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.
[Illustration: 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]
[Sidenote: Oldest mediæval maps]
[Sidenote: The wheel-map type]
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.[162] 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.[163] 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.
[Illustration: Beatus map, from Osma, 1203. The east is at the top]
[Illustration: Northern Europe on Heinrich of Mainz's map, at Cambridge
(1110)]
[Sidenote: The Beatus map]
[Sidenote: Sallust-maps]
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.
[Illustration: Northern Europe on the Hereford map (circa 1280)]
[Illustration: Northern part of the Psalter map (thirteenth century)]
[Sidenote: The North on known wheel-maps of the Middle Ages]
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.
[Illustration: Northern Europe on the Lambert map at Ghent (before 1125)]
[Illustration: Ranulph Higden's map of the world, in London (fourteenth
century)]
[Sidenote: Higden's work and the Geographia Universalis]
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,[164]
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"[165] 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.
[Sidenote: The Cottoniana map]
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[166] (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.
[Sidenote: Macrobius's zone-maps]
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.[167] 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
[Sidenote: The Arabs' many connections]
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)[168]--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.
[Sidenote: The Arabs' sense for geography]
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.
[Sidenote: The Arabs' connection with the North]
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[169] 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"[170] 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.
[Sidenote: Ibn Khordâḏbah, A.D. 885]
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):[171]
"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,[172]
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.[173]
[Sidenote: Ibn al-Faqîh, 900 A.D.]
[Sidenote: Ibn al-Bahlûl, 910 A.D.]
[Sidenote: Qodâma]
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,"[174] 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.]
[Sidenote: Ibn Ruste, 912 A.D.]
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.[175] 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.[176]
[Sidenote: Al-Mas'ûdî, before 950 A.D.]
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."[177] 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."[178]
This is evidently the ancient belief that the Black Sea was connected
through Mæotis with the Baltic.
[Sidenote: Al-Bîrûnî, 1030 A.D.]
The celebrated astronomer and mathematician, Abu-r-Raihân Muhammad
al-Bîrûnî (973-1038, wrote in 1030),[179] a Persian by birth, is of
interest to us as the first Arabic author who uses the name "Warank"[180]
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[181] 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."
[Sidenote: Al-Ġazâl's voyage to the Maǵûs]
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-Khațțâb 'Omar Ibn
Diḥya[183] (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.[184] 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,[185] 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,[186] 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 aț-Țartûshi (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.
[Sidenote: Al-Idrîsî, 1154 A.D.]
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.[187]
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.[188]
[Illustration: 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],[189] 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 (?)[190] 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 (?).[191] 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],[192] 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,[193] 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)[194] 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. 51, 55).
"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. 12, 75).
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 (?).[195]
[Sidenote: Ibn Sa'îd, thirteenth century]
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")[196] 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).
[Sidenote: Qazwînî, thirteenth century]
Zakarîyâ Ibn Muḥammad al-Qazwînî (ob. 1283) has in his cosmography[197]
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."[198]
"'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. 201, 209).
Qazwînî also[199] 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.[200] 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.[201] 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.
[Sidenote: 'Ash-Shîrazî circa 1300]
Mahmûd ibn Mas ûd 'ash-Shîrâzî (ob. 1310) has the following about the
northern regions:[202]
"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).
[Illustration: Northern portion of Carignano's chart (a few years later
than 1300)]
[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."
[Illustration: 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.[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.
[Illustration: 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.
[Illustration: 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.[219]
[Illustration: 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]
[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]
[Illustration: 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]
[Illustration: 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)]
[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]