As “Illa Verde” on the Catalan Map of 1480
In another well-known map[177] ([Fig. 7]), an unnamed cartographer, said to be Catalan, probably about 1480, delineates an elongated Illa Verde (using the Portuguese name for island), locating it southwest of Iceland, which bears the name Fixlanda, but is easily identifiable by its outline and geographical features. His Illa Verde runs nearly north and south, approximating more closely than Coppo’s island the true trend of Greenland. It also by its greater bulk seems founded on more adequate information. It is equally at sea and remote from other land, except that off its concave southern end, with a narrow interval, lies a large circular island named Brazil, our old mythical acquaintance of medieval maps not often located so far westward but, as we have seen in Chapter IV, apparently intended to represent the Gulf of St. Lawrence region. These two islands strikingly resemble in general situation and arrangement the Greenland and Estotiland (Labrador) in a map ([Fig. 14]) illustrating Torfaeus’ early eighteenth century “Gronlandia,”[178] except that the rounded outline of Estotiland is not completed, its proportional area is greater than “Brazil,” the strait between the two bodies of land is a little wider, and the lower end of Torfaeus’ Greenland is not made concave like that of Illa Verde. But again there can be no doubt that the Illa Verde of the Catalan (if he were a Catalan) represents the Greenland of Adam of Bremen and the sagas.
Fig. 13—Coppo’s world map of 1528 showing Green Island (“isola verde”). (After Kretschmer’s hand-copied reproduction.)