Chapter XIII: The North in Maps and Geographical Works of the Middle Ages (2)

"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."

[Sidenote: Dimashqî, circa 1300]

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 66-5/12°;[203] 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.[204] 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."[205]

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."

[Sidenote: Book of Wonders, tenth century]

There is preserved an "abstract of wonders" (oldest MS. of 1484),[206] 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.[207]
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.[208] 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.
197, 206), 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.

[Sidenote: The Arabs and the compass]

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

[Sidenote: Oldest authorities on the compass in Europe]

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.[209] 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.

[Sidenote: Oldest sea-charts]

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;[210] 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,[211] 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.

[Sidenote: Extent of the compass-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. 226, 232) 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,[212] 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. 231, 233). 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.

[Sidenote: Carignano's chart, circa 1300]

The first known compass-chart, the so-called "Carte Pisane," of about 1300,[213] goes no farther north than to the coast of Flanders and southern England. But the compass-chart[214] 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);[215] 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).

[Sidenote: Sanudo's work and Pietro Vesconte's charts, circa 1320]

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.[216] 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:[217]

"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."

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.[218] 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.

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.

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.[219]

[Sidenote: Dalorto's map, 1325]

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 ?),[220] 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,[221] 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).

[Sidenote: The Isle of Brazil]

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.[222] 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,[223] 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.[224] 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.[225]

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.[226] beate et fortunate" (the gulf of the 358 blessed and
happy islands), as also found on some later maps.[227] 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.

[Sidenote: Dulcert's (Dalorto's) map of 1339]

Angellino Dulcert's (Dalorto's) map of 1339[228] 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.[229]

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,[230] 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.[231]

[Sidenote: Viladeste's chart of 1413]

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,[232] and many others.[233]

[Sidenote: The Medici Atlas, 1351]

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,"[234] 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. 236, 260). 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."[235] 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.

[Sidenote: Pizigano's map, 1367]

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.

VIEWS OF THE NORTH AMONG THE NORTHERN PEOPLES

[Sidenote: Scandinavian view of Greenland as mainland]

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[236] (cf. vol. i. p. 313; vol. ii. pp. 1, 172), 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[237] (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.

[Sidenote: Saxo on the far North]

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).

[Sidenote: The tale of Halli Geit]

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."

[Sidenote: Land at the North Pole]

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."

[Sidenote: The Outer Ocean]

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,[238] 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.[239]

[Sidenote: Ginnungagap]

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).

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.

[Sidenote: Saxo]

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.

[Sidenote: The King's Mirror, circa 1240 ?]