The Cartography of Greenland

The oldest map yet discovered to show any part of Greenland, and consequently of America, is one found by Baron Nordenskjöld attached to a Ptolemy Codex in the Stadtbibliothek at Nancy. He presented a colored fac-simile of it in 1883 at the Copenhagen Congrès des Américanistes, in his little brochure Trois Cartes. It was also used in illustration of his paper on the Zeni Voyages, published both in Swedish and German. It will be seen by the fac-simile given herewith, and marked with the author’s name, Claudius Clavus, that “Gronlandia Provincia” is an extension of a great arctic region, so as to lie over against the Scandinavian peninsula of Europe, with “Islandia,” or Iceland, midway between the two lands. Up to the time of this discovery by Nordenskjöld, the map generally recognized as the oldest to show Greenland is a Genovese portolano, preserved in the Pitti Palace at Florence, about which there is some doubt as to its date, which is said to be 1417 by Santarem (Hist. de la Cartog., iii., p. xix), but Lelewel (Epilogue, p. 167) is held to be trustier in giving it as 1447. It shows how little influence the Norse stories of their Greenland colonization exerted at this time on the cartography of the north, that few of the map-makers deemed it worth while to break the usual terminal circle of the world by including anything west or beyond Iceland. It was, further, not easy to convince them that Greenland, when they gave it, lay in the direction which the Sagas indicated. The map of Fra Mauro, for instance, in 1459 cuts off a part of Iceland by its incorrigible terminal circle, as will be seen in a bit of it given herewith, the reader remembering as he looks at it that the bottom of the segment is to the north. We again owe to Nordenskjöld the discovery of another map of the north, Tabula Regionum Septentrionalium, which he found in a Codex of Ptolemy in Warsaw a few years since, and which he places about 1467. The accompanying partial sketch is reproduced from a fac-simile kindly furnished by the discoverer. The peninsula of “Gronlandia,” with its indicated glaciers, is placed with tolerable accuracy as the western extremity of an arctic region, which to the north of Europe is separated from the Scandinavian peninsula by a channel from the “Mare Gotticum” (Baltic Sea), which sweeps above Norway into the “Mare Congelatum.” The confused notions arising from an attempt by the compiler of the map to harmonize different drafts is shown by his drawing a second Greenland (“Engronelant”) to his “Norbegia,” or Norway, and placing just under it the “Thile” of the ancients, which he makes a different island from “Islandia,” placed in proper relations to his larger Greenland.

A few years later, or perhaps about the same time, and before 1471, the earliest engraved map which shows Greenland is that of Nicolas Donis, in the Ulm edition of Ptolemy in 1482. It will be seen from the little sketch which is annexed that the same doubling of Greenland is adhered to. With the usual perversion put upon the Norse stories, Iceland is made to lie due west of Greenland, though not shown in the present sketch.

At a date not much later, say 1486, it is supposed the Laon globe, dated in 1493, was actually made, or at least it is shown that in some parts the knowledge was rather of the earlier date, and here we have “Grolandia,” a small island off the Norway coast.

We have in 1489-90 a type of configuration, which later became prevalent. It is taken from an Insularium illustratum Henrici Martelli Germani, a manuscript preserved in the British Museum, and shows, as seen by the annexed extract, a long narrow peninsula, running southwest from the northern verge of Europe. A sketch of the whole map is given elsewhere.

This seems to have been the prevailing notion of what and where Greenland was at the time of Columbus’ voyage, and it could have carried no significance to his mind that the explorations of the Norse had found the Asiatic main, which he started to discover. How far this notion was departed from by Behaim in his globe of 1492 depends upon the interpretation to be given to a group of islands, northwest of Iceland and northeast of Asia, upon the larger of which he writes among its mountains, “Hi man weise Volker.”

As this sketch of the cartographical development goes on, it will be seen how slow the map-makers were to perceive the real significance of the Norse discoveries, and how reluctant they were to connect them with the discoveries that followed in the train of Columbus, though occasionally there is one who is possessed with a sort of prevision. The Cantino map of 1502 does not settle the question, for a point lying northeast of the Portuguese discoveries in the Newfoundland region only seems to be the southern extremity of Greenland. What was apparently a working Portuguese chart of 1503 grasps pretty clearly the relations of Greenland to Labrador.

Lelewel (pl. 43), in a map made to show the Portuguese views at this time, which he represents by combining and reconciling the Ptolemy maps of 1511 and 1513, still places the “Gronland” peninsula in the northwest of Europe, and if his deductions are correct, the Portuguese had as yet reached no clear conception that the Labrador coasts upon which they fished bore any close propinquity to those which the Norse had colonized. Ruysch, in 1508, made a bold stroke by putting “Gruenlant” down as a peninsula of Northeastern Asia, thus trying to reconcile the discoveries of Columbus with the northern sagas. This view was far from acceptable. Sylvanus, in the Ptolemy of 1511, made “Engroneland” a small protuberance on the north shore of Scandinavia, and east of Iceland, evidently choosing between the two theories instead of accepting both, as was common, in ignorance of their complemental relations. Waldseemüller, in the Ptolemy of 1513, in his “Orbis typus universalis,” reverted to and adopted the delineation of Henricus Martellus in 1490.

In 1520, Apian, in the map in Camer’s Solinus, took the view of Sylvanus, while still another representation was given by Laurentius Frisius in 1522, in an edition of Ptolemy, in which “Gronland” becomes a large island on the Norway coast, in one map called “Orbis typus Universalis,” while in another map, “Tabula nova Norbegiæ et Gottiæ,” the “Engronelant” peninsula is a broad region, stretching from Northwestern Europe.

This Ptolemy was again issued in 1525, repeating these two methods of showing Greenland already given, and adding a third, that of the long narrow European peninsula, already familiar in earlier maps—the variety of choice indicating the prevalent cartographical indecision on the point.

Kohl, in his collection of maps, copies from what he calls the Atlas of Frisius, 1525, still another map which apparently shows the southern extremity of Greenland, with “Terra Laboratoris,” an island just west of it, and southwest of that a bit of coast marked “Terra Nova Conterati,” which may pass for Newfoundland and the discoveries of Cortereal.

Thorne, the Englishman, in the map which he sent from Seville in 1527, seems to conform to the view which made Greenland a European peninsula, which may also have been the opinion of Orontius Finæus in 1531. A novel feature attaches to an Atlas, of about this date, preserved at Turin, in which an elongated Greenland is made to stretch northerly. In 1532 we have the map in Ziegler’s Schondia, which more nearly resembles the earliest map of all, that of Claudius Clavus, than any other. The 1538 cordiform map of Mercator makes it a peninsula of an arctic region connected with Scandinavia. This map is known to me only through a fac-simile of the copy given in the Geografia of Lafreri, published at Rome about 1560, with which I am favored by Nordenskjöld in advance of its publication in his Atlas.

The great Historia of Olaus Magnus, as for a long time the leading authority on the northern geography, as well as on the Scandinavian chronicles, gives us some distinct rendering of this northern geographical problem. It was only recently that his earliest map of 1539 has been brought to light, and a section of it is here reproduced from a much reduced fac-simile kindly sent to the editor by Dr. Oscar Brenner of the university at Munich. Nordenskjöld, in giving a full fac-simile of the Olaus Magnus map of 1567, of which a fragment is herewith also given in fac-simile, says that it embodies the views of the northern geographers in separating Greenland from Europe, which was in opposition to those of the geographers of the south of Europe, who united Greenland to Scandinavia. Sebastian Münster in his 1540 edition of Ptolemy introduced a new confusion. He preserved the European elongated peninsula, but called it “Islandia,” while to what stands for Iceland is given the old classical name of Thyle. This confusion is repeated in his map of 1545, where he makes the coast of “Islandia” continuous with Baccalaos. This continuity of coast line seemed now to become a common heritage of some of the map-makers, though in the Ulpius globe of 1542 “Groestlandia,” so far as it is shown, stands separate from either continent, but is connected with Europe according to the early theory in the Isolario of Bordone in 1547.

We have run down the main feature of the northern cartography, up to the time of the publication of the Zeno map in 1558. The chief argument for its authenticity is that there had been nothing drawn and published up to that time which could have conduced, without other aid, to so accurate an outline of Greenland as it gives. In an age when drafts of maps freely circulated over Europe, from cartographer to cartographer, in manuscript, it does not seem necessary that the search for prototypes or prototypic features should be confined to those which had been engraved.

With these allowances the map does not seem to be very exceptional in any feature. It is connected with northwestern Europe in just the manner appertaining to several of the earlier maps. Its shape is no great improvement on the map of 1467, found at Warsaw. There was then no such constancy in the placing of mid-sea islands in maps, to interdict the random location of other islands at the cartographer’s will, without disturbing what at that day would have been deemed geographical probabilities, and there was all the necessary warranty in existing maps for the most wilfully depicted archipelago. The early Portuguese charts, not to name others, gave sufficient warrant for land where Estotiland and Drogeo appear.

Mention has already been made of the changes in this map, which the editors of the Ptolemy of 1561 made in severing Greenland from Europe, when they reëngraved it. The same edition contained a map of “Schonlandia,” in which it seems to be doubtful if the land which stands for Greenland does, or does not, connect with the Scandinavian main. That Greenland was an island seems now to have become the prevalent opinion, and it was enforced by the maps of Mercator (1569 and 1587), Ortelius (1570, 1575), and Gallæus (1585), which placed it lying mainly east and west between the Scandinavian north and the Labrador coast, which it was now the fashion to call Estotiland. In its shape it closely resembled the Zeni outline. Another feature of these maps was the placing of another but smaller island west of “Groenlant,” which was called “Grocland,” and which seems to be simply a reduplication of the larger island by some geographical confusion, which once started was easily seized upon to help fill out the arctic spaces.

It was just at this time (1570) that the oldest maps which display the geographical notions of the saga men were drawn, though not brought to light for many years. We note two such of this time, and one of a date near forty years later. One marked “Jonas, Gudmundi filius, delineavit, 1570,” is given as are the two others by Torfæus in his Gronlandia Antiqua. They all seem to recognize a passage to the Arctic seas between Norway and Greenland, the northern parts of which last are called “Risaland,” or “Riseland,” and Jonas places “Oster Bygd” and “Wester Bygd” on the opposite sides of a squarish peninsula. Beyond what must be Davis’ Straits is “America,” and further south “Terra Florida” and “Albania.”

If this description is compared with the key of Stephanius’ map, next to be mentioned, while we remember that both represent the views prevailing in the north in 1570, it is hard to resist the conclusion that Vinland was north even of Davis’ Straits, or at least held to be so at that time.

The second map, that of Stephanius, is reproduced herewith, dating back to the same period (1570); but the third, by Gudbrandus Torlacius, was made in 1606, and is sketched in Kohl’s Discovery of Maine (p. 109). It gives better shape to “Gronlandia” than in either of the others.

It is not necessary to follow the course of the Greenland cartography farther with any minuteness. As the sixteenth century ended we have leading maps by Hakluyt in 1587 and 1599 (see Vol. III. 42), and De Bry in 1596 (Vol. IV. 99), and Wytfliet in 1597, all of which give Davis’s Straits with more or less precision. Barentz’s map of 1598 became the exemplar of the circumpolar chart in Pontanus’ Rerum et Urbis Amstelodamensium Historia of 1611. The chart of Luke Fox, in 1635, marked progress better than that of La Peyrère (1647), though his map was better known. Even as late as 1727, Hermann Moll could not identify his “Greenland” with “Groenland.” In 1741, we have the map of Hans Egede in his “Grönland,” repeated in late editions, and the old delineation of the east coast after Torfæus was still retained in the 1788 map of Paul Egede.

In the map of 1653, made by De la Martinière, who was of the Danish expedition to the north, Greenland was made to connect with Northern Asia by way of the North pole. Nordenskjöld calls him the Münchhausen of the northeast voyagers; and by his own passage in the “Vega,” along the northern verge of Europe, from one ocean to the other, the Swedish navigator has of recent years proved for the first time that Greenland has no such connection. It yet remains to be proved that there is no connection to the north with at least the group of islands that are the arctic outlyers of the American continent.