Chapter XIII

THE NORTH IN MAPS AND GEOGRAPHICAL WORKS OF THE MIDDLE AGES

At the beginning of the Middle Ages and down to the fifteenth century the cartography of the Greeks, which had reached its summit in the work of Ptolemy, was entirely unknown in Europe; while the early Greek conceptions (those of the Ionian school) of the disc of the earth or “œcumene” as a circle (called by the Romans “orbis terrarum,” the circle of the earth) round the Mediterranean—and externally surrounded by the universal ocean—had persisted through the late Latin authors, and probably also through Roman maps. At the same time Parmenides’ doctrine of zones (cf. vol. i. pp. 12, 123) remained prevalent owing to its enunciation by Macrobius, and maps exhibiting this doctrine were common until the sixteenth century. These two conceptions became the foundation of the learned view and representation of the world, and consequently also of the North, throughout the greater part of the Middle Ages. It was the age of speculation, not of observation. The Scandinavians were the first innovators in geography, by going straight to nature as it is, unfettered by dogmas. The Italian and Catalan sailors followed later with their portulans (sailing-books) and compass-charts.

Map of the world from Albi in Languedoc, also called
the Merovingian map (eighth century). The east is at the
top,the Mediterranean in the middle, and the universal
ocean outside, with its three bays: the Caspian Sea, the
Persian Gulf and the Red Sea

We find what is perhaps the oldest known Christian map of the world (cf. vol. i. p. 126) in the “Christian Topography” of Cosmas Indicopleustes. An attempt is made to combine the Roman classical view of the world, as lands grouped round the Mediterranean, with Cosmas’s pious conception of it as formed on the same rectangular plan as the Jews’ tabernacle. A map of the world of somewhat similar form is found in a MS. (by Orosius and Julius Honorius) of the eighth century, preserved in the library at Albi in Languedoc. But these attempts must be regarded as accidental. Typical of that time were the so-called wheel- or T-maps, the shape of which was due especially to Isidore Hispaliensis (cf. vol. i. pp. 151, ff.). The circular Roman maps of the world seem already to have had a tendency to a tripartition of the world: Europe, Asia and Africa. Sallust (in the “Bellum Jugurtinum”) indicates something of the sort, and Orosius’s geographical system seems to be founded upon a map of this kind. In St. Augustine we first find the division of the T-map clearly expressed. This dogmatic-schematic form was fixed by Isidore, according to whom the round disc of the earth surrounded by the outer ocean was to be compared to a wheel (or an O), divided into three by a T. Mechanical map-forms after this prescription (cf. vol. i. pp. 125, 150) were common during the whole of the first part of the Middle Ages until the fourteenth century; indeed they circulated and exercised influence far into the sixteenth; but sometimes, in accordance with the four corners of the earth in the Bible, the maps were given a square form instead of a round. In spite of the fact that most authors, among them Isidore himself, expressly declare that the earth had the form of a globe, this does not seem to have been anything more than a purely theoretical doctrine, for in cartographical representations, through the whole of the Middle Ages to about the close of the fifteenth century, there is never any hint of projection, or of any difficulty in transferring the spherical surface of the earth to a plane, which had been so clearly present to the minds of the Greeks.

Beatus map, from Osma, 1203. The east is at the top

Northern Europe on Heinrich of Mainz’s map, at Cambridge (1110)

The wheel-maps were, as we have said, from the first purely formal; but by degrees an attempt was made to bring into the scheme real geographical information, although the endeavour to approach reality in the representation is scarcely to be traced. To this type of map belongs the so-called Beatus map, which the Spanish monk Beatus (ob. 798) added to his commentary on the Apocalypse, and which was reproduced in very varying forms, ten of which have been preserved. The original map, which is not known, was probably round, but in the reproductions the circle of the earth is sometimes more or less round (as in the illustration, p. 184), sometimes oblong (cf. vol. i. p. 199), and sometimes four-sided with rounded corners [cf. K. Miller, ii., 1895]. Jerusalem was frequently placed in the centre of the wheel-maps, Paradise (often with Adam and Eve at the time of the Fall, or with the four rivers of Paradise) in the extreme east of Asia, which is at the top of the map, and the Mediterranean (Mare magnum), which forms the stem of the T, pointing down (cf. vol. i. p. 150). The cross-stroke of the T was formed by the rivers Tanais (with the Black Sea) and Nile. In the band of ocean surrounding the disc of the earth the oceanic islands were distributed more or less according to taste, and as there happened to be room. Thus in the version of the Beatus map here given, from Osma in Spain (of 1203), Scandinavia appears as an island (“Scada insula”) by the North Pole, as in the Ravenna geographer (cf. the map, vol. i. p. 152), and the “Orcades” (the Orkneys) and “Gorgades” (the fabulous islands of the Greeks to the west of Africa) are placed on the north-east of Asia. The so-called Sallust-maps, drawn up from Sallust’s description of the world in the Bellum Jugurtinum [cf. K. Miller, iii., 1895, pp. 110, ff.], were another type of very formal wheel-maps that were still current in the fourteenth century.

Northern Europe on the Hereford map (circa 1280)

Northern part of the Psalter map (thirteenth century)

But by degrees many changes were introduced into the strict scheme. The outer coast-line of the continents was in parts indented by bays and prolonged into peninsulas, and the islands were given a less formal shape. Such attempts appear, for instance, in Heinrich of Mainz’s map, which is taken to have been drawn in 1110 [cf. K. Miller, iii., 1895, p. 22], and the closely related “Hereford map” of about 1280 by Richard de Holdingham [cf. K. Miller, iv., 1896; Jomard, 1855]. Some resemblance to these maps is shown by the “Psalter” map in London, of the second half of the thirteenth century, and the closely related “Ebstorf” map of 1284 [cf. K. Miller, iii. pp. 37, ff.; iv. p. 3; v.]; and it is quite possible that they may all be derived from the same original source; there is in particular a great resemblance in their representation of Britain and Ireland. On the first three of these maps Scandinavia or Norway (“Noreya” or “Norwegia”) forms a peninsula with gulfs on the north and south sides. On Heinrich’s map there is beyond this an island or peninsula, called “Ganzmir,” a name which occurs again on the Hereford map (cf. vol. i. p. 157); Miller explains it as a corruption of Canzia, Scanzia (Scandinavia). On the “Lambert” map in the Ghent codex of before 1125 [cf. K. Miller, iii., 1895, p. 45], “Scanzia,” also with the name “Norwegia,” is represented as a peninsula with narrow gulfs running up into the continent on each side. “Island” (or “Ysland”) appears on Heinrich’s and the Hereford maps as an island near Norway. On the Ebstorf map “Scandinavia insula” and “Norwegia” are also shown as islands. Many fabulous countries, such as “Iperboria” (the land of the Hyperboreans), “Arumphei” (on the Psalter map, i.e., the land of the Aremphæans, cf. vol. i. p. 88), etc., appear as peninsulas or islands in the northern regions on several of these maps; on the other hand, neither Greenland nor Wineland occurs on any of them.

Northern Europe on the Lambert map at Ghent (before 1125)

Ranulph Higden’s map of the world, in London (fourteenth century)

Ranulph Higden’s map of the world, which accompanied his already mentioned work, “Polychronicon” (of the first part of the fourteenth century), is more fettered by the scheme of the wheel-maps in the form of the outer coast-line and of the islands. He took his vows in 1299, was a monk of St. Werburg’s Abbey at Chester, and died at a great age in 1363. Various reproductions of his map are known, but they display little sense of realistic representation. “Scandinavia” is placed in Asia on the Black Sea, together with the Amazons and Massagetæ, and to the north of it “Gothia” (Sweden ?). Islands in the ocean off the coast of northern Europe are called “Norwegia,” “Islandia,” “Witland” (or “Wineland,” etc.), with “gens ydolatra,” “Tile” (Thule) and “Dacia” (Denmark) with “gens bellicosa” somewhere near the North Pole. In spite of this representation on the map, the Polychronicon (cf. above, p. 31) contains various statements about the North, which may point to a certain communication with it, or may be echoes of Northern writers. Higden to a large extent copied an earlier work, the “Geographia Universalis,” a sort of geographical lexicon by an unknown author of the thirteenth century, which is for the most part based on earlier writers, especially Isidore. Both works are practically untouched by the knowledge of the North that had already appeared in King Alfred and in Adam of Bremen, and show how much ignorance could still prevail in learned quarters on many points connected with these regions. The “Geographia” speaks of “Gothia,” or lower Scythia, as a province of Europe, but obviously confuses Sweden (the land of the Götar) and Eastern Germania (the land of the Goths). Norway (“Norwegia”) was very large, far in the north, almost surrounded by the ocean; it bordered on the land of the Goths (Götar), and was separated from Gothia (Sweden) on the south and east by the river Albia (the Göta river). The inhabitants live by fishing and hunting more than by bread; crops are few on account of the severity of the cold. There are many wild beasts, such as white bears, etc. There are springs that turn hides, wood, etc., into stone; there is midnight sun and corresponding winter darkness. Corn, wine and oil are wanting, unless imported. The inhabitants are tall, powerful and handsome, and are great pirates. “Dacia” was divided into many islands and provinces bordering on Germania. Its inhabitants were descended from the Goths (Götar ? cf. Jordanes, vol. i. p. 135), were numerous and finely grown, wild and warlike, etc. “Svecia” (the land of the Svear) is also mentioned. That part of it which lay between the kingdoms of the Danes and of the Norwegians was called Gothia. Svecia had the Baltic Sea on the east and the British Ocean on the west, the mountains and people of Norway on the north, and the Danes on the south. They had rich pastures, metals and silver mines. The people were very strong and warlike, they once ruled over the greater part of Asia and Europe.

“‘Winlandia’ is a country along the mountains of Norway on the east, extending on the shore of the ocean; it is not very fertile except in grass and forest; the people are barbarously savage and ugly, and practise magical arts, therefore they offer for sale and sell wind to those who sail along their coasts, or who are becalmed among them. They make balls of thread and tie various knots on them, and tell them to untie three or more knots of the ball, according to the strength of wind that is desired. By making magic with these [the knots] through their heathen practices, they set the demons in motion, and raise a greater or less wind, according as they loosen more or fewer knots in the thread, and sometimes they bring about such a wind that the unfortunate ones who place reliance on such things perish by a righteous judgment.”

It is possible that the name “Winlandia” itself is a confusion of Finland (i.e., the land of the Finns [Lapps], Finmark) with Vinland (cf. above, p. 31); although the description of the country must refer to the former. It may be supposed that a misunderstanding of the name was the origin of the myth of selling wind being connected with it. The idea persisted, and the same myth is given so late as by Knud Leem [1767, p. 3] from an anonymous book of travels in northern Norway.

Of Iceland the “Geographia” says:

“‘Yselandia’ is the uttermost part of Europe beyond Norway on the north.... Its more distant parts are continually under ice by the shore of the ocean on the north, where the sea freezes to ice in the terrible cold. On the east it has Upper Scythia, on the south Norway, on the west the Hibernian Ocean.... It is called Yselandia as the land of ice, because it is said that there the mountains freeze together to the hardness of ice. Crystals are found there. In that region are also found many great and wild white bears, that break the ice in pieces with their claws and make large holes, through which they plunge down into the water and take fish under the ice. They draw them up through the said holes, and carry them to the shore, and live on them. The land is unfertile in crops except in a few places.... Therefore the people live for the most part on fish and hunting and meat. Sheep cannot live there on account of the cold, and therefore the inhabitants protect themselves against the cold and cover their bodies with the skins of the wild beasts they take in hunting.... The people are very stout, powerful, and very white (‘alba’).”

In Higden’s Polychronicon Gothia is also spoken of as lower Scythia, but among the provinces of Asia, although it is said that it lies in Europe; it has on the north Dacia and the Northern Ocean. But the geographical confusion in this work is greater; as already mentioned (p. 31), the countries of the Scandinavians are described together with the Insulæ Fortunatæ, Wyntlandia, etc., as islands in the outer ocean. The disagreement between Higden’s text and his map gives us an insight into how little weight was attached at that time to the relation between maps and reality; they are for the most part merely graphic schemes. Probably Higden’s map was partly copied from an older one, and the desirability of bringing it into better agreement with his text did not occur to him.

The so-called “Anglo-Saxon mappamundi” or “Cottoniana” (reproduced vol. i. pp. 180, 183), which is in the British Museum, occupies a position of its own among early mediæval maps. Its age is uncertain; it may at the earliest date from the close of the tenth century, but possibly it is as late as the twelfth [cf. K. Miller, iii., 1895, p. 31]. It exhibits no agreement with the text of Priscian (Latin translation of Dionysius Periegetes, see vol. i. p. 114), to which it is appended. Many of the names might rather be derived from Orosius, there is also great resemblance to Mela (cf. vol. i. pp. 85, ff.), and in some ways to the mediæval maps already mentioned, although the representation of the North is different. Probably an older, perhaps Roman (?) map formed the basis of it. Name-forms like Island, Norweci (Norwegia), Sleswic, Sclavi, may remind us of Adam of Bremen, but they may also be older. This map is doubtless less formal than the pronounced wheel-map type, but it does not bear a much greater resemblance to reality, although the form of Britain, for instance, may show an effort in that direction. The peninsula which has been given the name of Norweci (Norway) has most resemblance to Jutland, and the name seems to have been misplaced. No doubt it ought rather to have been attached to the long island lying to the north, which has been given the names Scridefinnas and Island. The representation has great resemblance to Edrisi’s map (cf. p. 203), where Denmark forms a similar peninsula, and Norway a similar long island, with two smaller islands to the east of Denmark, which is also alike. The “Orcades Insule” are given a wide extension on the Cottoniana map, and Tyle (Thule) lies to the north-west of Britain, as it should do according to Orosius. This map does not therefore indicate, any more than the others, any particular increase of knowledge of the North, and compared with King Alfred’s work it is still far behind in the dark ages.

The zone-maps, already alluded to, which are derived from Macrobius (cf. vol. i. p. 123), gave a formal representation of the earth of a peculiar kind, which was common throughout the whole of the Middle Ages; they may be regarded as mathematical geography more than anything else. The earth is divided in purely formal fashion into five zones, two of which are habitable: our temperate zone and the unknown temperate zone of the antipodes (in the southern hemisphere); and three uninhabitable: the torrid zone with the equatorial ocean, and the two frigid zones, north and south. These conceptions also reached the North at an early time, and are mentioned in the “King’s Mirror,” amongst other works, although its author thought that the inhabited part of Greenland really lay in the frigid zone. A zone-map from Iceland is also known of the thirteenth century. Another of the fourteenth century and a kind of wheel-map of the twelfth century, but with geographical names only without coast-lines, are also found in Icelandic MSS., besides a small wheel- and T-map. Otherwise it is not known that maps were drawn in the North during the Middle Ages. A purely formal wheel- and T-map is known from Lund before 1159 [see Björnbo, 1909, p. 189]. Another Danish wheel-map of the sixteenth century is known [see Björnbo, 1909, p. 192], and Björnbo reproduces [1909, pp. 193, ff.] two wheel-maps of 1486 from Lübeck, belonging to Professor Wieser, where the lands and islands of the North are drawn as round discs (with names) in the outer universal ocean.

THE ARAB GEOGRAPHERS OF THE MIDDLE AGES

If we turn now from the intellectual darkness of Christian Western Europe in the early Middle Ages to contemporary Arabic literature, it is as though we entered a new world; not least is this shown in geographical science, where the authors follow quite different methods. Through their contact with the intellectual world of Greece in the Orient, the Arabs kept alive the Greek tradition; they had translations in their own language of Euclid, Archimedes, Aristotle, the now lost work of Marinus of Tyre, and others, and of special importance to their geographical knowledge was their acquaintance with Ptolemy’s astronomy and geography, which had been forgotten in Europe, and which first became known there through the Arabs (cf. vol. i. p. 116). They were also acquainted with Greek cartography. To this education in Greek views and interests was added the fact that they had better opportunities than any other nation of collecting geographical knowledge; through their extensive conquests and through their trade they reached China on the east—where for a considerable time their merchants had fixed colonies, first in Canton (in the eighth century), and later, in the ninth century, even in Khânfu (near Shanghai)—and the western coasts of Europe and Africa on the west, the Sudan and Somaliland (and even Madagascar) on the south, and North Russia on the north. In spite of the religious fanaticism which in the seventh century made them an irresistible nation of conquerors, they had civilisation enough to remember that “the ink of science is worth more than the blood of martyrs,” and there flourished among them a remarkably copious literature, with an endless variety of works, from the ninth century through the whole of the Middle Ages.

Although the Arabs never attained the Greeks’ capacity for scientific thinking, their literature nevertheless reveals an intellectual refinement which, with the dark Middle Ages of Europe as a background, has an almost dazzling effect. The Arab geographers have a special gift for collecting concrete information about countries and conditions, about peoples’ habits and customs, and in this they may serve as models; on the other hand sober criticism is not their strong side, and they had a pronounced taste for the marvellous; if classical writers, and still more the learned men of the European Middle Ages, had blended together trustworthy information and fabulous myth more or less uncritically, the Arabs did so to an even greater degree, and we often find in them a truly oriental splendour in the mythical; thus it must not surprise us to hear of whales two hundred fathoms long and snakes that swallow elephants in the same author (Ibn Khordâḏbah) who says that the earth is round like a sphere, and that all bodies are stable on its surface because the air attracts their lighter parts [thus we have the buoyancy of the air], while the earth attracts towards its centre their heavy parts in the same way as the magnet influences iron [a perfectly clear description of gravitation].

Chiefly on account of the language the new fund of geographical knowledge, which, together with much that is mythical, is contained in the rich literature of the Arabs, did not attain any great importance in mediæval Europe; on the other hand the Arabs exercised more influence through the geographical myths and tales which they brought orally from the East to Europe, and, as we have seen, the world of Irish myth, amongst others, was influenced thereby.

The ideas of the Arabs about the North are, in most cases, very hazy. Putting aside the partly mythical conceptions that they had derived from the Greeks (especially Ptolemy), they obtained their information about it chiefly in two ways: (1) by their commercial intercourse in the east with Russia—chiefly over the Caspian Sea with the towns of Itil and Bulgar on the Volga—they received information about the districts in the north of Russia, and also about the Scandinavians, commonly called Rûs, sometimes also Warank. (2) Through their possessions in the western Mediterranean, especially in Spain, they came in contact with the northern peoples of Western Europe, the Scandinavian Vikings (“Maǵûs”) in particular, and in that way acquired information.

“Maǵûs” means in the west the same northern people, the Scandinavians, whom in the east the Arabs called Rûs or Warangs, which word they may have got from the Greek “Varangoi” (Βάραγγοι) and the Russian “Varyag.”

All that the Arab authors of the oldest period have about the North, and that is not taken from the Greeks, they got through their commercial connections with Russia; but it is not until the ninth century and later that anything worth mentioning appears, and even in the tenth and eleventh centuries their ideas on the subject are very much tinged with myth. Professor Alexander Seippel in his work “Rerum Normannicarum fontes Arabici” [1896], printed in Arabic, has collected the most important statements about the North in mediæval Arabic literature, and has been good enough to translate parts of these, which I give in the following pages. I have also made some additions from other sources. In an earlier chapter (pp. 143, ff.) several Arabic authors have already been quoted on the connection with Northern Russia.

The imperfection of Arabic script and its common omission of vowels easily give rise to all kinds of corruptions and misunderstandings; this is especially fatal to the reproduction of foreign words and geographical names, which explains the great uncertainty that prevails in their interpretation.

In the oldest Arab writers, of the ninth century and later, there is little or no knowledge of the North. We are only told in some of their works that furs come from there, and that the ocean in the north is entirely unknown. Abu’l-Qâsim Ibn Khordâḏbah (ob. 912), a Persian by descent and the Caliph’s postmaster in Media, thus relates in his “book of routes and provinces” (completed about 885):

“As concerns the sea that is behind [i.e., to the north of] the Slavs, and whereon the town of Tulia [i.e., Thule] lies, no ship travels upon it, nor any boat, nor does anything come from thence. In like manner none travels upon the sea wherein lie the Fortunate Isles, and from thence nothing comes, and it is also in the west.” “The Russians, who belong to the race of the Slavs [i.e., Slavs and Germans], travel from the farthest regions of the land of the Slavs to the shore of the Mediterranean (Sea of Rum), and there sell skins of beaver and fox, as well as swords” (?).

The Russian merchants also descended the Volga to the Caspian Sea, and their goods were sometimes carried on camels to Bagdad.

There was no great change in knowledge of the North in the succeeding centuries. Ibn al-Faqîh, about 900 A.D., has nothing to say about the North. He mentions in the seventh climate women who “cut off one of their breasts and burn it at an early age so that it may not grow big,” and he says that Tulia (Thule) is an island in the seventh sea between Rumia (Rome) and Kharizm (Khwarizm in Turkestan), “and there no ship ever puts in.” Ibn al-Bahlûl, about 910 A.D., gives information after Ptolemy about the latitudes of the northern regions and mentions two islands of Amazons, one with men and one with women, in the extreme northern ocean [Seippel, 1896]. Qodâma Ibn Ǵafar (ob. 948 or 949 A.D.) says of the encircling ocean (the Oceanus of the Greeks) in which the British Isles lie that

“it is impossible to penetrate very far into this ocean, the ships cannot get any farther there; no one knows the real state of this ocean.” [Cf. De Goeje in Ibn Khordâdhbeh, 1889, p. 174.]

Abû ‘Alî Ahmad Ibn Ruste, about 912 A.D., says of the Russians (“Rûs,” that is, Scandinavians, usually Swedes) that they live on an island, which is surrounded by a sea, is three days’ journey (about seventy-five miles) long, and is covered with forest and bogs; it is unhealthy and saturated to such a degree that the soil quakes where one sets foot on it. They come in ships to the land of the Slavs and attack them, etc. They have neither fixed property, nor towns, nor agriculture; their only means of support is the trade in sable, squirrel and other skins, which they sell to any one who will buy them. They are tall, of handsome appearance, and courageous, etc. Probably there is here a confusion of various statements; the ideas about the unhealthy bog-lands are doubtless connected with northern Russia, and the trade in sables can scarcely be referred to the Swedes on the Baltic.

The well-known historian, traveller and geographer, Abu’l Hasan ‘Alî al-Mas‘ûdî (ob. 956), in his book (allegorically entitled “Gold-washings and Diamond-mines”) repeats certain Arab astronomers who say

“that at the end of the inhabited world in the north there is a great sea, of which part lies under the north pole, and that in the vicinity of it there is a town [or land] which is called Tulia, beyond which no inhabited country is found.” He mentions two rivers in Siberia: “the black and the white Irtish; both are considerable, and they surpass in length the Tigris and Euphrates; the distance between their two mouths is about ten days. On their banks the Turkish tribes Kaimâk and Ghuzz have their camps winter and summer.”

He also states that the black fox’s skin, which is the most valuable of all, comes from the country of the Burtâsians (a Finnish people in Russia, Mordvins ?), and is only found there and in the neighbouring districts. Skins of red and white foxes are mentioned from the same locality, and he gives an account of the extensive trade in furs, whereby these skins are brought to the land of the Franks and Andalusia [i.e., Spain], and also to North Africa, “so that many think they come from Andalusia and the parts of the land of the Franks and of the Slavs that border upon it.” He also has a statement to the effect that before the year 300 of the Hegira [i.e., 912 A.D.] ships with thousands of men had landed in Spain and ravaged the country.

“The inhabitants asserted that these enemies were heathens, who made an inroad every two hundred years, and penetrated into the Mediterranean by another strait than that whereon the copper lighthouse stands [i.e., the Straits of Gibraltar]. But I believe (though Allah alone knows the truth) that they come by a strait [canal] which is connected with Mæotis [the Sea of Azov] and Pontus [the Black Sea], and that they are Russians [i.e., Scandinavians] ... for these are the only people who sail on these seas which are connected with the ocean.”

This is evidently the ancient belief that the Black Sea was connected through Mæotis with the Baltic.

The celebrated astronomer and mathematician, Abu-r-Raihân Muhammad al-Bîrûnî (973-1038, wrote in 1030), a Persian by birth, is of interest to us as the first Arabic author who uses the name “Warank” for Scandinavian, and mentions the Varangians’ Sea or Baltic.

In his text-book of the elements of astronomy he says that from “the Encircling Ocean” [the Oceanus of the Greeks], out into which one never sails, but only along the coast, “there proceeds a great bay to the north of the Slavs, extending to the vicinity of the land of the Mohammedan Bulgarians [on the Volga]. It is known by the name of the Varangians’ Sea (‘Baḥr Warank’), and they [the Varangians] are a people on its coast. Then it bends to the east in rear of them, and between its shore and the uttermost lands of the Turks [i.e., in East Asia] there are countries and mountains unknown, desert, untrodden.”

Al-Bîrûnî also has a very primitive map of the world as a round disc in the ocean, indented by five bays, of which the Varangians’ Sea is one [cf. Seippel, 1896, Pl. I]. The peoples who are beyond the seventh climate, that is, in the northernmost regions, are few, says he, “such as the Îsû [i.e., Wîsû], and the Warank, and the Yura [Yugrians] and the like.”

The Arabs of the West came in contact with the North through the Norman Vikings, whom they called Maǵûs (cf. p. 55), and who in the ninth century and later made several predatory expeditions to the Spanish Peninsula. Their first attack on the Moorish kingdom in Spain seems to have taken place in 844, when, amongst other things, they took and sacked Seville. After that expedition, an Arab writer tells us, friendly relations were established between the sultan of Spain, ‘Abd ar-Raḥmân II., and “the king of the Maǵûs,” and, according to an account in Abu’l-Khaṭṭâb ‘Omar Ibn Diḥya (ob. circa 1235), the former is even said to have sent an ambassador, al-Ġazâl, to the latter’s country. Ibn Diḥya says that he took the account from an author named Tammâm Ibn ‘Alqama (ob. 896), who again is said to have had it from al-Ġazâl’s own mouth. It is obviously untrustworthy, but may possibly have a historical kernel. The king of the Maǵûs had first sent an ambassador to ‘Abd ar-Raḥmân to sue for peace (?); and al-Ġazâl accompanied him home again, in a well-appointed ship of his own, to bring the answer and a present. They arrived first at an island on the borders of the land of the Maǵûs people. From thence they went to the king, who lived on a great island in the ocean, where there were streams of water and gardens. It was three days’ journey or 300 [Arab] miles from the continent.

“There was an innumerable multitude of the Maǵûs, and in the vicinity were many other islands, great and small, all inhabited by Maǵûs, and the part of the continent that lies near them also belongs to them, for a distance of many days’ journey. They were then heathens (Maǵûs); now they are Christians, for they have abandoned their old religion of fire-worship, only the inhabitants of certain islands have retained it. There the people still marry their mothers or sisters, and other abominations are also committed there [cf. Strabo on the Irish, vol. i. p. 81]. With these the others are in a state of war, and they carry them away into slavery.”

This mention of many islands with the same people as those established on the continent may suit the island kingdom of Denmark; but Ireland, with the Isle of Man, the Scottish islands, etc., lies nearer, and moreover agrees better with the 300 miles from the continent.

We are next told of their reception at the court of the king and of their stay there, and especially how the handsome and wily Moorish ambassador paid court in prose and verse to the queen, who was very compliant. When Ibn ‘Alqama asked al-Ġazâl whether she was really so beautiful as he had given her to understand, that prudent diplomatist answered: “Certainly, she was not so bad; but to tell the truth, I had use for her....” When he was afraid his daily visits might attract attention, she laughed and said:

“Jealousy is not among our customs. With us the women do not stay with their husbands longer than they like; and when their consorts cease to please them, they leave them.” With this may be compared the statement for which Qazwînî gives aṭ-Ṭartûshi (tenth century) as authority, that in Sleswick the women separate from their husbands when they please [cf. G. Jacob, 1876, p. 34].

After an absence of twenty months, al-Ġazâl returned to the capital of the sultan ‘Abd ar-Raḥmân. In the excellence of its realistic description and the introduction of direct speeches this tale bears a remarkable resemblance to the peculiar method of narration of the Icelandic sagas.

The best known of the western Arab geographers is Abû ‘Abdallâh Muḥammad al-Idrîsî (commonly called Edrisi), who gives beyond comparison the most information about the North. He is said to have been born in Sebta (Ceuta) about 1099 A.D., to have studied in Cordova, and to have made extensive voyages in Spain, to the shores of France, and even of England, to Morocco and Asia Minor. It is certain that in the latter part of his life he resided for a considerable time at the court of the Norman king of Sicily, Roger II., which during the Crusades was a meeting-place of Normans, Greeks and Franks. According to Edrisi’s account, Roger collected through interpreters geographical information from all travellers, caused a map to be drawn on which every place was marked, and had a silver planisphere made, weighing 450 Roman pounds, upon which were engraved the seven climates of the earth, with their countries, rivers, bays, etc. Edrisi wrote for him his description of the earth in Arabic, which was completed in 1154, and was accompanied by seventy maps and a map of the world. Following the Greek model, the inhabited world, which was situated in the northern hemisphere, was divided into seven climates, extending to 64° N. lat.; farther north all was uninhabited on account of the cold and snow. Edrisi describes in his great work the countries of the earth in these climates, which again are divided each into ten sections, so that the book contains in all seventy sections.

Edrisi’s representation of Northern Europe, put together, and much reduced, from eight of his maps. (Chiefly after Seippel’s reproduction [1896] and after Lelewel [1851].) Some of the Arabic names are numbered on the map and given below according to Seippel’s reading

(1) “Khâlia” (empty); (2) the first part of the 7th climate; (3) “ǵazîrat Birlânda” (the island of Birlânda, by a common error for Ireland); (4) “kharâb” (desert); (5) the island of “Dans” or “Vans” (Seippel reads Wales); (6) “ǵazîrat Angiltâra” (the island of England); (7) “ǵazîrat Sqôsia” (the island, or peninsula, of Scotland); (8) “al-baḥr al-muslim ash-shamâlî” (the dark northern ocean); (9) “ǵazîrat Islânda” (the island of Iceland); (10) “ǵazîrat Dânâmarkha” (the island, or peninsula, of Denmark); (11) “Hrsns” (Horsens); (12) “Alsia” (Als ?); (13) “Sliaswiq”; (14) “Lundûnia” (Lund); (15) “sâḥil arḍ Polônia” (the coast of Poland); (16) “Derlânem” (Bornholm ?); (17) “Landsu(d)den” (in Finland); (18) “Zwâda” (Sweden); (19) “nahr Qutalw” (the Göta river); (20) “ǵazîrat Norwâga” (the island of Norway); (21) may be read “Trônâ” (Trondheim); (22) “‘Oslô” (Oslo); (23) “Siqtûn”; (24) “bilâd Finmark” (the district of Finmark); (25) “Qalmâr”; (26) “Abûda” (Åbo ?); (27) “mabda’ nahr D(a)n(a)st” (the beginning of the river Dniestr ?); (28) “arḍ Tabast” (the land of Tavast); (29) “Daġwâda” (Dagö ?); (30) “ǵazîrat Amazânûs er-riǵâl al-maǵûs” (the island of the male heathen Amazons); (31) “ǵazîrat Amazânûs an-nisâ” (the island of the female Amazons)

On the outside of all is the Dark Sea [i.e., Oceanus, the uttermost encircling ocean], which thus forms the limit of the world, and no one knows what is beyond it. After describing Angiltâra [England] with its towns, Edrisi continues:

“Between the end of Sqôsia [Scotland], a desert island [i.e., peninsula], and the end of the island of Irlânda is reckoned two days’ sail to the west. Ireland is a very large island. Between its upper [i.e., southern, as the maps of the Arabs had the south at the top] end and Brittany is reckoned three and a half days’ sail. From the end of England to the island of Wales (?) one day. From the end of Sqôsia to the island of Islânda two-thirds of a day’s sail in a northern direction. From the end of Islânda to the great island of Irlânda one day. From the end of Islânda eastward to the island of Norwâga [Norway] twelve miles (?). Iceland extends 400 miles in length and 150 in breadth.”

Dânâmarkha is described as an island, round in shape and with a sandy soil; on the map it is connected with the continent by a narrow isthmus. There are “four chief towns, many inhabitants, villages, well protected and well populated ports surrounded by walls.” The following towns are named: “Alsia” [Als ?], “Tordîra” or “Tondîra” [Tönder], “Haun” [Copenhagen], “Horsnes” [Horsens], “Lundûna” [Lund], “Slisbûlî” [Sliaswiq ?]. From “Wendilskâda,” written “Wadî Lesqâda” [Vendelskagen], it is a half-day’s sail to the island of “Norwâġa” [Norway]. An island to the east of Denmark and near Lund is called on the map “Derlânem” [Bornholm ?].

On the continent to the south of Denmark is the coast of “Polônia” [Poland], and to the east of it, also on the continent, is “Zwâda” [Sweden], and a town “Gûta” [Götaland], also “Landsu(d)den” [in Finland]. We have further the river “Qutelw” [the Göta river], on which is the town of “Siqtun.” There is also “Qîmia” [Kemi ?]. Farther east is “bilâd Finmark” [the district of Finmark], where we still find the river Qutelw with the town of “Abûda” [Åbo ?] inland, and “Qalmâr” on the coast near another outlet of the Göta river. These two towns are

“large but ill populated, and their inhabitants are sunk in poverty; they scarcely find the necessary means of living. It rains there almost continually.... The King of Finmark has possessions in the island of Norwâġa.”

Next on the east comes the land of “Tabast” [Tavast] with “‘Daġwâda’ [Dagö ?], a large and populous town on the sea.” In the land of Tabast

“are many castles and villages, but few towns. The cold is more severe than in Finmark, and frost and rain scarcely leave them for a moment.”

Farther east Esthonia and the land of the heathen are also mentioned.

“As regards the great island of Norwâġa [Norway], it is for the most part desert. It is a large country which has two promontories, of which the left-hand one approaches the island of Dânâmarkha, and lies opposite to the harbour that is called Wendilskâda, and between them the passage is short, about half a day’s sail; the other approaches the great coast of Finmark. On this island [Norwâġa] are three inhabited towns, of which two are in the part that turns towards Finmark, the third in the part that approaches Dânâmarkha. These towns have all the same appearance, those who visit them are few, and provisions are scarce on account of the frequent rain and continual wet. They sow [corn] but reap it green, whereupon they dry it in houses that are warmed, because the sun so seldom shines with them. On this island there are trees so great of girth as are not often found in other parts. It is said that there are some wild people living in the desert regions, who have their heads set immediately upon their shoulders and no neck at all. They resort to trees, and make their houses in their interiors and dwell in them. They support themselves on acorns and chestnuts. Finally there is found there a large number of the animal called beaver; but it is smaller than the beaver [that comes] from the mouth of Russia” [i.e., no doubt, from the mouths of the Russian rivers].

“In the Dark Sea [i.e., the outer encircling ocean] there are a number of desert islands. There are, however, two which bear the name of the Islands of the Heathen Amazons. The western one is inhabited solely by men; there is no woman on it. The other is inhabited solely by women, and there is no man among them. Every year at the coming of spring the men travel in boats to the other isle, live with the women, pass a month or thereabouts there, and then return to their own island, where they remain until the next year, when each one goes to find his woman again, and thus it is every year. This custom is well known and established. The nearest point opposite to these islands is the town of Anhô (?). One can also go thither from Qalmâr and from Daġwâda [Dagö ?], but the approach is difficult, and it is seldom that any one arrives there, on account of the frequency of fog and the deep darkness that prevails on this sea.”

Edrisi says that there are many inhabited and uninhabited islands in the Dark Sea to the west of Africa and Europe; indeed, according to Ptolemy “this ocean contained 27,000 islands.” He mentions some of them. There is an island called “Sâra,” near the Dark Sea.

“It is related that Ḏu’l-Qarnain (Alexander the Great ?) landed there before the deep darkness had covered the surface of the sea, and spent a night there, and that the inhabitants of the island attacked him and his companions with stones and wounded many of them [cf. the Skrælings’ attack in Eric the Red’s Saga, and the island of smiths in the Navigatio Brandani, vol. i. p. 328; vol. ii. p. 9]. Another island in the same sea is called the Isle of Female Devils (‘ǵazîrat as-sa’âlî’), whose inhabitants resemble women more than men; their eyeteeth protrude, their eyes flash like lightning, their cheeks are like burnt wood; they speak an incomprehensible language and wage war with the monsters of the ocean....”

He also mentions the Isle of Illusion (“ǵazîrat khusrân” == “Villuland,” cf. vol. i. p. 377), of great extent, inhabited by men of brown colour, small stature, and with long beards reaching to their knees; they have a large (broad) face and long ears [cf. the ideas of the Pygmies, dwarfs, underground people and brownies], they live on plants that the earth produces of itself. There was a further large island “al-Ġaur,” with abundance of grass and plants of all kinds, where wild asses and oxen with unusually long horns lived in the thickets. There was the Isle of Lamentation (“ǵazîrat al-mustashkîn”), which was inhabited, and had mountains, rivers, many trees, fruits and tilled fields; but where there was a terrible dragon, of which Alexander freed the inhabitants. On the island of “Kalhân” in the same sea the inhabitants have the form of men but animal heads; another island was called the Isle of the Two Heathen Brothers, who practised piracy and were changed into two rocks. He also names the Island of Sheep and “Râka,” which is the Island of Birds (cf. pp. , ).

“To the islands in this sea belongs also the island of ‘Shâsland’ [presumably Shetland, perhaps confused with Iceland], the length of which is fifteen days’ journey, and the breadth ten. It had three towns, large and populous; ships put in and stayed there to buy ambra (amber ?) and stones of various colours; but the majority of the inhabitants perished in dissensions and civil war which took place in the country. Many of them removed to the coast of the European continent, where large numbers of this people still live....”

What is here said about this island is approximately the same as Edrisi elsewhere states about the island of Scotland, following the “Book of Wonders,” which is attributed to Mas’ûdî.

It will be seen that he has a very heterogeneous mixture of islands in this western ocean. Some of them, like the Island of Sheep and that of Birds, as already suggested (p. 55), probably came from Ireland, and this whole archipelago is evidently related to the numerous islands of Irish legend, and points to an ancient connection, which may have consisted in reciprocal influence; while many of these conceptions travelled from the east through the Arabs to western Europe and Ireland, the Arabs again may have received ideas from the Irish and from western Europe and carried them to the east. Thus Edrisi relates that, according to the author [Mas’ûdî] of the “Book of Wonders,” the king of France sent a ship (which never returned) to find the island of Râkâ; we may therefore conclude that the Arabs had this myth from Europe. That many of these islands are inhabited by demons and little people, who resemble the northern brownies and the Skrælings, is interesting, and shows that whether the myths came from the Irish to the Arabs or vice versa, there were in this mythical world various similar peoples who may have helped to form the epic conceptions of the Skrælings of Wineland (cf. pp. , ).

Edrisi’s map of the world is to a great extent an imitation of Ptolemy’s, but shows much deviation, which may resemble the conceptions of Mela, for instance. It might seem possible that Edrisi was acquainted with some Roman map or other. In his representation of the west and north coast of Europe, for instance, there are also remarkable resemblances to the so-called Anglo-Saxon map of the world (cf. vol. i. p. 183; vol. ii. p. 192); this may point to both being derived from some older source, perhaps a Roman map (?).

Abu’l-Hasan ‘Alî Ibn Sa‘îd (1214 or 1218-1274 or 1286) says (in his book: “The extent of the earth in its length and breadth”) of Denmark (the name of which he corrupts to “Ḥarmûsa”) that from thence are obtained true falcons (for hunting):

“Around it are small islands where the falcons are found. To the west lies the island of white falcons, its length from west to east is about seven days and its breadth about four days, and from it and from the small northern islands are obtained the white falcons, which are brought from here to the Sultan of Egypt, who pays from his treasury 1000 dinars for them, and if the falcon arrives dead the reward is 500 dinars. And in their country is the white bear, which goes out into the sea and swims and catches fish, and these falcons seize what is left over by it, or what it has let alone. And on this they live, since there are no [other] flying creatures there on account of the severity of the frost. The skin of these bears is soft, and it is brought to the Egyptian lands as a gift.”

He speaks of the women’s island and the men’s island which are separated by a strait ten miles across, over which the men row once a year and stay each with his woman for one month. If the child is a boy, she brings it up until it reaches maturity, and then sends it to the men’s island; the girls stay on the women’s island.

“To the east of these two islands is the great Saqlab island [i.e. the Slavs’ island, which is Edrisi’s Norwâġa], behind which there is nothing inhabited in the ocean either on the east or north, and its length is about 700 miles, and its width in the middle about 330 miles.” Then he says a good deal about the inhabitants, amongst other things that they are still heathens and worship fire, and on account of the severity of the cold do not regard anything as of greater utility than it. This is evidently the same error as in Ibn Diḥya, due to the designation of “Maǵûs” (== Magian) for heathen (cf. p. 201).

Zakarîyâ Ibn Muḥammad al-Qazwînî (ob. 1283) has in his cosmography several statements about the North, some of which have already been referred to (vol. i. pp. 187, 284; vol. ii. p. 144). Of the northern winter he has very exaggerated ideas. Even of the land of “Rûm” [the Roman, especially the Eastern Roman Empire; in a wider sense the countries of Central Europe] he says that winter there has become a proverb, so that a poet says of it:

“Winter in Rûm is an affliction, a punishment and a plague; during it the air becomes condensed and the ground petrified; it makes faces to fade, eyes to weep, noses to run and change colour; it causes the skin to crack and kills many beasts. Its earth is like flashing bottles, its air like stinging wasps; its night rids the dog of his whimpering, the lion of his roar, the birds of their twittering and the water of its murmur, and the biting cold makes people long for the fires of Hell.”

He says of the people of Rûm [i.e., the Germanic peoples of Central Europe] that “their complexion is for the most part fair on account of the cold and the northern situation, and their hair red; they have hardy bodies, and for the most part are given to cheerfulness and jocularity, wherefore the astronomers place them under the influence of the planet Venus.”

Of the cold in “Ifranǵa” [the land of the Franks, Western Europe] he says that it

“is quite terrible, and the air there is thick on account of the excessive cold.”

“‘Burǵân’ [or ‘Bergân,’ as the first vowel is doubtful] is a land which lies far in the north. The day there becomes as short as four hours and the night as long as twenty hours, and vice versa [cf. Ptolemy on Thule, vol. i. p. 117]. The inhabitants are heathens [‘Maǵûs’] and worshippers of idols. They make war on the Slavs. They resemble in most things the Franks [West Europeans]. They have a good understanding of all kinds of handicraft and ships.”

Professor Seippel considers it not impossible that there may here be a corruption of the Arabic Nurmân [== Normans] to Burǵân, and to a layman this looks probable. In any case Burǵân cannot here, as elsewhere in Arab authors, be Bulgar [the Bulgarians]; on the other hand it might be the Norwegian town of Bergen. In any case the description seems to suit the Norwegians best, and the mention of Ptolemy’s latitude for Thule (the longest night of twenty hours) also points to this. That they are said to be heathens is due again to the name “Maǵûs” (cf. pp. , ).

Qazwînî also tells us that

“Warank is a district on the border of the northern sea. For from the ocean in the north a bay goes in a southerly direction, and the district which lies on the shore of this bay, and from which the bay has its name, is called Warank. It is the uttermost region on the north. The cold there is excessive, the air thick, and the snow continuous. [This region] is not suited either for plants or animals. Seldom does any one come there, because of the cold and darkness and snow. But Allâh knows best [what is the truth of the matter].”

As mentioned above (p. 199), elsewhere in Arab writers the Varangians’ Sea undoubtedly meant the Baltic; but here, as is also suggested by Professor Seippel, one might be tempted to think that it is Varanger or the Varanger-fjord in Finmark that is intended. It may also be recalled that Edrisi already knew the name of Finmark. But as Qazwînî has such exaggerated ideas of the cold in Rûm and in Ifranǵa, he may also be credited with such a description of the regions on the Baltic. No importance can be attached to the statement that the bay proceeds from the northern ocean in a southerly direction, as ideas of that kind were general.

Mahmûd ibn Mas ûd ‘ash-Shîrâzî (ob. 1310) has the following about the northern regions:

“Thus far as regards the islands: you may know that in that part [of the sea] which goes into the north-western quarter [of the earth] and is connected with the western ocean there are three, whereof the largest is the island ’Anglîsî‘ [or ’Anglisei‘ (-island), probably England], and the smallest the island Irlânda. The most handsome of hunting-birds—those that are known by the name of ’sunqur‘ [hunting-falcons]—are only found on it [this island]. The middlemost of them is the island of Orknia.” Probably Ireland and Iceland are here thrown together under the name of Irlânda, as elsewhere falcons are especially attributed to the latter. “The longest day reaches twenty hours where the latitude is 63° [cf. Ptolemy, vol. i. p. 117]. There is an island that is called Tûlê. Of its inhabitants it is related that they live in heated bathrooms [literally, warm baths] on account of the severe cold that prevails there. This is generally considered to be the extreme latitude of inhabited land.” It appears to be Norway that is here meant by Thule.

Shîrazî says that “the sea that among the ancients was called Mæotis is now called the Varangians’ Sea, and these are a tall, warlike people on its shore. And after the ocean has gone past the Varangians’ country in an easterly direction it extends behind the land of the Turks, past mountains which no one traverses and lands where no one dwells, to the uttermost regions of the land of the Chinese, and because these are also uninhabited, and because it is impossible to sail any farther upon it [the ocean], we know nothing of its connection with the eastern ocean.”

Shams ad-dîn Abû ‘Abdallâh Muḥammad ad-Dimashqî (1256-1327) in his cosmography has little of interest about the North, and his ideas on the subject are obscure.

“The habitable part of the earth extends as far as 66⁄12°; the regions beyond, up to 90°, are desert and uninhabited; no known animals are found there on account of the great quantity of snow and the thick darkness, and the too great distance from the sun.... It is the climate of darkness.” It lies in the middle of the seventh climate, which surrounds it as a circular belt, and “around it the vault of heaven turns like the stone in a mill.”

“The sea beyond the deserts of the Qipdjaks [southern Russia, Turkestan and western Siberia] in latitude 63° has a length of eight days’ journey, with a breadth varying to as little as three. In this sea there is a great island [probably Scandinavia], inhabited by people of tall stature, with fair complexions, fair hair and blue eyes, who scarcely understand human speech. It is called the Frozen Sea because in winter it freezes entirely, and because it is surrounded by mountains of ice. These are formed when the wind in winter breaks the waves upon the shore; as they freeze they are cast upon the icy edges, which grow in layers little by little, until they form heights with separate summits, and walls that surround them.”

He has besides various strange fables about the northern regions and the fabulous creatures there. Of the sea to the north of Britain he says that its coasts

“turn in a north-westerly direction, and there is the great bay that is called the Varangians’ Sea, and the Varangians are an inarticulate people who scarcely understand human speech, and they are the best of the Slavs, and this arm of the sea is the Sea of Darkness in the north.”

Afterwards the coasts extend farther still to the north and west, and lose themselves in the climate of Darkness, and no one knows what is there.

Of the whales he says that in the Black Sea a kind of whale is often seen which the ignorant assert to have been carried by angels alive into Hell, to be used for various punishments, while others think it keeps at the bottom of the sea and lives on fish;

“then Allâh sends to it a cloud and angels, who lift it up out of the sea and cast it upon the shore for food for Yâǵûǵ and Mâǵûǵ. The whales are very large in the Mediterranean, in the Caspian Sea(!) and in the Varangians’ Sea(!), as also off the coasts of Spain in the Atlantic Ocean.”

There is preserved an “abstract of wonders” (oldest MS. of 1484), by an unknown Arab author, which gives a picture of the Arabs’ mythical ideas in the tenth century. It also tells of islands in the west, which are of interest to us on account of their resemblance to many of the mediæval mythical conceptions of Western Europe.

“In the great ocean is an island which is visible at sea at some distance, but if one tries to approach it, it withdraws and disappears. If one returns to the place one started from, it is seen again as before. It is said that upon this island is a tree that sprouts at sunrise, and grows as long as the sun is ascending; after midday it decreases, and disappears at sunset. Sailors assert that in this sea there is a little fish called ‘shâkil,’ and that those who carry it upon them can discover and reach the island without its concealing itself. This is truly a strange and wonderful thing.”

This is evidently the same myth as that of the Lost Isle, already referred to (Perdita, cf. vol. i. p. 376), and of the Norwegian huldrelands, etc. It also bears resemblance to legends from China and Japan. The tree is the sun-tree of the Indian legends, which was already introduced into the earliest versions of the Alexander romance (Pseudo-Callisthenes, circa 200 A.D.), and which is met with again in the fairy-tales and mythical conceptions of many peoples. Possibly it is this same tree that grows on the mountain Fusan in the Japanese happy land Horaisan, and which is sometimes seen over the sea horizon (see p. 56).

“The island of ‘as-Sayyâra.’ There are sailors who assert that they have often seen it, but they have not stayed there. It is a mountainous and cultivated island, which drifts towards the east when a west wind is blowing, and vice versa. The stone that forms this island is very light.... A man is there able to carry a large mass of rock.” This floating island resembles those met with in tales from the Faroes and elsewhere (cf. vol. i. pp. 375, f.). Even Pliny [Nat. Hist., ii. c. 95] has statements about floating islands, and Las Casas, in 1552-61 [Historias de las Indias in “Documentos ineditos,” lxii. p. 99], says that in the story of St. Brandan many such islands (?) are spoken of in the sea round the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores, and he asserts that “the same is mentioned in the book of ‘Inventio fortunata,’” that is, by Nicholas of Lynn [cf. de Costa, 1880, p. 185].

“‘The Island of Women.’ This is an island that lies on the borders of the Chinese Sea. It is related that it is inhabited only by women, who become pregnant by the wind, and who bear only female children; it is also said that they become pregnant by a tree, of which they eat the fruit. They feed on gold, which with them grows in canes like bamboo.” This myth, as will be seen, resembles Adam of Bremen’s tale of the land of women, Kvænland (vol. i. p. 186). Myths of women’s islands are, moreover, very widespread; they are found in various forms in classical authors (p. 47), in Arab writers (cf. above, pp. , ), in Indian legends, among the Irish (vol. i. pp. 354, 357), among the Chinese, etc. It is partly the Amazon idea that appears here, partly the happy land desired by men.

Through an apparently small thing the Arabs possibly exercised more than in anything else a transforming influence upon the navigation, geography and cartography of Europe; for it was probably they who first brought to Europe the knowledge of the magnetic needle as a guide. We know that the Chinese were acquainted with it, at any rate in the second century A.D., and used it for a kind of compass for overland journeys. Whether they also used it at sea we do not know, but it may readily be supposed that they did. That the Arabs through their direct commercial intercourse with the Chinese became acquainted with this discovery at an early date seems probable; but curiously enough we hear nothing of it in Arabic literature before the thirteenth century. As the Arabs and Turks after that date used the Italian word “bossolo” for compass (bussol), it has been thought that they may have derived their knowledge of it, not from China, but from Italy; but it seems more reasonable to suppose that, while they had their first knowledge of the magnetic needle from China, they obtained an improved form of the compass from Italy, and with it the Italian word.

COMPASS-CHARTS

We do not know how early the magnetic needle’s property of pointing to the north became known in Europe and used for finding the way at sea. The first mention of it is found at the close of the twelfth century in the works of the Englishman Alexander Neckam, professor in Paris about 1180-1190, and of the troubadour Guyot de Provins from Languedoc. The latter, in a satirical poem of about 1190, wishes the Pope would imitate the immutable trustworthiness of the polar star by showing the steadiness of the heavenly guide; for sailors come and go by this star, which they are always able to find, even in fog and darkness, by a needle rubbed with the ugly brown lodestone; stuck in a straw and laid upon water, the needle points unfailingly to the north star. As late as in 1258 Dante’s teacher, Brunetto Latini, saw as a curiosity in the possession of Roger Bacon at Oxford a large and ugly lodestone, which was able to confer on an iron needle the mysterious power of pointing to the star; but he thinks that it cannot be of any use, for ship-masters would not steer by it, nor would sailors venture to sea with an instrument which was so like an invention of the devil. As always when the progress of humanity is at stake, orthodoxy and religious prejudice raises its head. It is certain that the use of the compass-needle must have been known in the Mediterranean at the beginning of the thirteenth century, and probably even in the twelfth. It has been alleged that the compass was known long before that time, even in the eleventh and tenth centuries; but no proof of this has been found, and it does not appear very probable. How early the compass, or lodestone, was known in the North is uncertain. We only know that when the Hauksbók was written, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, it was at any rate known in Iceland (cf. vol. i. p. 248); but it may of course have been known before that time, and it does not appear that any long time elapsed between the instrument’s being known in the Mediterranean and its reaching the Scandinavians.

When the compass came into general use on Italian ships in the thirteenth century, it naturally led to the development of an entirely new type of map, the Italian sea-charts or compass-charts, which were to be of fundamental importance to all future cartography. The mediæval maps of the world already mentioned were learned representations which were of no practical use to the navigator. The Greeks had drawn land-maps which were also of no great use at sea, and we do not know that they had sea-charts. On the other hand sailing-books (“peripli”), which gave directions for coasting voyages, were in use far back in antiquity. In the Middle Ages sailing-books, called “portolani,” which gave information about harbours, distances, etc., were an important aid to the navigator, especially in the Mediterranean. It was the Italians before all others who at that period developed navigation. When coasting was to some extent replaced by sailing in open sea, after the compass came into use, sea-charts became a necessary adjunct to the written sailing-books or portolani. How early they began to be developed is unknown; we only know that charts were in use on Italian ships in the latter half of the thirteenth century; and we must suppose that they were employed long before that time. Whether, as some have maintained, there was a connection between these charts and the maps of the Greeks is doubtful, though there may indeed have been an indirect connection through the Arabs, among whom Edrisi, for instance, seems perhaps to have exercised some influence. But in any case it is certain that the Italians of the Middle Ages were not acquainted with Greek cartography, and this may in a way be regarded as an advantage; for they were thus obliged to invent their own mode of representation. For Greek thought the chief thing was to find the best expression for the system of the world and the “œcumene,” to solve problems such as the reduction of a spherical to a plane surface by projection, etc.; while the sense of accurate detail was less prominent. The Italian sailor and cartographer went straight to nature, unhindered by theory, and to him it appeared a matter of course to set down on the map coasts and islands as accurately as possible according to the course sailed and the distance, without reflecting that sea and land form a spherical surface.

The Italian sea-charts seem especially to have been developed in the republics of northern Italy, Genoa and Pisa, and to some extent Venice. Later the Catalans of the Balearic Isles and of Spain (Barcelona and Valencia) also learned the art, probably from Genoa. The charts have been justly admired for their correct and detailed representation of the coasts known to the Italians and the seamen of the Mediterranean; the world had never before produced any parallel to such a representation. It shows that the sailors of that time were masters in the use of their compass, and in making up their reckoning. The remarkable thing is that the first known compass-charts, of the beginning of the fourteenth century, were already of so perfect a form that there was little to add to or improve in them in later times. It looks as though this type of chart suddenly sprang forth in full perfection, like Athene from the brain of Zeus, without our knowing of any forerunner; it held the field with its representation of the coasts of the Black Sea, the Mediterranean, and Western Europe almost unaltered through three centuries. There is something puzzling in that. We must suppose in any case that these charts were developed through many smaller special charts throughout the whole of the thirteenth century, but even that seems a short period for the development of a representation so complete as this, which thenceforward became almost stereotyped. It is principally the coasts that are represented, with many names, while inland there are comparatively few, which of course is natural in sea-charts.

As Italian trade did not extend farther north than Flanders and England (from whence came wool), it is also characteristic of the compass-charts that their detailed representation of the coast extends to the south of England and to Sluis in Flanders, and to the mouth of the Scheldt. Farther than this the Italian ships did not sail; beyond this boundary began the commercial domain of the Hanseatic League. The delineation on the compass-charts of the greater part of Ireland, northern England, Scotland, the north coast of Germany, Denmark, the Baltic and Scandinavia has an entirely different character from that of the more southern coasts. The coast-lines are there evidently drawn in a formal way, and more or less hypothetically; the names (chiefly those of a few ports, bishops’ sees and islands) are also strikingly few. It is clearly seen that these coasts cannot have been drawn from actual compass courses and reckonings; they are sketches based on second- or third-hand information. For this reason too the shape of the northern countries may be subject to considerable variation in the different types of compass-charts.

We know little of the sources from which they may have obtained their delineation of the North; probably they were many and of different kinds. A glance at the maps reproduced (pp. , ) will convince one that their image of the North differed greatly from that which we find on the wheel-maps, and from that which was probably shown on the maps of antiquity. It is a decisive step in the direction of reality, although the representation is still imperfect. In a whole series of these charts the image of the North shows certain typical features. The coast of Germany and Jutland goes due north from Flanders, thus coming much too near Britain, and the North Sea becomes nothing but a narrow strait. Even on the earliest charts (Dalorto’s chart, p. 226) the shape of Jutland is quite good. Norway, the coasts of which are indicated by chains of mountains, is placed fairly correctly in relation to Jutland, but is put too far to the west and too near to England. It is also made too broad. The Skagerak appears more or less correctly, but the Danish islands, including Sealand, usually as a round island, are placed in the Cattegat to the north-east of Jutland. This greatly distorts the picture. Sweden is much too small, and is given too little extension to the south; the Baltic has a curious form: it extends far to the east and has a remarkable narrowing in the middle, through the German coast making a great bend to the north towards Sweden. Gotland lies in the great widening of its inner portion. The Gulf of Bothnia seems to be unknown. The islands to the north of Scotland: Shetland (usually called “scetiland,” “sialanda” or “stillanda”), the Orkneys, and often Caithness as an island, come to the west of Norway, frequently placed in a somewhat arbitrary fashion, and in the wrong order. “Tille” (Thule), the round island off the north-east coast of Scotland, is a characteristic feature on many compass-charts. Its origin is uncertain, but possibly it may be connected with the Romans having thought they had seen Thule to the north of the Orkneys (?) (cf. vol. i. p. 107). The names in the North are in the main the same on most of the compass-charts, and one cartographer has copied another; by this means also many palæographic errors have been introduced, which are afterwards repeated. As an example: the Baltic is originally called “mar allemania,” this is read by Catalan draughtsmen as “mar de lamanya,” also written “de lamãya,” and thus we get “mar de la maya” (cf. pp. , ). Another example: Bergen is originally called “bergis” (cf. p. 221), a draughtsman corrupts this to “bregis,” and that becomes the name of the town in later charts (cf. p. 232). Whence these names first came we do not know; partly, no doubt, from sailors, and partly from literary sources. The latter must be true of names in the interior. There are also various legends or inscriptions on these charts, e.g., in Norway, in Sweden, in the Baltic, on the islands in the Northern Ocean, and in Iceland. Many of these legends can be certainly proved to have a literary origin. Some of them (e.g., that attached to Norway) may be derived in part from the Geographia Universalis. Others are connected with such authors as Giraldus Cambrensis, Higden, and others. Certain resemblances to Arabic writers, especially Edrisi, might also be pointed out; but it is uncertain whether these are not due in part to their being derived from a common source.

The first known compass-chart, the so-called “Carte Pisane,” of about 1300, goes no farther north than to the coast of Flanders and southern England. But the compass-chart drawn by the Genoese priest Giovanni da Carignano (ob. 1344), evidently a little after 1300, already gives a delineation of Great Britain, Ireland, the Orkneys and Scandinavia, with the Baltic. That these regions are only represented hypothetically, and do not belong to the compass-chart proper, is also indicated by their partly lying outside the network of compass-lines. It is in the main a land map, with many names in the interior of the continents, but the delineation of the known coasts (to the south of Flanders) is evidently taken from the sea-charts. The representation of the British Isles and of the North reminds one a good deal of the Cottoniana map (cf. vol. i. p. 183), and of Edrisi’s representation (cf. p. 203); as an example: it is difficult to suppose that the western inclination of Scotland should have come about independently on each of the three maps. There is also considerable resemblance to Edrisi in the names on other parts of the chart; but Carignano has no hint of Edrisi’s “Island,” nor of the Cottoniana’s island of Tylen (Thule). Whether his Scandinavia is a peninsula, as usually asserted, and not rather a long island, as on the two maps in question, is uncertain, since the delineation has suffered a good deal and is indistinct in the inner part of the Baltic. To judge from a photograph of the chart [Ongania, Pl. III.] it appears to me most probable that it was an island, which then has considerable resemblance to the island of Norwâġa [Norway] in Edrisi. Names that are legible on this island or peninsula are: “noruegia,” “finonia” [Finmark or Finland], “suetia”; also “bergis” [Bergen], “tromberg” [Tönsberg], “uamerlant” [Vermeland], “scarsa” [Skara on Lake Vener], “kundgelf” [Kungelf], “scania” [Skåne], “lendes” [Lund], “stocol” [Stockholm], etc. On the two islands in the Baltic there are “scamor” [i.e., “scanior” ? Skanör] and “gothlanda” [Gotland]. Many of these names appear here for the first time in any known authority. Carignano may have taken them from older unknown maps, but he may also in some way or other have received information from the North; possibly, for instance, he may have had the names of ports, etc., from sailors. His representation of the western part of Scandinavia, with three long peninsulas (cf. Saxo), is curious; of these the eastern, with “scania,” might be south Sweden with Skåne; the central one with “tromberg” [Tönsberg] might be Vestfold and Grenmar, and the western with Bergen might be western Norway. The smaller peninsula to the north might be Tröndelagen [the district of Trondhjem] (cf. also Historia Norwegiæ, below, p. 235).

Northern portion of Carignano’s chart (a few years later than 1300)

Between the years 1318 and 1321 the Venetian Marino Sanudo wrote a work, “Liber secretorum fidelium crucis” (the Book of Secrets for Believers in the Cross), to rouse enthusiasm for a new crusade, and himself presented a copy of it with a dedication to the Pope at Avignon, which is probably one of the two now preserved at the Vatican. The work is accompanied by several charts which must have been drawn by the well-known cartographer Pietro Vesconte in 1320, since an atlas bearing his name has been found in the Vatican with charts that completely correspond. Among them is a circular map of the world of the wheel type, but on which the forms of the coasts from the compass-charts are introduced. Scandinavia is there represented as a peninsula with a mountain chain (Kjölen ?) along the middle (see map, p. 223), and the names “Gotilandia,” “Dacia,” “Suetia,” “Noruega” may be read. On the continent is written “Guenden [Kvænland, or else == “Suenden” == Sweden ?] vel Gotia”; and on the coast to the north of the peninsula is “Liuonia” and to the south of it “Frixia” [Friesland]. As Kretschmer has shown, Scandinavia was originally drawn (in both atlases) as an island, but was afterwards connected with the continent by a narrow isthmus. This representation of Scandinavia as a peninsula resembles that on many of the wheel-maps mentioned above (see pp. 185, ff.). It also bears a strong resemblance to the view of Saxo (beginning of the thirteenth century), who says:

“Moreover the upper arm of the ocean [i.e., the southern arm, the Baltic, as the south is supposed to be at the top of the map], which cuts through and past Dania, washes the south coast of Gothia [Götaland, i.e., Sweden] with a bay of fair size; but the lower [northern] branch, which goes past the north coast of Gothia and Noruagia, turns towards the east with a considerable widening, and is bounded by a curved coast. This end of the sea was called by our ancient primæval inhabitants Gandvicus. Between this bay and the southern sea lies a little piece of continent, which looks out upon the seas washing it on both sides. If nature had not set this space as a limit to the two almost united streams, the arms of the sea would have met one another, and made Suetia and Noruagia into an island.”

Northern Europe in Vesconte’s mappamundi (1320)
in the Vatican (Kretschmer, 1891)

It seems not improbable that the delineation on Vesconte’s map may have a connection with this description; it has also very nearly the same forms of names. The regions far in the north and east on his map are pure fancy, and the “rifei montes” are still found there.

Eight other MSS. (in various libraries) of Sanudo’s work are known, accompanied by maps, and six of them have the circular mappamundi; but the reproductions differ considerably one from another, especially in the representation of the northern coast of Europe. The mappamundi in the MS. in Queen Christina’s collection in the Vatican (Codex Reginensis, 548), and the exactly similar map in the MS. at Oxford, have a remarkably good delineation of the Scandinavian Peninsula (see map, p. 224), with the names “Suetia” [Svealand], “Gotia” [Götaland], and “Scania” on the east, “Noruegia” on the west, “Finlandia” and “Alandia” [Åland, or perhaps Hallandia ?] in the extreme north-east. On the continent is written “Kareli infideles,” “Estonia,” “Liuonia,” etc. In the Baltic are two islands, “Gotlandia” in the middle, and “Ossilia” [Ösel] farthest in. The shape of Jutland [with the names “Dacia” and “Jutia”], the direction of the coast of northern Europe and the Baltic, with Scandinavia parallel to it, remind one a good deal of Edrisi’s map, of the Cottoniana and also of Carignano’s map. Evidently there is here new information which Vesconte did not possess when he drew the map previously mentioned; the correct placing of the names in Sweden and Norway is especially striking. These names, as also “Jutia,” occur in Saxo in approximately the same forms (cf. also Historia Norwegiæ). Marino Sanudo, according to his own statement, had himself sailed from Venice to Flanders, and had also travelled in Holstein and Slavonia. He was thus able to collect geographical information, and, as suggested by Björnbo [1909, pp. 211, f.], may have received communications from North German priests whose picture of the North had been formed by the study of Adam of Bremen and Saxo; but there does not appear to me to be any necessity for such a hypothesis, he may just as well have received direct information from people who knew the localities, while doubtless the names are to a great extent literary. If we suppose that it was Pietro Vesconte who drew all the maps, he may have derived his information about the North through Sanudo himself; but in that case it would be strange that he did not use it for his first map. We must therefore suppose that it was after this that their real collaboration began.

Northern Europe in the mappamundi in the MS. of
Sanudo’s work at Oxford (Björnbo, 1910, p. 123)

But here we come upon another difficulty, and this is the third entirely different form of the delineation of the North that is found in the corresponding mappamundi in the MS. of Sanudo at Paris. There the Scandinavian Peninsula is divided in an unaccountable way into several islands, the largest of which bears the name “scania de regno dacie” or “scãdinaua.” To the north of it is a long island, “gotlandia,” which has been read by some “yrlandia” or “yslandia,” and made into Iceland [as in Thoroddsen, i., 1897, p. 84]. “Noruegia” is written outside the border of the map to the north of Jutland [called “dacia”], and the name “prouincia noruicie” is placed on the west coast of Jutland, which has been given a fantastic extension towards the north with many bays. An island in the ocean to the north of Russia [“rutenia”] is marked “kareli infideles.” The whole of this representation is in complete disagreement with the other Sanudo maps, and it is difficult to understand that Vesconte can have also drawn this one, although in other respects it may bear much resemblance to the rest from his hand. One might be inclined to think that some other man had tinkered at this part of the map, introducing ideas which he entirely misunderstood.

Northern Europe in the mappamundi in the Paris MS.
of Sanudo’s work (Björnbo, 1910, p. 123)

A remarkable thing about it is that it is, perhaps, the first that has a legend about the North. For on the large island in the Baltic (?) we read: “In hoc mari est maxima copia aletiorum” [in this sea is the greatest abundance of herrings ?]. In the opinion of Björnbo this may allude to the herring fishery in the Sound.

The North on Dalorto’s map of 1325. The network of compass-lines is omitted
for the sake of clearness. Only a few of the names are given

The type which is first known from Angellino Dalorto’s map of 1325 (or 1330 ?), and from that of 1339 signed Angellino Dulcert, which is undoubtedly by the same man, was of fundamental importance to the representation of the North on the Catalan compass-charts. It has been thought that he belonged to a well-known Genoese family named Dalorto, and that the first map was drawn in Italy, while the latter was certainly drawn in Majorca, either by a copyist who corrupted the name of Dalorto to Dulcert, or by himself, who in that case must be supposed to have given his name a more Catalan sound on settling in Majorca. But in any case these maps had Italian models; this appears clearly in the form of the names [cf. Kretschmer, 1909, pp. 118, f.].

The two maps are much alike. The oldest, of 1325 (1330 ?), gives a more complete representation of the North and of the Baltic than any earlier map known (see illustration). In its names it shows a connection both with Carignano’s map and with Marino Sanudo, but new names and fresh information have been added, the delineation of Great Britain and Ireland is more correct, and there is also a more reasonable representation of Scandinavia and of the extent of the Baltic than on Carignano’s map. Amongst new names in the North may be mentioned “trunde” [Trondhjem, cf. “Throndemia” in the Historia Norwegiæ], and “alogia” for a town on the west side of Norway; this is evidently Halogia [Hálogaland], a form of the name which was used, for instance, in the Historia Norwegiæ and by Saxo. Another name in the far north, and again at the south-western extremity of Norway, is “alolandia” (see illustration, p. 226). One might suppose that the form of the name and its assignment to these two places are due to a confusion of the name Hálogaland with Hallandia (in Saxo) and “alandia” on the Sanudo-Vesconte map (see p. 224).

It will be seen that Norway, which is represented as a pronouncedly mountainous country, has on this map been given a great increase of breadth, so that its west coast is brought to the same longitude as the west coast of Great Britain. In the legends attached to Norway we read that from its deserts are brought “birds called gilfalcos” (hunting falcons), and in the extreme north is the inscription:

“Here the people live by hunting the beasts of the forest, and also on fish, on account of the price of corn which is very dear. Here are white bears and many animals.”

The substance of this may be derived in the main from the Geographia Universalis (cf. pp. 189, f.; see also p. 177). Islands in the ocean to the west of Norway are: farthest north, “Insula ornaya” [the Orkneys]; farther south, “sialand” [Shetland, “Insula scetiland” on the map of 1339, and “silland” or “stillanda” on later maps]. The resemblance to “shâsland,” the name of an island in Edrisi (cf. above, p. 207), is great, but it cannot be supposed that we have here a corruption of Iceland. At the north-eastern corner of Scotland is the round island, “Insula tille” (cf. p. 219).

In the ocean to the west of Ireland we find for the first time on this map an island called “Insula de montonis siue de brazile.” This island is met with again on later compass-charts under the name of “brazil” as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is evidently the Irish fortunate isle “Hy Breasail,” afterwards called “O’Brazil,” that has found its way on to this map, or probably on to the unknown older sources from which it is drawn. On this and the oldest of the later maps the island has a strikingly round form, often divided by a channel.

The Irish myth of Hy Breasail, or Bresail, the island out in the Atlantic (cf. vol. i. p. 357), is evidently very ancient; the island is one of the many happy lands like “Tír Tairngiri” [the promised land]. In the opinion of Moltke Moe and Alf Torp the name may come from the Irish “bress” [good fortune, prosperity], and would thus be absolutely the same as the Insulæ Fortunatæ. The Italians may easily have become acquainted with this myth through the Irish monasteries in North Italy, unless indeed they had it through their sailors, and in this way the island came upon the map. The form “brazil” may have arisen through the cartographer connecting the name with the valuable brazil-wood, used for dyeing. The channel dividing the island of Brazil on the maps may be the river which in the legend of Brandan ran through the island called “Terra Repromissionis,” and which Brandan (in the Navigatio) was not able to cross. It is probably the river of death (Styx), and possibly the same that became the river at Hop in the Icelandic saga of Wineland (see vol. i. p. 359). We thus find here again a possible connection, and this strengthens the probability that Brazil was the Promised Land of the Irish, which on the other hand helped to form Wineland.

On later compass-charts several isles of Brazil came into existence. As early as in the Medici Atlas (1351) an “Insula de brazi” appears farther south in the ocean, to the west of Spain, and on the Pizigano map (1367) and the Soleri map (1385) there is to the west of Brittany yet a third “brazir,” afterwards commonly called “de manj,” or “maidas,” etc. The name “Insula de montonis” is difficult to understand. If we may believe it to be an error for “moltonis” (or perhaps “moutonis,” a latinisation of the French “mouton” ?), it might mean the sheep island of the Navigatio Brandani, which was originally Dicuil’s Faroes (cf. vol. i. p. 362). Thus this name also carries us to Ireland.

At the same time another Irish mythical conception has found its way on to the map of 1325, and faithfully attends the isle of “Brazil” on its progress through all the compass-charts of later times; this is the fortunate lake, “lacus fortunatus,” with its islands, “insulle sc̄i lacaris” [Lough Carra or Lough Corrib ?], which were so numerous that there was said later to be one for every day of the year. On Perrinus Vesconte’s map of 1327 the same lake with its many islands is found, and as far as I can read the greatly reduced reproduction in Nordenskiöld’s Periplus (Pl. VII.) the words are: “gulfo de issolle CCCLVIII. beate et fortunate” (the gulf of the 358 blessed and happy islands), as also found on some later maps. I have not had an opportunity of examining the map of the British Isles in the same draughtsman’s atlas of 1321, to see whether this happy lake and the isle of Brazil are given there; the gulf with the 358 islands is stated to be on Vesconte-Sanudo maps [cf. Harrisse, 1892, pp. 57, f.], which I have also had no opportunity of consulting.

Angellino Dulcert’s (Dalorto’s) map of 1339 differs somewhat from the map of 1325 (1330 ?) in its delineation of the North, in that Norway is given a narrower and more rectangular form, with only those four headlands on the south side which are largest on the map of 1325, while the country with the smaller headlands to the west of these is cut away, whereby the narrower shape is brought about.

Dalorto’s maps of 1325 and 1339 furnish the prototype for the representation of the North in later compass-charts; and this persists without important alteration until well into the fifteenth century. But while later Italian charts (cf. Pizigano’s of 1367) more closely resemble the Italian Dalorto map of 1325, the Majorca map of 1339 represents the type of the later Catalan charts. In the one preserved at Modena, and dating from about 1350, the Catalan compass-chart is combined with the representation of the world of the wheel-maps. We find the picture of the North to be the same in all its main outlines; but here a new feature is added, in that Iceland appears as a group of eight islands in the far north-west, out on the margin of the map, with the note: “questas illes son appellades islandes” (these islands are called Icelands). The southernmost island is called “islanda,” the others have incomprehensible names (“donbert,” “tranes,” “tales,” “brons,” “bres,” “mmau...,” “bilanj” [?]); but the name of Greenland is not found. In the ocean to the north of Norway there is “Mare putritum congelatum” [the putrid, frozen sea]. This is evidently the idea of the stinking Liver Sea (as in Arab myths, cf. p. 51), combined with that of the frozen sea. On the approximately contemporary Catalan compass-chart (see the reproduction, pp. 232-233), preserved in the National Library at Florence (called No. 16), we find the same group of islands called “Island,” with a long inscription (see p. 232; cf. also Björnbo and Petersen, 1908, p. 16), which is partly illegible, but wherein it is stated that “the islands are very large,” that “the people are handsome, tall and fair, the country is very cold,” etc. The name of Greenland does not occur on this chart either.

North-western Europe on the wheel-shaped compass-chart at Modena (circa 1350).
The network of compass-lines, names and legends omitted. Mountains indicated by shading

North-western Europe on the anonymous Catalan mappamundi of the middle of the fourteenth century, in the National Library
at Florence. Reproduced mainly from a tracing of the original made by Dr. A. A. Björnbo. The text of the names and legends has
been somewhat enlarged to render it legible in the reduced reproduction. In the legend on the Baltic the erroneous “gronlandia”
is given, while the original has “gotlandia” (according to O. Vangensten)

The same type of Catalan charts includes Charles V.’s well-known mappamundi, or “Catalan Atlas,” of 1375, as well as Mecia de Viladeste’s chart of 1413, and many others.

We find a different representation of the North, especially of the Scandinavian Peninsula, in the anonymous atlas of 1351, preserved at Florence and commonly called the “Medicean Marine Atlas,” which is an Italian, probably a Genoese, work. The North is here represented on a map of the world and on a map of Europe (reproduced pp. , ). The representation to a great extent resembles the Dalorto type. Its division of western Scandinavia into three great promontories no doubt recalls the Carignano map to such an extent that one may suppose it to have been influenced by some Italian source of that map; but in the names it shows more resemblance to the Dalorto maps: the delineation of the Baltic and of the peninsula corresponding to Skåne is practically the same, it perhaps resembles in particular the Modena map and the anonymous map at Florence (cf. pp. 232, 233). Jutland, on the other hand, has been greatly prolonged and given a different shape. The three great tongues of land in Norway, with a smaller one on the east near Denmark, may correspond to the four headlands on the south coast of Norway on the Dalorto maps (cf. especially that of 1339). Through these being considerably increased in size, and the bays between them being enlarged, the west coast of Norway has been moved even farther to the west than on the map of 1325, and has been given a somewhat more westerly longitude than Ireland. On the map of Europe “C. trobs” [“capitolum tronberg” ? i.e., Tönsberg] is written on the first bay [like “trunberg” on the Dalorto map], “c. bergis” [“capitolum bergis,” i.e., the see of Bergen] and “c. trons” (?) [the see of Trondhjem] on each of the two other bays. Finally, “alogia,” which on the Dalorto map is marked as a town on the northern west coast of Norway, to the north of Nidroxia [Nidaros], has followed the west coast and is placed on the westernmost tongue of land. How the whole of this delineation came about is difficult to say. One might be tempted to think that it was through a misunderstanding of a description of Norway, like that we find in the Historia Norwegiæ, where the country is described as divided into four parts, the first being the land on the eastern bay near Denmark, the second “Gulacia” [Gulathing], the third “Throndemia,” the fourth “Halogia.” The map of the world in the Medici atlas is drawn in the same way as the compass-charts. It has no names of towns in Scandinavia, and the westernmost tongue of land is without a name (see the reproduction). On the other hand, the name “alolanda” occurs inland in eastern Norway, and is there obviously a corruption of “Hallandia” (cf. p. 227). This mappamundi is interesting from the fact that it makes the land-masses of the continent extend without a limit on the north, whereas Africa is terminated by a peninsula on the south.

The north-western portion of the mappamundi in the Medicean Marine
Atlas (1351). The degrees are here inserted after the maps of Ptolemy

The map of the Venetian Francesco Pizigano, of 1367, resembles Dalorto’s of 1325 in its delineation of the North; the south side of Norway has somewhat the same rounded form with seven headlands, and “Alogia” is a town on the west coast.

From the Bayeux tapestry, eleventh century

VIEWS OF THE NORTH AMONG THE NORTHERN PEOPLES

It has been already pointed out that, while the oldest northern authority, Adam of Bremen, regarded the countries of the North, outside Scandinavia, as islands in the ocean surrounding the earth’s disc (in agreement with the learned view and with the wheel-maps), the Scandinavians, unfettered by learned ideas, assumed that Greenland was connected with the continent, for the reason, amongst others, that, as the author of the “King’s Mirror” expresses it, continental animals such as the hare, wolf and reindeer could not otherwise have got there. But, as we have seen, this land communication could only be supposed to exist on the far side of Gandvik (the White Sea) and the Bjarmeland (Northern Russia) that they knew, and to go round the north of the sea that lay to the north of Norway. Thus the sea came to be called Hafsbotn (i.e., the bay or gulf of the ocean). We find the clearest expression of this view in the Icelandic geography already referred to, which may in part be attributed to Abbot Nikulás Bergsson of Thverá (cf. vol. i. p. 313; vol. ii. pp. , ), and where we read:

“Nearest Denmark is lesser Sweden [so called to distinguish it from ‘Sviþjóð it Mikla,’ Russia], there is Öland, then Gotland, then Helsingeland, then Vermeland, then two Kvænlands, and they are north of Bjarmeland. From Bjarmeland uninhabited country extends northward as far as Greenland. South of Greenland is Helluland,” etc. [cf. the continuation, above, p. 1]. In a variant of this geography in an older MS. we read: “North of Saxland is Denmark. Through Denmark the sea goes into ‘Austrveg’ [the countries on the Baltic]. Sweden lies east of Denmark, but Norway on the north. To the north of Norway is Finmark. From thence the land turns towards the north-east, and then to the east before one comes to Bjarmeland. This is tributary to the Garda-king [the king of Gardarike]. From Bjarmeland the land stretches to the uninhabited parts of the north, until Greenland begins. To the south of Greenland lies Helluland,” etc.

We have yet a third, later and more detailed variant in the so-called “Gripla,” given in vol. i. p. 288.

The belief in this land connection with Greenland may have originated in, or at any rate have been considerably strengthened by, the discovery of countries such as Novaya Zemlya, Svalbard (Spitzbergen ?), and the northern uninhabited parts of the east coast of Greenland (cf. above, pp. 165, ff.). In addition to this, those sailing the Polar Sea came across pack-ice wherever they went in a northerly direction, closing in the sea and making it like a gulf, and it must therefore have been natural to believe in a continuous coast which connected the countries behind the ice, and which held this fast. The belief in a land connection seems to have been so ingrained that it can scarcely have rested on nothing but theoretical speculations, but must rather have been supported by tangible proofs of this kind.

It was to be expected that the countries on the north of Hafsbotn should become fairylands in popular belief, Jotunheimr and Risaland, inhabited by giants. Even Saxo (beginning of the thirteenth century) says that to the north of Norway

“lies a land, the name and position of which are unknown, without human civilisation, but rich in people of monstrous strangeness. It is separated from Norway, which lies opposite, by a mighty arm of the sea. As the navigation there is very unsafe, few of those who have ventured thither have had a fortunate return.”

As it can hardly be the Christian settlements in Greenland that Saxo refers to as a land without human civilisation, we must doubtless suppose that his land in the north is a confusion of the eastern uninhabited tracts of Greenland with Jotunheimr, as in Icelandic ideas. For Adam of Bremen already had giants (Cyclopes) on an island in the north, and we have seen that there were similar conceptions in the Historia Norwegiæ (cf. p. 167).

A mediæval Icelandic tale [inserted in Björn Jónsson’s Greenland Annals] says of Halli Geit that

“he alone succeeded in coming by land on foot over mountains and glaciers and all the wastes, and past all the gulfs of the sea to Gandvik and then to Norway. He led with him a goat, and lived on its milk; he often found valleys and narrow openings between the glaciers, so that the goat could feed either on grass or in the woods.”

From the Bayeux tapestry, eleventh century

Ideas of this kind led to the view held by some that there was land as far as the North Pole, which appears in an Icelandic tract, included in the “Rymbegla” [1780, p. 466]. Of a bad Latin verse, there reproduced, it is said:

“Some will understand this to mean that he [i.e., the poet] says that land lies under ‘leidarstjarna’ [the pole star], and that the shores there prevent the ring of the ocean from joining [i.e., around the disc of the earth]; with this certain ancient legends agree, which show that one can go, or that men have gone, on foot from Greenland to Norway.”

But the mediæval learned idea of the Outer Ocean surrounding the whole disc of earth also asserts itself in the North, and appears in Snorre’s Heimskringla and in the “King’s Mirror,” amongst other works. This ocean went outside Greenland, which was connected with Europe, and made the former into a peninsula. In the work already referred to, “Gripla” (only known in a late MS. in Björn Jónsson of Skardsá, first half of the seventeenth century), we read, in continuation of the passage already quoted (p. 35): “Between Wineland and Greenland is Ginnungagap, it proceeds from the sea that is called ‘Mare oceanum,’ which surrounds the whole world.” Since Wineland [i.e., the Insulæ Fortunatæ], as already stated (pp. 1, ff.), was by some, evidently through a misunderstanding, made continuous with Africa, it is clear that the Outer Ocean must be supposed to go completely round both Greenland and Wineland (cf. the illustration, p. 2). Thus it was also natural to suppose that there was an opening somewhere between these two countries, through which the Outer Ocean was connected with the inner, known ocean between Norway, Greenland, etc.

At least as old as the Norsemen’s conceptions of countries beyond the ocean in the North was probably the idea of the great abyss, Ginnungagap, which there forms the boundary of the ocean and of the world, and which must be derived from the Tartarus and Chaos of the Greeks (cf. p. 150). When the Polar Sea (Hafsbotn) was closed by the land connection between Bjarmeland and Greenland, it was natural that those who tried to form a consistent view of the world could no longer find a place for the abyss in that direction; and G. Storm [1890] is certainly right in thinking that it was for this reason that Ginnungagap was located in the passage between Greenland and Wineland; since, no doubt, the idea was that this “gap” in some way or other was connected with the void Outer Ocean. But this view is first found in the very late copy (seventeenth century) of “Gripla,” and of the somewhat older map of Gudbrand Torlaksson [Torlacius] of 1606 [Torfæus, 1706; Pl. I., p. 21], where “Ginnunga Gap” is marked as the name of the strait between Greenland and America. What Ginnungagap really was seems never to have been quite clear, different people having no doubt had different ideas about it; but when, as here, it is used as the name of a strait through which the Outer Ocean enters, it cannot any longer be an abyss; at the most it may have been a maelstrom or whirlpool, which, indeed, is suggested by the whirlpool on Jón Gudmundsson’s map (cf. p. 34). But even this interpretation of the name became effaced, and in another MS. of the seventeenth century (see p. 35) it is simply used as a name for the great ocean to the west of Spain (that is, the Atlantic).

From an Icelandic MS. of 1363

On the other hand we have seen (pp. 150, ff.) that ideas of whirlpools in the northern seas appear to have been widely spread in the Middle Ages. There is a possibility, as already hinted (vol. i. p. 303), that when in Ivar Bárdsson’s description of the northern west coast of Greenland “the many whirlpools that there lie all over the sea” are spoken of, it was thought that here was the boundary of the ocean and of the world, and that it was formed by the many whirlpools, or abysses in the sea. In that case these cannot be regarded merely as maelstroms like the Moskenström, but more like the true Ginnungagap. But this is extremely uncertain; it may again have been one of those embellishments which were often used in speaking of the most distant regions.

Saxo Grammaticus (first part of the thirteenth century) in the preface to his Danish history gives geographical information about Scandinavia and Iceland, to which we have already referred several times. He does not mention Greenland. He says himself that he has made use of Icelandic literature to a large extent; but he has also mingled with it a good deal of mythical material from elsewhere.

Beyond comparison the most important geographical writer of the mediæval North, and at the same time one of the first in the whole of mediæval Europe, was the unknown author who wrote the “King’s Mirror,” probably about the middle of the thirteenth century. If one turns from contemporary or earlier European geographical literature, with all its superstition and obscurity, to this masterly work, the difference is very striking. Even at the first appearance of the Scandinavians in literature, in Ottar’s straightforward and natural narrative of his voyage to King Alfred, the numerous trustworthy statements about previously unknown regions are a prominent feature, and give proof of a sober faculty of observation, altogether different from what one usually meets with in mediæval literature. This is the case to an even greater degree in the “King’s Mirror,” and the difference between what is there stated about the North and what we find less than two hundred years earlier in Adam of Bremen is obvious. Apart from the fact that the whole method of presentation is inspired by superior intelligence, it shows an insight and a faculty of observation which are uncommon, especially at that period; and in many points this remarkable man was evidently centuries before his time. Although well acquainted with much of the earlier mediæval literature, he has liberated himself to a surprising extent from its fabulous conceptions. We hear nothing of the many fabulous peoples, who were still common amongst much later authors, nor about whirlpools, nor the curdled and dark sea, but instead we have fresh and copious information about the northern regions, and it comes with a clearness like that which already struck us in Ottar. We have a remarkably good description of the sea-ice, its drift, etc. (cf. vol. i. pp. 279, f.); we have also a description of the animal world of the northern seas to which there is no parallel in the earlier literature of the world (cf. pp. 155, ff.). No less than twenty-one different whales are referred to fully. If we make allowance for three of them being probably sharks, and for two being perhaps alternative names for the same whale, the total corresponds to the number of species that are known in northern waters. Six seals are described, which corresponds to the number of species living on the coasts of Norway and Greenland. Besides these the walrus [“rostung”] is very well described. But even the author of the “King’s Mirror” could not altogether avoid the supernatural in treating of the sea. He describes in the seas of Iceland the enormous monster “hafgufa,” which seems more like a piece of land than a fish, and he does not think there are more than two of them in the sea. This is the same that the Norwegian fishermen now call the krake, and certainly also the same that appears in ancient oriental myths, and that is met with again in the Brandan legend as the great whale that they take for an island and land on (cf. p. 234). In the Greenland seas the “King’s Mirror” has two kinds of trolls, “hafstrambr” [a kind of merman], with a body that was like a glacier to look at, and “margygr” [a mermaid], both of which are fully described. There is also mention in the Greenland seas of the strange and dangerous “sea-fences,” which are often spoken of in the sagas [and about which there is a lay, the “hafgerðinga-drápa”]. The author does not quite know what to make of this marvel, for “it looks as if all the storms and waves that there are in that sea gather themselves together in three places, and become three waves. They fence in the whole sea, so that men cannot find a way out, and they are higher than great mountains and like steep summits,” etc. It is probable that the belief in these sea-fences is derived from something that really took place, perhaps most likely earthquake-waves, or submarine earthquakes, which may sometimes have occurred near volcanic Iceland. But it is curious that in the “King’s Mirror” these waves are connected with Greenland. They might also be supposed to be connected with the waves that are formed when icebergs capsize.

Marginal drawing in the Flateyjarbók (1387-1394)

The principal countries described are Ireland, Iceland and Greenland; but it is characteristic of the author that the farther north he goes, away from regions commonly known, the freer his account becomes from all kinds of fabulous additions. In Ireland he is still held fast by the superstition of the period, and especially by the priests’ fables about themselves and their holy men, and by the English author Giraldus Cambrensis. In Iceland, as a rule, he is free of this troublesome ballast, and gives valuable information about the glaciers of Iceland, glacier-falls, boiling springs, etc. In his opinion the cold climate of Iceland is due to the vicinity of Greenland, which sends out great cold owing to its being above all other lands covered with ice; for this reason Iceland has so much ice on its mountains. Although he thinks it possible that its volcanoes are due to the fires of Hell, and that it is thus the actual place of torment, and that Hell is therefore not in Sicily, as his holiness Pope Gregory had supposed, he nevertheless has another and more reasonable explanation of the origin of earthquakes and volcanoes. They may be due to hollow passages and cavities in the foundations of the land, which by the force either of the wind or of the roaring sea may become so full of wind that they cannot stand the pressure, and thus violent earthquakes may arise. From the violent conflict which the air produces underground, the great fire may be kindled which breaks out in different parts of the country. It must not be thought certain that this is exactly how it takes place, but one ought rather to lay such things together to form the explanation that seems more conceivable, for

“we see that from force [‘afli’] all fire comes. When hard stone and hard iron are brought together with a blow, fire comes from the iron and from the force with which they are struck together. You may also rub pieces of wood together until fire comes from the labour that they have. It is also constantly happening that two winds arise from different quarters, one against the other, and if they meet in the air there is a hard shock, and this shock gives off a great fire, which spreads far in the air,” etc.

This idea of a connection between labour (friction) and force (motion), and this explanation of the possible origin of volcanoes are surprising in the thirteenth century, and seem to bring the author centuries in advance of his time; we here have germs of the theory of the conservation of energy.

His statements about Greenland are remarkable for their sober trustworthiness. He gives the first description of its inland ice:

“But since you asked whether the land is thawed or not, or whether it is covered with ice like the sea, you must know that there are small portions of the land which are thawed, but all the rest is covered with ice, and the people do not know whether the country is large or small, since all the mountains and valleys are covered with ice, so that no one can find his way in. But in reality it must be that there is a way, either in those valleys that lie between the mountains, or along the shores, so that animals can find a way, for otherwise animals cannot come there from other countries, unless they find a way through the ice and find the land thawed. But men have often tried to go up the country, upon the highest mountains in various places, to look around them, to see whether they could find any part that was thawed and habitable, but they have not found any such, except where people are now living, and that is but little along the shore itself.”

Norwegian MS. of the Gulathings law. Fourteenth century

This, as we see, is an extremely happy description of the mighty ice-sheet. He also describes the climate of the country, both the fine weather that often occurs in summer, and its usually inclement character, which causes so small a proportion of the country to be habitable.

“The land is cold, and the glacier [i.e., the great ice or inland ice] has this nature, that he sends out cold gusts which drive away the showers from his face, and he usually keeps his head bare. But often his near neighbours have to suffer for it, in that all other lands which lie in his neighbourhood get much bad weather from him, and all the cold blasts that he throws off fall upon them.”

Though in simple and everyday words, this really expresses the idea that Greenland and the neighbouring regions are disproportionately cold, and that, in part at any rate, this is due to the glaciers of Greenland, which have a refrigerating effect (as an anticyclonic pole of maximum cold). This is to a certain degree correct. In crossing Greenland in 1888 we found that a pole of cold [anticyclone] lies over the inland ice, which gives off cold air. Scientific greatness does not always depend on erudition or acute learned combinations; it is just as often the result of a sound common-sense.

The allusion in the “King’s Mirror” to the Norse inhabitants of Greenland and their life has already been quoted in part (vol. i. p. 277); curiously enough the Skrælings are not mentioned. The author gives a graphic description of the aurora borealis, and attempts to explain its cause. As already noted (p. 155), it is curious that he should speak of it as something peculiar to Greenland, when he must of course have known it well enough in Norway.

The cosmography of the “King’s Mirror” is based on older mediæval writers, especially Isidore. The spherical form of the earth and the course of the sun are mentioned, as is Macrobius’s doctrine of zones. In the frigid zones the cold has attracted to itself such power that the waters throw off their nature and are changed to ice, and all the land and sea is covered with ice. They are usually uninhabitable, but nevertheless the author considers that Greenland lies in the north frigid zone. He thinks that “it is mainland, and connected with other mainland,” as already mentioned, because it has a number of terrestrial animals that are not often found on islands. It

“lies on the extreme side of the world on the north, and he does not think there is land outside ‘Heimskringla’ [the circle of the world, ‘orbis terrarum’] beyond Greenland, only the great ocean which runs round the world; and it is said by men who are wise that the strait through which the empty ocean flows comes in by Greenland, and into the gap between the lands (‘landa-klofi’), and thereafter with fjords and gulfs it divides all countries, where it runs into Heimskringla.”

This is, as we see, the same idea as already (p. 240) referred to, that the Outer Ocean runs in through a sound between Greenland and another continent to the south, evidently Wineland, which is thus here again regarded as part of Africa (cf. p. 1).

It is moreover striking that neither Wineland, Markland, nor Helluland is mentioned in the “King’s Mirror,” and Bjarmeland, Svalbard, etc., are also omitted. Thus it does not give any complete description of the northern lands, but it must be remembered that what we know of the work is only a fragment, and perhaps it was never completed.

The Nancy map. A copy, of 1427, of Claudius Clavus’s first map of the North.
The lines of latitude and longitude are omitted for the sake of clearness

CLAUDIUS CLAVUS

The credit of having introduced the name of Greenland, with the ancient Norsemen’s geographical ideas about the extreme North, into cartography belongs, so far as is known, to the Dane Claudius Claussön Swart, usually called in Latin Claudius Clavus (sometimes also Nicolaus Niger). He was born in Funen, travelled about Europe, and, as shown by Storm [1891, pp. 17, f.], was probably the “Nicolaus Gothus” who is mentioned at Rome in January 1424, and who is reported to have there given out that he had seen a copy of Livy in the monastery of Sorö, near Roskilde (which was probably a romance on his part). We are told that he was a man of acute intelligence, but a rover and unsteady. His subsequent history is unknown. As a supplement to Ptolemy’s Geography, which just at that time (1409) was becoming known in Western Europe in a Latin translation, he made, probably in Italy, two maps of the North, with accompanying descriptions. The maps must have been drawn either by himself or with his help. They are the first maps known in Western Europe which are furnished, after the model of Ptolemy (or Marinus), with lines of latitude and longitude, and they thus mark the beginning of a more scientific cartography and geography in Western Europe.

His first map (the Nancy map) must have been drawn between the years 1413 and 1427, probably between 1424 and 1427; but it can never have been widely known, as it has exercised no noticeable influence on the cartography of the succeeding period. The French cardinal Filastre (ob. 1428), who was staying in Rome in 1427, became acquainted with it there, and made a reduced copy of it, which, together with a copy of the accompanying text, he had bound up with his copy of the Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Geography with maps. This work was not rediscovered at Nancy until 1835, when it was published; the map is therefore usually called the Nancy map. Clavus’s second map, which seems to have been drawn later than that just mentioned, has on the other hand had considerable influence on the cartographical representation of the northern regions through a period of two centuries.

A copy of the later map was first brought to light by Nordenskiöld at Warsaw in 1889 [1889, p. xxx.]; since then several copies have been rescued from oblivion, while the text accompanying the map was accidentally discovered in 1900 by Dr. A. A. Björnbo in a mediæval MS. at Vienna [Björnbo and Petersen, 1904]. The original map is lost; but except as regards details of no great consequence there can now be no doubt as to what it was like.

The reproductions (pp. and ) will give an idea of the representation of the North on the two maps. As far as Ptolemy’s map extended (cf. vol. i. pp. 118, f.), it will be seen that its coast-lines and islands are almost slavishly adhered to on both maps. To this the Nancy map adds a Scandinavia, with Iceland, the east coast of Greenland, and a northern land connection between the latter and Russia. On the later map Scandinavia has been given a somewhat altered form, and Greenland has a west coast. The Nancy map has few names, many more being mentioned in the text, especially in Denmark. Even as regards Denmark they are evidently to a great extent taken from an older itinerary like that of Bruges [“Itinéraire Brugeois,” cf. Storm, 1891, p. 19]. Some of the names on the map, like “bergis,” “nidrosia,” etc., may be taken from older compass-charts; both texts have the northern form “Bergen.” Headlands, bays and islands (on the coasts of Norway, Iceland and Greenland), for which he had no names (and which moreover are due to the free imagination of the draughtsman), have been designated in the Nancy text by Latin numerals (“Primum,” “Secundum,” etc.), or are simply named after each other (in Iceland), a sure sign that Clavus neither knew nor had heard anything about these coasts.

Copy, of about 1467, of Claudius Clavus’s later map. The copy was executed by Nicolaus Germanus.
Owing to the map being transferred to the latter’s trapezoidal projection, with converging meridians,
Greenland, for instance, has been given a very oblique appearance

On his later map Clavus has made up for the want of names in an astonishing way. On some of the coasts he has continued to use Latin numerals for bays, etc., but side by side with this on the shores of the Baltic and in Sweden he has used Danish numerals, such as, “Förste aa fluuii ostia” (First river, river-mouth), “Anden aa” (Second river) ..., etc. The southerners, who did not understand Danish, of course regarded these as names, and subjected them to all sorts of corruptions. Matters became worse when in Gotland and Norway he used as the names of headlands and rivers the words of a meaningless rigmarole: “Enarene,” “apocane,” “uithu,” “wultu,” “segh,” “sarlecrogh,” etc. (evidently corresponding to children’s rigmaroles like “Anniken, fanniken, fiken, foken,” etc.) In Iceland he used the names of the runic characters for headlands and rivers; but most remarkable of all are his names in Greenland, alternately for headlands and the mouths of rivers(!). If, as shown by Björnbo and Petersen, these are read continuously from the most northern headland on the east coast round the south of the country, the following verse in the dialect of Funen is the result:

“Thær boer eeynh manh secundum [== ij ?] eyn Gronelandsz aa,
ooc Spieldebedh mundhe hanyd heyde;
meer hawer han aff nidefildh,
een hanh hawer flesk hinth feyde.
Nordh um driuer sandhin naa new new.”

(There lives a man (in ?) a Greenland river,
and Spieldebedh is his name;
he has more vermin (?)
than he has fat bacon, etc.)

The verse, as pointed out by Axel Olrik, is evidently an imitation or travesty of the folk-songs, and, as Karl Aubert has shown, its prototype must certainly have been the first verse of the same folk-song that is now known in Sweden by the name of “Kung Speleman”:

“Dher bodde een kjempe vid Helsingborg,
Kung Speleman månde han heta,
Visst hade han mera boda sölf,
Än andra flesket dhet feta.
Uren drifver noran, och hafvet sunnan för noran.”

(There lived a giant by Helsingborg,
King Fiddler was his name.
Sure he had greater store of silver
Than others of fat bacon, etc.)

This method of fabricating geographical names adopted by Clavus recalls the designation of the notes in the mediæval scale, for which the words of a Latin hymn were used, and it seems likely that this is what he has imitated. But his mystification, with all these strange names which no one in Southern Europe understood, and which in course of time underwent many corruptions, has caused a good deal of trouble; many intelligent men have racked their brains to discover learned etymological interpretations of their origin, until Björnbo’s lucky find of the later text of Clavus solved the riddle.

Björnbo and Petersen, who by their valuable work on Claudius Clavus with a reproduction of this text have the credit of throwing light on the relation between his first and second maps, have put forward the view that Clavus must have made his first map (the Nancy map) with its Latin text in Italy; but curiously enough they think he entirely rejected the Italian compass-charts as unsuitable for the representation of the North, and constructed his delineation of the northern regions independently of them, as an addition to Ptolemy’s coast-lines, simply from information he had derived from northern sources. After this we are to suppose that, in order to extend his geographical knowledge, he went back to Denmark; and since the authors place reliance on Clavus’s assertion (in his later text) that he had seen the places himself, they even credit him with having made a voyage of geographical exploration, first to Norway (Trondhjem) and then to Greenland. And then he is supposed to have drawn his later map, and written the text for it (in Latin), in the North.

I have come to an entirely different conclusion. His older map must be based, in my opinion, not only on Ptolemy, but to a great extent on Italian maps. His later map and text, I consider, show beyond doubt that he cannot have been either in Norway or Greenland, and I cannot find a single statement in the Vienna text, or any coast-line in his later map, which shows that he was outside Italy in the period between the two works. Doubtless the delineation of Denmark, especially Sealand, is more detailed in the second map; but the additions do not disclose any more local knowledge than might be attributed to Clavus as a native of Funen before his first map was drawn, even though he had not then ventured to change the form of Ptolemy’s Scandia, which to him, of course, became Sealand. After this first attempt, however, he may have gained courage to launch out further with his knowledge. He may also have discovered a few fresh pieces of information, in the papal archives, for instance. Besides this, he may, of course, have received oral communications from people from the northern countries; but even of this I am unable to find sure signs. In consideration of the imaginative tendencies shown by Clavus in his distribution of names, and to some extent in the coast-lines on his map, which perhaps may also have asserted themselves in his statement that he had seen a complete MS. of Livy in Sorö monastery, we shall scarcely be insulting him if we believe his statements (in two passages of the Vienna text) that he himself had seen Pygmies from a land in the North, and Karelians in Greenland, to be rhetorical phrases, calculated to strengthen the reader’s confidence, and to mean at the outside that he had seen something about these people in older authorities.

After having heard my reasons, Björnbo and Petersen have in all essentials come round to my views. In particular they agree with me that Clavus cannot have been in Greenland, but that the delineation of that country on his later map is based on the Medicean map of the world, which will be mentioned later. I therefore consider it superfluous to combat any further here the reasons given in their work for their former view.

Claudius Clavus’s task must have been to supplement the newly discovered atlas of Ptolemy by what he knew of the North; and to this end his maps were drawn, either by himself or by a professional draughtsman in Italy from his instructions. The text was prepared after each of the maps, as a description of it; and the latitudes and longitudes are taken from the map [cf. Björnbo and Petersen, 1904, p. 130]. With the superstitious respect of the period for older learned authorities in general, and for Ptolemy in particular, he did not venture to alter the latter’s coast-lines or latitudes as far as they extended; even in the Danish islands he has done so with hesitation, thus Sealand in his first sketch [the Nancy map] has still the same form as Scandia in Ptolemy, etc. He then added to the latter’s coast-lines what he knew or could get together from other quarters.

His first map [the Nancy map] may presuppose the following sources, besides Ptolemy’s various maps of Northern Europe; Pietro Vesconte’s mappamundi (circa 1320) in Marino Sanudo’s work, and the anonymous mappamundi, now preserved in the so-called Medicean Marine Atlas, of 1351, at Florence. In addition to these, either the Bruges itinerary itself [Itinéraire Brugeois, cf. Storm, 1891, p. 19], or one of its earlier sources. Possibly he also had, in part at all events, a tract [in Icelandic ?] that is included in the fourth part of the “Rymbegla” [1780]; that he also knew of the Icelandic sailing directions, as assumed by Björnbo and Petersen, I regard as less certain, although not impossible; perhaps it would be safer to suppose that he may have seen some statements from Ivan Bárdsson’s description of Greenland, in an itinerary, for instance. I have not been able to find any certain indication of his having been acquainted with the Icelandic geography mentioned on p. 237; perhaps he may rather have known of the land connection between Greenland and Russia from some tale or other, or from a legendary saga; from the same source (or from Ivar Bárdsson’s description ?) may also be derived the name Nordbotn (cf. p. 171, note 1), which is not known in the Icelandic geography, but which seems most probably to be a legendary form. Certain names, such as those of the bishops’ sees in Norway and Iceland, Clavus may easily have found in the papal archives in Rome.

In the first place, exactly following Ptolemy, the draughtsman has marked Ireland with the islands around it and six Hebrides to the north-east, Scotland with the island of Dumna and the archipelago “Orcadia” to the north (the island of Ocitis a little farther east), and the south coast of Thule farther north; next Jutland with its small islands round about, and with the large island of Scandia, which, of course, became Sealand (he has added Funen and a number of other islands); finally the coast of Germany and Sarmatia eastwards to 63° N. lat., and with the same number of river-mouths as in Ptolemy. As this coast does not extend nearly so far to the east as does the Baltic on the compass-charts, it resulted that Clavus’s Baltic became much shorter than that of the charts, and its shape had to be altered to suit Ptolemy’s coast-line. Then, at its northern end, the draughtsman has placed possibly Pietro Vesconte’s Scandinavian peninsula, going out towards the west (see the two maps, pp. , ); but as he saw Norway on the compass-charts extending west as far as to the north of Scotland, where on Ptolemy’s map he found Thule, it was natural that he should take the latter to be the southern point of Norway, and he was obliged to move Vesconte’s peninsula farther to the west. Its south coast may have been drawn with the Medici map, or a similar one, as model. As the southern coast of the Baltic was moved far to the south, after Ptolemy, and Jutland was given a different and smaller form than on the Medici map, besides a marked inclination to the east, and as Skåne had to be near Sealand (Scandia), the draughtsman was obliged to move the peninsula corresponding to Skåne about five degrees to the south. The south coast of the peninsula on the north of Scotland on the Medici map (see pp. , ) corresponded very nearly to the south coast of Thule (with an east-south-easterly direction) on Ptolemy’s map; it lay in an almost corresponding latitude, but on account of the puzzling prolongation of Scotland to the east on Ptolemy’s map, it had to be moved a good fifteen degrees of longitude to the east. Thule was thus united to Norway and its south coast was given exactly the same shape as the south coast of the peninsula in question, with three arched bays (the broadest on the east) and a projecting point towards the south-east. The coast between this promontory and Skåne may then have been drawn with the same number of four large bays as on the Medici map: a deeper one farthest west, then a broad peninsula, next two wide, open bays, with a narrow peninsula between them, and finally a smaller bay opposite Sealand. The “Halandi” of the Nancy map is thus brought to the corresponding place with the “Alolanda” of the Medici map (p. 236).

Thus far it may be fairly easy to compare the maps; but then Norway according to most of the compass-charts ought not to have any considerable farther extension to the west, while on the other hand Northern ideas demanded a Greenland in the far west, as well as a land in the north between that and Russia. With the latter the westernmost tongue of land in Norway on the Medicean mappamundi agrees remarkably well. The southern point of Clavus’s Greenland has also the same length in proportion to the west coast of Ireland, and about the same breadth, as on this map. There was also an extensive mass of land in the north. According to various representations, such as those of Vesconte’s mappamundi, Saxo’s description (cf. p. 223), and others, there should be a gulf on the north side of the Scandinavian Peninsula. According to representations like that of the Lambert map at Ghent (cf. p. 188), this arm of the sea had the same form as that on the south side of Scandinavia, and there should only be a narrow isthmus between these two arms of the sea, connecting the peninsula with the mainland (cf. Saxo). On the Nancy map, too, the north coast of Scandinavia is drawn almost exactly like the south coast, with the same number of promontories and bays, which correspond very nearly even in their shape. In this way Clavus’s “Nordhindh Bondh” [Norðrbotn], also called “Tenebrosum mare” [i.e., the dark sea] or “Quietum mare” [the motionless sea], may have originated. This remarkable bay is connected on his map with the Baltic by a canal (which is also mentioned in the Vienna text). By this means Scandinavia really becomes an island. Clavus cannot have acquired such an idea from any known source, although, as already mentioned, Saxo says that it is nearly an island (p. 223); but similar conceptions seem to have arisen in Italy (cf. above on Pietro Vesconte’s mappamundi, p. 223).

Scandinavia on the map of Europe in the Medici Atlas (of 1351).
The scales of latitude and longitude are here added from Ptolemy’s
maps. The network of compass-lines is omitted

The south coast of Norway [with “Stauanger”] and the southern point of Greenland retained on Clavus’s map the same relation of latitude, a difference of 1½°, as the corresponding localities on the Medici map, with very nearly the same degrees of latitude as on the latter, if we there employ a scale of latitude calculated upon this map’s representation of Spain (the Straits of Gibraltar) and France (Brittany), and use Ptolemy’s latitudes for these countries. This has been done in the reproduction of the Medicean mappamundi on p. 236. The scale of longitude is calculated in the same proportion to the latitude as in Ptolemy. In some tract like that included in the fourth part of the “Rymbegla” [1780, p. 466] Clavus may have found that Bergen lay in latitude 60° and so placed the town on the west coast of Norway in this latitude according to his own scale (on the right-hand side of the Nancy map, see p. 474). In relation to the south coast of Norway Bergen was thus brought ¾° farther south than “c. bergis” on the Medici map (above). Calculated according to Ptolemy’s scale of latitude (on the left-hand side of the Nancy map), Bergen was consequently placed in Clavus’s text in 64°, while the southern point of Greenland is placed in 63° 15′, a difference in latitude of 45′ (in the Vienna text the difference is 35′), while in reality it is 38′; a remarkable accidental agreement. According to Clavus’s own scale of latitude on the right-hand side of the Nancy map, we get the following latitudes: Bergen 60°, the southern point of Greenland 59° 15′, Stavanger 58° 30′. In reality the latitudes of these places are: 60° 24′, 59° 46′, and 58° 58′. This agreement is remarkable, as a displacement of the scale of latitude half a degree to the north on the Nancy map would give very nearly correct latitudes. The mutual relation between the latitudes of the three places may, as we have seen, be explained from the Medici map, but hardly from a possible acquaintance with the Icelandic sailing directions; for according to these Bergen and the southern point of Greenland would be placed in the same latitude, since we are told that from Bergen the course was “due west to Hvarf in Greenland.” The Medici map may also give a natural explanation of places like Bergen and the southern point of Greenland having been given by Clavus a latitude so much too northerly (even in the Nancy map), and of the southern point of Greenland having only half a degree more westerly longitude than the west coast of Ireland.

Iceland lay, according to the Bruges itinerary, midway between Norway and Greenland, precisely as on the Nancy map. Between Norway and Iceland, according to the same itinerary, lay “Fareö” [Færö], and the fabulous island “Femöe,” “where only women are born and never men.”

After speaking of the “third headland” in 71° on the east coast of Greenland, the Nancy text goes on:

“But from this headland an immense country extends eastward as far as Russia. And in its [i.e., the country’s] northern parts dwell the infidel Karelians (‘Careli infideles’), whose territory (‘regio’) extends to the north pole (‘sub polo septentrionalis’) towards the Seres of the east, wherefore the pole [‘polus’ == the arctic circle ?], which to us is in the north, is to them in the south in 66°.”

It is probable, as suggested by Björnbo and Petersen, that these “Careli infideles” are identical with those who are found almost in the same place, in the ocean to the north of Norway, on one of the maps in Marino Sanudo’s work (in the Paris MS., see above, p. 225), and who on other maps belonging to that work are placed on the mainland to the north-east of Scandinavia. As pointed out by Storm, “Kareli” are also mentioned together with Greenland and “Mare Gronlandicum” in the Bruges itinerary.

Björnbo and Petersen maintain that Claudius Clavus has here consciously put forward a new and revolutionary view which was a complete break with the cosmogony of the whole of the Middle Ages, since according to the latter the disc of the earth was entirely surrounded by sea to the south of the North Pole, as represented on the wheel-maps. I think this is attributing to Clavus rather too much original thought, of which his maps and text do not otherwise give evidence. It is, of course, correct that the idea of land, and inhabited land, too, at the North Pole, or to the north of the Arctic Circle, did not agree with the general learned conception of the Middle Ages; but the same idea had already been clearly enough expressed in Norwegian-Icelandic literature. Even the Historia Norwegiæ has inhabited land beyond the sea in the north, and the Icelandic legendary sagas and Saxo have it too. In addition to these, the tract included in the “Rymbegla” says distinctly (see above, p. 239) that this land in the opinion of some lies under the pole-star (cf. Clavus’s expression: “sub polo septentrionalis”). The fact that the continent on the Medicean map of the world extended boundlessly on the north into the unknown (whereas Africa ended in a peninsula on the south) must have confirmed Clavus in the view that the land reached to the pole. To this was added, what perhaps weighed most with him, the fact that such a view did not conflict with Ptolemy, whose continent also had no limit on the north.

On the connecting land in the north is written, on the Nancy map: “Unipedes maritimi,” “Pigmei maritimi,” “Griffonii regio vastissima,” and “Wildhlappelandi.” As these names are not mentioned in Clavus’s text, it is uncertain whether the fabulous creatures may not be to some extent additions for which he is not responsible.

After the map was drawn, with its bays and headlands, and the coast of Scandinavia provided with a suitable number of islands, Claudius Clavus set himself to describe it; where he had no names from earlier sources, he numbered the headlands, bays and islands, “Primum,” “Secundum,” etc.

A remarkable thing about the Nancy map is that it has two divisions of latitude: one according to Ptolemy on the left-hand side of the map, and another according to Clavus himself, on a scale four degrees lower, on the right-hand side. According to the latter, Roskilde would have a longest day of seventeen hours (through a transposition the Nancy map gives seventeen hours thirty minutes), which, as pointed out by Björnbo [1910, p. 96], exactly agrees with what Clavus may have learnt from a Roskilde calendar (“Liber daticus Roskildensis”) of 1274. Björnbo has also remarked that Bergen is given a remarkably correct latitude, 60° (the correct one is 60° 24′), and thinks it possible that there may have been a Bergen calendar which Clavus has used. But a more likely source, unnoticed by Björnbo, is to be found, as mentioned on p. 260, in the “Rymbegla” tract, where the latitude of Bergen is given as 60°. It is true that the same tract gives the latitude of Trondhjem (Nidaros) as 64°, which does not agree with the Nancy map, where there is a difference of only 2° between Bergis and Nidrosia. Even though it is probable that Clavus was acquainted with some such tract, with which his statement as to land at the North Pole also agrees, it may have been a somewhat different version from that which found its way into the “Rymbegla,” and perhaps the latitude of Trondhjem was not mentioned there. On the other hand, he may have found, there or elsewhere, the latitude of Stavanger given, 1½° farther south than Bergen (?).

If we assume that Clavus, even in the construction of his first map, made use of the Medicean map of the world, and that his Greenland is the most westerly peninsula of the latter’s Norway, it will seem strange that he did not also draw the west coast of that peninsula, which would naturally become the west coast of Greenland. It is true that the Nancy map is only a copy, but as the west coast of Greenland is not mentioned in the copy of Clavus’s text either, we are bound to believe that he did not include it. The margin on the western side of Clavus’s first map was evidently determined by that of Ptolemy’s map of the British Isles, and follows precisely the same meridian. Thus there was no room for the Medici map’s peninsula corresponding to Clavus’s Greenland. As already stated, it is difficult to get away from the belief that the Medici map was used for the east coast of Greenland, the south coast of Norway, etc.; the resemblances are too great, and otherwise inexplicable (cf. p. 261, note 3).

After the first map was drawn, Clavus may have made further cartographical studies in Italy, and may thus have become acquainted with other compass-charts, especially those of the Dalorto type. At the same time he may have obtained a new and more accurate determination of the latitude of Trondhjem, probably by the length of its longest day. As Trondhjem was an archbishopric, it is not unlikely that he found such a piece of information in the papal archives at Rome. He may then naturally have wished to bring his map more into agreement with his new knowledge, and this may have led to his later map, which is now known to us through several somewhat varying copies. To this he then wrote a new text (the Vienna text), which in all important points resembles the former, but has various additions and alterations. The later map has not the double scale of latitude on any of the copies known, but curiously enough only Ptolemy’s degrees. Besides a more accurate delineation of Jutland and the Danish islands, especially Sealand, Bornholm and Gotland are drawn in closer resemblance to the Medici map; the south coast of Scandinavia has been altered to agree more with compass-charts of the Catalan type. In particular the south coast of Norway has been given the four characteristic promontories (as on the Dalorto map of 1339, and on the Modena map, etc.; cf. the reproductions, pp. , ), and Bergen (“Bergis”) has been placed at the head of the westernmost of the three bays thus formed, which is also a peculiarity of the maps of this type (the Catalan chart of 1375 has five promontories with four bays, cf. Nordenskiöld, 1896, Pl. XI.). The other two diocesan towns, Stavanger and Hamar, are placed at the heads of the other two bays to the east, and Stavanger has thus lost the remarkably correct position in relation to Bergen and the south point of Greenland which it had on the older map. Trondhjem has been placed at the extremity of the westernmost promontory, possibly because there had been found a more correct determination of the latitude of the town, which was to be fitted into Ptolemy’s graduation; thereby the shape of Norway has become still narrower and farther removed from reality.

From the “lac scarsa” (Lake Skara, i.e., Vener) with its river is derived the great lake “Vona” (Vener) in the centre of Scandinavia on all the copies of Clavus’s later map, from which the river “Vona” (also mentioned in the Vienna text) runs into the deep bay by “Aslo” (Oslo) and the island of “Tunsberg.” A connection, especially with Dalorto’s map of 1339, seems again to be implied by Clavus’s statement in the Vienna text that on Lister Ness “white falcons are caught” (“Liste promontorium, ubi capiuntur falcones albi”). On Dalorto’s map there is a picture of a white falcon on the headland to the west of that which Clavus has made into Lister, and the words “hic sunt girfalcos” (here are hunting falcons). That Clavus has moved the hawks to a headland farther east is of small importance. Either he may have taken his hawks from Dalorto’s or a similar map, or else they are derived from an older common source.

Through the alteration of the south coast of Norway, it became necessary to separate it from Thule, which again became an island as originally in Ptolemy; but on the copies of the map it has in addition the name “Bellandiar,” which may be a corruption of Hetlandia (Shetland). The north-west coast of Norway has also been given a form which agrees better with the compass-charts, although it has a much more east-north-easterly direction than even on the Modena map; but this was, of course, necessary to make room for the sea “Nordhenbodnen” (Nordbotn). That the compass-charts might lead to something resembling Clavus’s last form of Scandinavia, and especially of the south coast of Norway, is shown by the map of Europe in Andrea Bianco’s atlas of 1436, which must have been drawn without knowledge of Clavus’s work. If on this map we move the coast of the Baltic farther south and Skåne also, which would be necessitated by a better knowledge of Denmark (and by the alteration of the map following Ptolemy), and draw the coast-line of Norway towards the east-north-east from the south-western promontory (instead of making it go in a northerly direction), we shall get a Scandinavia of very similar type to that in Clavus’s later map.

The north-western portion of the map of Europe in Andrea Bianco’s
atlas of 1436. The compass-lines are omitted

Björnbo and Petersen have maintained in their monograph that Clavus must have been in Norway before he drew this map, and that amongst other things his remarkably correct latitude for Trondhjem must be due to his own observation of the length of the day at the summer solstice. Storm [1889, p. 140] seems also to have supposed that Clavus may really have been in Norway. To me it appears that his map and text are conclusive evidence against his ever having been there; for a man who had sailed to Trondhjem along the coast of Norway could not possibly have produced a cartographical representation of the country so entirely at variance with reality as Clavus has done, however ignorant we may suppose him. The fact in itself that “Trunthheim” (Trondhjem) or “Nedrosia” is placed at the extremity of the south side of the south-western promontory of the country is extraordinary. If he had come there asleep he could not have got any such idea; and for a man who had sailed in through the long channel of the Trondhjem fjord up to the town it is incredible. It is equally incredible that a man who had sailed along the coast from Stavanger and Bergen to Trondhjem could place the latter town in a latitude 10′ to the south of Bergen, and only 10′ to the north of Stavanger. We are not justified in attributing to Clavus such an entire lack of power of observation, especially if we are to suppose him capable of determining with remarkable accuracy the length of the longest day at Trondhjem. That Trondhjem is placed to the west of Bergen and Stavanger, that the Dovrefjeld is called a high promontory, while on the Nancy map it was inland, that Hamar (“Amerensis”) is put on the sea-coast, etc., all shows the same want of knowledge of the country and its configuration. The names he may have taken from an itinerary or other sources, and, as already suggested, it is not unlikely that he may have found in the papal archives a fairly correct statement of the latitude (or length of the longest day) of Trondhjem, which was an archbishop’s see. That the towns he gives are just those that are the heads of dioceses is perhaps an indication of a connection with the Vatican.

Clavus tells us further that

“Norway has eighteen islands, which in winter are always connected with the mainland, and are seldom separated from it, unless the summer is very warm,” and that “‘Tyle’ [Thule] is a part of Norway and is not reckoned as an island, although it is separated from the land by a channel or strait, for the ice connects it with the land for eight or nine months, and therefore it is reckoned as mainland. The same applies to the sea ‘Nordhinbodnen’ [Nordbotn], which separates ‘Wildlappenland’ from ‘Vermenlandh’ and ‘Findland’ by a long strait, since the countries are united by almost eternal ice.”

This discloses an extraordinary lack of knowledge of Northern conditions. Such a connection of the islands with the mainland by ice occurs, of course, nowhere on the whole outer coast of Norway from Færder to the Murman Coast. On the other hand, the Gulf of Bothnia and the Åland archipelago are frozen over for a long time in winter, and it might be supposed that Clavus had heard reports of this. But I have not been able to discover any source from which he may have derived these fables. Most probably they are embellishments of the same kind as the eighteen islands of Norway, that form an arbitrary decoration of the coast-line of his map, a circumstance which does not hinder him from describing them as real. Clavus has used the ice as a transition between the representation of his older map, where Thule was part of the mainland, and that of the later one, where it was made into an island.

At the northernmost limit of Norway, between two places called “Ynesegh” and “Mestebrodh,” Clavus connected the Polar Sea (“Nordhinbodhn”) by a narrow channel with the Gotland Sea [the Baltic], and a little farther north, in 67°, he says that

“the uttermost limit is marked with a crucifix, so that Christians shall not venture without the king’s permission to penetrate farther, even with a great company.” “And from this place westwards over a very great extent of land dwell first Wildlappmanni [Wild Lapps, i.e., Mountain Lapps, Reindeer Lapps ? cf. vol. i. p. 227], people leading a perfectly savage life and covered with hair, as they are depicted; and they pay yearly tribute to the king. And after them, farther to the west, are the little Pygmies, a cubit high, whom I have seen after they were taken at sea in a little hide-boat, which is now hanging in the cathedral at Nidaros; there is likewise a long vessel of hides, which was also once taken with such Pygmies in it.”

Two things are to be remarked about this assertion that he himself had seen these Pygmies (one might suppose in Norway): (1) if he had really seen a captive Eskimo brought to Norway (by whom ?), he could hardly have been ignorant that this remarkable native was from Greenland, and not from a fabulous northern land. And (2), how could he then give their height as no more than a cubit, like the Pygmies of myth? It appears to me that in one’s zeal to defend Clavus, one would thus have to attribute to him two serious falsehoods, instead of a more innocent rhetorical phrase about having seen this, that, and the other.

Clavus’s statement about the Pygmies’ small hide-boats, and the long hide-boat, that hung in Trondhjem cathedral, is, however, of great interest from the fact that this is the first mention in literature of the two forms of Eskimo boat: the kayak and the women’s boat (“umiak”). Perhaps he got this from the same unknown source (in the Vatican ?) in which he found the statement of the latitude of Trondhjem (?). In the fact that the Wild Lapps are mentioned first, and after them the Pygmies, Clavus’s text again bears a great resemblance to the anonymous letter to Pope Nicholas V. (of about 1450). In the northernmost regions (to the north-west of Norway) this letter mentions [cf. Storm, 1899, p. 9]

“the forests of Gronolonde, where there are monsters of human aspect who have hairy limbs, and who are called wild men.”... “And as one goes west towards the mountains of these countries, there dwell Pygmies,” etc. (cf. above, p. 86).

Michael Beheim also mentions “Wild lapen,” who live in the forests to the north of Norway, and who carry on a dumb barter of furs with the merchants, like that described by the Arab authors as taking place in the country north of Wîsu (cf. p. 144), and he goes on to speak of the Skrælings, three spans high, etc. (cf. above, p. 85). Beheim’s statement differs from Clavus’s text, and this again from the letter to Nicholas V., so that one cannot be derived from the other. It is therefore most probable, as suggested already (p. 86), that they have all drawn from some older source, and it may be supposed that this was Nicholas of Lynn. We have seen that there are other points in Clavus that lead one’s thoughts in the same direction.

Clavus proceeds:

“The peninsula of the island of Greenland stretches down from land on the north which is inaccessible or unknown on account of ice. Nevertheless, as I have seen, the infidel Karelians daily come to Greenland in great armies (bands of warriors, ‘cum copioso exercitu’), and that without doubt from the other side of the North Pole. Therefore the ocean does not wash the limit of the continent under the Pole [Arctic Circle ?] itself, as all ancient authors have asserted; and therefore the noble English knight, John Mandevil, did not lie when he said that he had sailed from the Indian Seres [i.e., China ?] to an island in Norway.”

If we compare this with the “Rymbegla” tract already mentioned [1780, p. 466], we see that these are much the same ideas as there expressed. We read there

“that it is the report of the same men that the sea is full of eternal ice to the north of us and under the pole star, where the arms of the Outer Ocean meet....”

When it is there stated that

“those shores [under the pole star] hinder the ring of the ocean from coming together [i.e., round the earth]” ... and “that one can go on foot ... from Greenland to Norway” [cf. above, p. 239],

this is evidently something similar to what Clavus says; but the latter’s words as to the voyage which he attributes to Mandeville from the Indian Seres to Norway being more probable because there is land at the North Pole are somewhat incomprehensible.

John Mandeville’s book about a voyage through many lands to the far east and China dates from between 1357 and 1371, and is put together from various accounts of voyages, with the addition of all kinds of fables. Mandeville does not himself claim to have made any such voyage from China to Norway; on the other hand, he has much to say, in chapter xvii., about the possibility of sailing round the world, which he declares to be practicable, and if ships were sent out to explore the world, one could sail round the world, both above and below. He says that when he was young he heard of a man who set out from England to explore the world, and who went past India and the islands beyond it where there are more than five thousand islands, and so far did he travel over sea and land that he finally came to an island where he heard them calling to the ox at the plough in his own language, as they did in his own country. This island afterwards proved to be in Norway.

Clavus’s assertion that he himself saw (“ut uidi”) Karelians in Greenland is impossible. As it is expressly stated that there was land at the North Pole, and as it is not mentioned that these Karelians had hide-boats like the Pygmies, the meaning must be that their armies came marching by the land route, which, of course, is an impossibility, which, if he had been in Greenland, would make him a worse romancer than if we suppose his “ut uidi” to mean that he had seen something of the sort stated in a narrative; but even this may be doubtful. In the Bruges itinerary [cf. Storm, 1891, p. 20] or some similar older authority, which we know he may have used, he may have seen “Kareli” beyond Greenland spoken of as “in truth a populus monstrosus.” We have already said that on the maps accompanying Marino Sanudo’s work he may have seen “Kareli infideles” marked on the mainland to the north-east of Norway, or even on an island out in the northern sea, and he would then naturally have connected the Karelians of the itinerary with these Karelians north of Norway. If we add to this that on the Medicean map of the world he saw the mass of the continent extending from Scandinavia and the peninsula corresponding to Greenland, northwards into the unknown, and that in the “Rymbegla” tract he saw mention of land at the North Pole—then, indeed, his whole statement seems to admit of a perfectly natural explanation.

His lack of knowledge of the conditions in Greenland appears again in his speaking of Pygmies and Karelians as two different peoples, one apparently on the sea, and the other marching in armies on land; and in his mentioning hide-boats as something peculiar to the former in the fabulous northern country, while he does not say that the Karelians in Greenland had boats or went to sea. If he had only spoken to people who had been in Greenland, he could hardly have avoided hearing of the Skrælings who come to meet every traveller in their hide-boats.

Map constructed by Dr. Björnbo after Clavus’s later description (the Vienna text).
(Björnbo and Petersen, 1904, Pl. II.)

It is an important difference between Clavus’s first and second maps (and also between his first and second texts) that on the latter Greenland is given a west coast. Its form bears an altogether striking resemblance to the west coast of the corresponding peninsula on the Medicean mappamundi, so that there can be no doubt that this coast is copied from it. This is notably the case if we confine ourselves to Björnbo and Petersen’s reconstruction of the coast after the text of Clavus, from which it appears plainly enough that there are the same number of bays as on the Medici map; they are closest together near the southern point of the country; then come two larger bays to the north, then a very broad bay, longer than the two others together, and then a straighter coast-line to the north of that (cf. p. 236). The east coast of Greenland has in part been provided with corresponding bays, although this coast is almost straight on the Medici map; but this answers to the north coast of Scandinavia on the Nancy map having very nearly the same indentations as the south coast. In taking the Medici map as the foundation of Clavus’s Greenland coast we also have a natural explanation of the relation between his distribution of names on the east coast and the west. In his later text it is striking that his description of the east coast of Greenland does not reach farther than to his “Thær promontorium” in 65° 35′, while the description of the west coast goes as far north as 72°. This might seem to be connected with real local knowledge, since the latitude 65° 35′ on the east coast agrees in a remarkable way with the latitude of Cape Dan, 65° 32′, where the coast turns in a more northerly direction. To the north of this the coast is usually blocked with ice, and this place has therefore frequently been given as the northern limit of the known east coast, and probably it was there that the Icelanders first arrived off the land on their voyage westward to the Greenland settlements. But this is one of those accidental coincidences that sometimes occur, and that warn us to be careful not to draw too many conclusions from evidence of this nature. We find the explanation in the Medici map (p. 236), where the east coast of the peninsula corresponding to Greenland does not go farther north than to about the same latitude as the promontory on the south side of the broad bay already referred to on the west coast, which promontory Clavus calls “Hynth” [“Hyrch”]; it lies in 65° 40′. As Clavus’s coast from this point of the east coast northward had no map to depend on, he did not venture to go farther in his description this time, though in the Nancy text he goes to 71° with his northernmost cape.

The Medicean map of the world gives us at the same time a simple explanation of Clavus’s designations for the two most northerly points on the west coast of Greenland. If we confine ourselves to the scale of latitude for the Medici map, which, as stated above (p. 259), we have found by using Ptolemy’s latitudes for more southern places on the map (Gibraltar and Brittany), and which is inserted in the left-hand margin of the reproduction, p. 236, we shall find the following: just at the spot of which Clavus declares: “New, the uttermost limit of the land which we know on this side, lies in 70° 10′,” the heavy colouring of the land on the Medici map comes to an end (judging from the photograph in Ongania, Pl. V.). Farther to the north extends the coast of the lightly coloured mass of land; but just at this point, in 72°, where Clavus has his “ultimus locus uisibilis” [last point visible] this coast-line disappears into the oblique frame which cuts off the upper left-hand corner of the map. The agreement is here so exact and so complete that it would be difficult to find any way out of it.

Björnbo and Petersen have asserted that Iceland, on the later map and in the Vienna text, has been given a position more in agreement with the sailing directions than on the Nancy map. I cannot see the necessity for this supposition, as it has almost exactly the same position in relation to the southern point of Greenland and to Norway in both works; the chief difference is merely that the longitude of all three countries is made 3° farther east in the later work (and the latitude of the southern points of Iceland and Greenland is put somewhat farther south), and that the east coast of Greenland has a more oblique north-eastward direction than the corresponding north-east coast on the Medici map, with the direction of which the Nancy map agrees fairly well. In this way it is brought nearer to Iceland; but that this should be due to a knowledge of the sailing directions seems very uncertain, and is not disclosed, so far as I can see, elsewhere in the later work. The only things I have found which might possibly point to northern authorities having been consulted since the production of the Nancy work, are the accurate latitude of Trondhjem, already referred to, and the island of “Byörnö” between Iceland and Greenland. The latter might be the Gunnbjörnskerries (or Gunnbjarnar-eyar) mentioned, amongst other places, in Ivar Bárdsson’s description of Greenland; but the abbreviation of the name is curious. Perhaps the island may be due to some oral communication, or an erroneous recollection of something the author may have heard of in Denmark in his youth.

On the whole we shall be compelled after all to detract considerably from Claudius Clavus’s reputation as a Northern traveller and cartographer. His journey did not extend farther north than the Danish islands, and perhaps Skåne. On the other hand, he was in Italy, where he drew his maps or had them drawn, and where he also found his most important authorities. His chief merit as a cartographer is that he is the first we know of to have adopted Ptolemy’s methods, and that he gave the name of Greenland to the westernmost tongue of land in Norway on the Medicean mappamundi, and altered this a good deal with the help of other compass-charts and Vesconte’s mappamundi, to make it agree better with the ideas of the North which he may have acquired to some extent in his youth through legendary tales, and later through Saxo and other writers.

North-western portion of Nicolaus Germanus’s first revision of Ptolemy’s
map of the world (after 1466). (J. Fischer, 1902, Pl. I.)

Claudius Clavus’s later map of the North exercised for a long period a decisive influence on the representation of Scandinavia and to some extent of Greenland. This was chiefly due to the two well-known cartographers, Nicolaus Germanus and Henricus Martellus. The former must have become acquainted with Clavus’s map soon after 1460, and included copies of it in the splendid MSS. of Ptolemy’s Geography which proceeded from his workshop at Florence. In these copies, of which several are known (cf. p. 251), he has redrawn Clavus’s map in the trapezoidal projection invented by himself, whereby his Greenland has been given a more oblique position than the Greenland of the original map and the corresponding peninsula on the Medici map. He also introduced this Greenland into his map of the world [cf. J. Fischer, 1902, Pl. I., III.; Björnbo, 1910, p. 136]; but, in order to make it agree better with the learned mediæval view of the earth’s disc surrounded by ocean, he surrounded it by sea on the north, so that it came to form a long and narrow tongue of land projecting from northern Russia, instead of the northern mass of land extending to the North Pole according to Clavus. But this long peninsula does not seem to have entirely satisfied this priest’s erudite ideas of the continent, and on later maps (which were printed after his death in the Ulm editions of Ptolemy of 1482 and 1486) he shortened it so much that it became a rounded peninsula to the north of Norway, with the name “Engronelant,” and at the same time he moved Iceland out into the ocean to the north-west. This apparently quite arbitrary alteration may perhaps be due to a desire to bring the map as far as possible into agreement with the learned dogma of the continent [cf. Björnbo, 1910, pp. 141, ff.]; but older conceptions of Greenland may also have contributed towards it [cf. J. Fischer, 1902, pp. 87, ff.]. We have already seen that Adam of Bremen regarded Greenland as an island “farther out in the ocean opposite the mountains of Suedia” (see vol i. p. 194), and in his additions to the copy of Ptolemy, Cardinal Filastre (before 1427) states that Greenland lay to the north of Norway; we find the same view in the letter of 1448 from Pope Nicholas V. (see above, p. 113). It is also somewhat remarkable that on the Genoese mappamundi of 1447 (or 1457) there occurs a peninsula north of Scandinavia just at the place where Clavus’s Greenland should begin (see p. 287). On Fra Mauro’s mappamundi (1457-59) there are several peninsulas to the north of Scandinavia, some of which proceed from Russia (see p. 285).

Map of the North by Nicolaus Germanus (before 1482), after Claudius
Clavus, but with Greenland transferred to the north of Norway

The cartographer Henricus Martellus, who succeeded Nicolaus Germanus, again adopted Clavus’s form of Greenland, wholly or in part, on his maps dating from about 1490.

In this way there arose on the maps of the close of the Middle Ages two types of the North: one with Greenland in a comparatively correct position to the west of Iceland, though far too near Europe and connected therewith, and another type with “Engronelant” as a peninsula to the north of Norway. The latter remained for a long time the usual one in all editions of Ptolemy, in other cartographical works and on many globes. After the rediscovery of Greenland we even get sometimes two delineations of this country on the same map, one to the north of Norway and the other in its right place in the west.

Greenland seems to have been given a wholly different form on a Catalan compass-chart from Majorca, of the close of the fifteenth century, where in the Atlantic to the west of Ireland and south-west of Iceland [“Fixlanda”] there is an island called “Illa verde” [the green isle]. It seems, as assumed by Storm [1893, p. 81], that the name must be a translation of Greenland, which is called in the Historia Norwegiæ “Viridis terra.” The representation of Iceland [“Fixlanda”] on this map is incomparably better than on all earlier maps, and gives proof of new information having come from thence. As the place-names point to an English source, it is possible that the cartographer may have received information from Bristol, which city was engaged in the Iceland trade and fisheries, and his island, “Illa verde,” may be due to an echo of reports about the forgotten Greenland in the west. It is worth remarking that the island is connected with the Irish mythical “Illa de brazil,” which lay to the west of Ireland and which appears in this map twice over in its typical round form (cf. above, p. 228). If we remember that this happy isle is in reality the Insulæ Fortunatæ, and that in the Historia Norwegiæ (see above, p. 1) it is said that Greenland [“Viridis terra”] nearly touches the African Islands (i.e., Insulæ Fortunatæ), then we possibly have an explanation of this juxtaposition. But as it is said in the same passage that Greenland forms the western end of Europe, we cannot suppose that the cartographer was acquainted with this work. The probability is, no doubt, that Greenland [Illa verde] together with Brazil or the Insulæ Fortunatæ had become transformed into mythical islands out in the ocean.

Part of a Catalan compass-chart of the fifteenth century,
preserved at Milan. (Nordenskiöld, 1892, Pl. 5)

On another compass-chart, bound up in a Paris MS. of Ptolemy of the latter part of the fifteenth century, a similar island (or peninsula ?), with the same round island to the south of it, is seen to project southwards from the northern border of the chart out into the Atlantic, and a little farther east than the Insulæ Fortunatæ. On the island is written: “Insula uiridis, de qua fit mentio in geographia” [the green island, of which mention is made in the geography]. We do not know what geographical work may here be meant; Björnbo suggests that it might be the lost work of Nicholas of Lynn, who again may have used the Historia Norwegiæ. It is striking that the island, besides being connected with a round island like Brazil, but without a name, is placed on this map near the Insulæ Fortunatæ.

This “green island,” which thus is probably a remnant of old Greenland, occurs again in various forms and in various places on many sixteenth-century maps.

It is not surprising that information about the northern lands made its appearance also on the maps of this time, as we know that the North was visited more frequently, and sometimes by eminent southerners, from the year 1248, when the well-known Matthew Paris, who, amongst other things, drew a map of England remarkable for his time, visited Norway. Rather is it strange that the direct knowledge thus obtained did not leave more definite traces. Early in the fifteenth century (some year between 1397 and 1448) a Byzantine, Cananos Lascaris, travelled in the North and wrote about it (in Greek). He mentions amongst other things that in Bergen, the capital of Norway (“Bergen Vagen”), money was not used in trading [this must have been due to scarcity of coin]; but in Stockolmo, the capital of Sweden, they had money of alloyed silver. Bergen had a month of daylight from June 24 to July 25. He also says that he himself went to the land of the Ichthyophagi (fish-eaters), “Islanta,” from “Inglenia,” and stayed there for twenty-four days. The people were strong and powerfully built, they lived only on fish, and they had a summer day of six months [cf. Lampros, 1881].

It would take us too far here to attempt a mention of all the fifteenth-century maps which have a different representation of the North; but perhaps some of the mappemundi in wheel-form, which were still current at this time, ought to be referred to. We saw that on Vesconte’s map of the world accompanying Marino Sanudo’s work the coast-lines of the compass-charts in the Mediterranean, etc., had already been introduced. On the Modena map (p. 231) this has also been carried out as regards the North. In the fifteenth century we have various wheel-maps, of which some seem to be more antiquated. Lo Bianco’s round mappamundi, in his atlas of 1436, is connected with the compass-charts of that time. Johannes Leardus’s round mappamundi, in many editions of 1448 and earlier, likewise shows a strong affinity to the compass-charts, although there is little detail in the delineation of the North. The same is the case with the anonymous round mappamundi in a codex in the Library of St. Mark at Venice [cf. Kretschmer, 1892, atlas, Pl. III., No. 13], but this map has also points of similarity to Vesconte’s mappamundi in Sanudo’s work, and, amongst other things, it has the same mountain-chain along the north coast of the continent, and the same form of the Baltic.

Europe on the mappamundi in the Geneva MS. of Sallust
of about 1450. (The south should be at the top)

The round mappamundi in a MS. of Mela of 1417 at Rheims is, on the whole, of a very antiquated type, but its image of the North seems more modern, and it has the same mountain-chain along the north coast of the continent as Vesconte’s map. The “Sallust” map at Geneva, of about 1450, is also antiquated, but its Baltic resembles the compass-charts, and the two mountain ridges, one along the north coast of the continent, the other parallel with it in the interior, strongly recall Vesconte’s map of the world. On the other hand, the connection by water between the Baltic and Mæotis (the Sea of Azov) is evidently derived from an earlier age (cf. p. 199). Out in the ocean to the north-west and west of Norway lie four islands. Björnbo supposes [1910, p. 75] that the two more northerly of these may correspond to Adam of Bremen’s Greenland and Wineland, but this must be very uncertain.

North-western portion of Andreas Walsperger’s mappamundi (of 1448).
Most of the names are omitted. (The south should be at the top)

A curious delineation of the North is found on the round mappamundi which was drawn at Constance in 1448 by the Benedictine monk Andreas Walsperger of Salzburg [cf. Kretschmer, 1891a]. The map is in most respects imperfect and antiquated, but shows also more recent, particularly German, influence.

The Mediterranean and the Baltic are disproportionately large, and the mass of land between them has been contracted. There are many mediæval mythical conceptions, and items showing possible influence by Adam of Bremen [cf. Miller, iii. 1895, p. 147]. Thus in northern Asia we have “Cenocephali” and Cannibals [“Andropophagi”], bearded women, Gog, Magog, etc. In Norway we read: “Here demons often show themselves in human shape and render service to men, and they are called trolls.” Claudius Clavus also speaks of trolls in Norway. In the northern ocean to the north-west of Norway is written: “In this great sea there is no sailing on account of magnets.” This is evidently the widely distributed mediæval myth of the magnet-rock, which attracted all ships with iron in them; in Germany it occurs in the legend of Duke Ernst’s wanderings in the Liver Sea, and it is doubtless derived from the Arabian Nights. On the mainland to the north-east of Norway we read that “here under the North Pole the land is uninhabitable on account of the excessive cold which produces a condition of continual frost....” In the extreme north of the ocean, near the Pole, is written: “Hell is in the heart or belly of the earth according to the opinion of the learned.”

“Palus meotidis” [the Sea of Azov] is marked as a lake due east of the Baltic. Along the north coast of Europe (and Norway) is indicated a ridge of mountains, somewhat similar to that in the Sanudo-Vesconte maps of the world. The delineation of Denmark (“dacia,” with “koppenhan” and “londoma,” i.e., Lund), the straight south coast of the Baltic, and a long-shaped island called “Suecia” (with “Stocholm” and “ipsala”) on the north, remind us a good deal of Edrisi’s map (p. 203), and also somewhat of the Cottoniana (vol. i. p. 183). To the north of the island of Suecia “the very great kingdom of Norway [‘Norwegie’]” projects to the west as a long peninsula bounding the Baltic, with “brondolch” [Bornholm ?] and “nydrosia metropolis” [the capital Nidaros] as towns on its south coast, and with the land of “Yslandia” [Iceland] and the town of “Pergen” [Bergen] on its extreme promontory.

Another peculiar type of the round mappamundi is the so-called Borgia map of the fifteenth century (after 1410). Its representation of Europe, with the Mediterranean on the southern side of the earth’s disc, is very imperfect and far removed from reality. The same is the case with its delineation of the North, but curiously enough its Scandinavia, which is different from that of the compass-charts, and in which Skåne forms a peninsula on the south, to the east of Denmark, has a greater resemblance to reality than that of other maps of this time. This map, too, has a chain of mountains along the north coast of the continent, as in the Vesconte maps [see Nordenskiöld, 1897, Pl. XXXIX.].

North-western portion of Fra Mauro’s mappamundi
(of 1457-59), preserved at Venice. The legends and most
of the names are omitted. (The south should be at the top)

The best known fifteenth-century map of the world is that of Fra Mauro (1457-59), which is also drawn in wheel-form and is preserved at Venice. The coast-lines are taken to a great extent from the compass-charts, but a great deal of new matter has been added. As regards Norway, this consists of information from Querini’s voyage in 1432, as well as from other sources which are unknown to us; this is indicated by, amongst other things, an inscription on the sea to the north of Russia [“Permia”], which relates that a short time before two Catalan ships had sailed thither [cf. Vangensten, 1910]. On this map the Scandinavian Peninsula has been given a more reasonable extension to the north; but the west coast is very imaginatively supplied with peninsulas and islands, while the ocean outside is full of fabulous islands and contains many legends.

Denmark [“Datia”] has been made into an island (which is also called “Isola islandia”), and the Baltic [“Sinus germanicus”] has been widened into an inland sea with islands. In its northern part is a note that on this sea the use of the compass is unknown [cf. Vangensten, 1910]. Could this inscription be due to a misunderstanding like that on the Walsperger map in the ocean to the north-west of Norway, that it could not be navigated on account of magnets (cf. p. 283)? There is no hint of the name of Greenland on this map; on the other hand, Iceland appears in three or four different places: besides Denmark, as mentioned above, there is in northern Norway or Finland a peninsula named “Islant,” “where wicked people dwell, who are not Christians”; also a large island, “Ixilandia,” north-west of Ireland, and finally an intricate peninsula in the middle of Norway called “Isola di giaza” [i.e., the island of ice]. On the north of Norway or Finland a peninsula projects into the Polar Sea with the name of “Scandinabia.” The map does not contribute anything new of importance about the North, but points to a few fresh pieces of information about Norway, which are not to be traced in the older compass-charts; thus Bergen comes nearly in its right place on the west coast, and Marstrand appears to the east of Christiania fjord.

A picture of the North of a wholly different type is given on the elliptical Genoese mappamundi [of 1447 or 1457], which is still more fantastic than any of those hitherto mentioned. The Scandinavian Peninsula has a very long extension to the west, and ends in a promontory projecting northwards. To the north of this Scandinavia there is another fantastic peninsula where Lelewel thinks he can read the name “Grinland,” which is probably due to a misunderstanding, since, as pointed out by Björnbo [1910, p. 80], the name cannot be seen on the much-damaged original, or on Ongania’s photographic reproduction [Fischer-Ongania, Pl. X.]. Many imaginary islands are scattered about in the sea round these peninsulas.

Northern Europe on the Genoese mappamundi of 1447 or 1457

Towards the close of the fifteenth century the discovery was made of representing the surface of the earth, with land and sea, on globes. It was evidently the efforts of Toscanelli that led to the general adoption of this mode of representation, which had been used by the Greeks at an early time (cf. vol. i. p. 78); in 1474 he announced that his idea of the western route to India could best be shown on a sphere. Columbus seems to have taken a globe with him on his voyage of 1492, according to his own words in the ship’s log. The oldest known terrestrial globe that is preserved was made in 1492 by the German Martin Behaim (born at Nuremberg in 1459). He spent much time in Portugal, and also in the Azores, after making a distinguished marriage with a native of those islands, a sister-in-law of Gaspar Corte-Real’s sister. But it was during a visit to his native town (1490-93) that he constructed his globe. The sources of Behaim’s representation of the North were principally Nicolaus Germanus’s mappamundi in the Ulm editions of Ptolemy, of 1482 and 1486, where Greenland is placed to the north of Norway, and Marco Polo’s travels, which speak of the northern regions of Asia. Besides these a name like “tlant Venmarck” (the land of Finmark), for instance, points to a use of the same older authority as in the anonymous letter to Pope Nicholas V., of about 1450, where in the existing French translation there is mention of “lieux champestres de Venmarche” [the plains of Finmark]. Thus we are here again led to the lost work of Nicholas of Lynn, “Inventio fortunata” (1360), as the possible source. That it really was this work that was used seems also to result from the fact that the countries about the North Pole on Behaim’s globe bear a remarkable resemblance to Ruysch’s map of 1508, where this note is given at the North Pole:

“In the book ‘De Inventione fortunata’ it may be read that there is high mountain of magnetic stone, 33 German miles in circumference. This is surrounded by the flowing ‘mare sugenum,’ which pours out water like a vessel through openings below. Around it are four islands, of which two are inhabited. Extensive desolate mountains surround these islands for 24 days’ journey, where there is no human habitation.”

Northernmost Europe and the north polar regions on Behaim’s globe, 1492

What is new in Behaim’s picture of the North is chiefly this circle of land and islands around the North Pole, which he evidently took from Nicholas of Lynn, and which is not represented on any older map known to us. It consists of a continuous mass of land proceeding from his Greenland-Lapland to the north of Scandinavia, and extending eastward nearly to the opposite side of the Pole, where the Arctic Ocean (“das gefroren mer septentrional”) to the north of the continent becomes an enclosed sea. On the other side of the Pole are two large islands and a number of smaller ones. On one of the large islands is a picture of an archer in a long dress attacking a polar bear (which may be connected with myths about Amazons ?), and on the other side is written: “Hie fecht man weisen valken” [here they catch white falcons]. It might be supposed that this was derived from statements about Scandinavia or Iceland (cf. e.g., the legends of the compass-charts); but, as assumed by Ravenstein [1908, p. 92] and Björnbo [1910, p. 156], it is more likely to come from Marco Polo’s travels, where the Arctic coast of Siberia is spoken of. The many correct names, in a German form, in Martin Behaim’s Scandinavian North point to the possibility of his also having received oral information, though they may equally well be derived from older German maps.

A portion of the Laon globe of 1493. (After d’Avezac.)

Almost contemporary with Behaim’s globe is the so-called Laon globe of 1493, which was accidentally discovered in a curiosity shop at Laon some years ago. It gives a wholly different representation of the North, more in agreement with the usual maps of the world of the Nicolaus Germanus type, with sea at the pole round the north of the continent, which terminates approximately at the Arctic Circle. The Scandinavian Peninsula (called “Norvegia”) has a form somewhat resembling this type; but to the north of it “Gronlandia” appears as an island, with a land called Livonia projecting northward on the east, and two islands, Yslandia and Tile, on the west. Nothing is known of the origin of the Laon globe, or of the sources of its representation of the North.

Such were the geographical ideas of the North at the close of the Middle Ages, when the period of the great discoveries was at hand; they were vague and obscure, and the mists had settled once more over large regions which had been formerly known; but out in the mists lay mythical islands and countries in the north and west.