles, shelled animals and so on, that can be found in the mud of the shore or the ice. The long tusks help with foraging for food, as they allow for loosening the ground, but they are also skilfully employed for climbing onto pack ice. Generally, walruses lay lazily on the shore in herds, but a look-out will have been appointed and a strange bark will raise the alarm at any danger. They move clumsily on land using their rear flippers but, in water, they can outswim any boat as they have much endurance. However, they are reluctant to stray far from the land or ice, with the exceptions of large migrations. A traveller once reported on such a case in Baffin Bay, when he observed such a migration of thousands and yet more thousands of walruses as they swam by for hours -a strange sight indeed!

The females give birth to a single young and defend it with courage. The youngster responds to this love with great dependence and will not even leave a dead mother. Walruses will also hurry to assist one another, but they fight bloody battles among themselves. As well as displaying great aggression, travellers also report these giants to have a child-like curiosity. Bayer relates of how his companion, when marching across thin ice, was followed in a most unpleasant manner by very inquisitive walruses. The seals swam beneath the ice but then repeatedly surfaced and cracked through it with the skull, and this kept happening until the traveller was able to flee to a thicker layer. Spitzbergen, Greenland and the ice clad coastlands of North America and Asia are the current homelands of the walrus; during the Ice Age large glaciers and ice bergs allowed them to penetrate much further south; indeed, even in the 15th century, they were reportedly often seen on the Scottish coast. When, in the remoteness of distant lands, these strange monsters held on, then these cases unfortunately present exceptions and, where there were once herds of many thousands, today only a few hundred are to be observed. They have been senselessly slaughtered by extensive hunting, and this has been to obtain the brown leather skin, to be worked into braces, as well as for oil. The Eskimos in some areas live only from hunting walruses, and the disappearance of these prey animals has already resulted in famines and even the demise of the residents.

An index of more of my translations of old Kosmos articles can be found at:

Kosmos Translations Archive

A number of Mesozoic (and post-Mesozoic) location summaries can be found at Localities.