Green Island on Sixteenth-Century Maps
To the same origin, in a remoter sense, we may ascribe the rather large Insula Viridis of Schöner, 1520,[179] which is brought down to a latitude between that of southern Ireland and that of northern Spain and something east of mid-ocean. It must seem that the map-maker had quite lost sight of any relation between this Latinized Green Island and the true Greenland of the northwest.
Fig. 14—Bishop Thorláksson’s map of Greenland 1606, showing Estotiland as a part of America. Cf. with [Fig. 18]. (From Torfaeus’ “Gronlandia antiqua,” Copenhagen, 1706, in the library of the American Geographical Society.)
This is even more obviously true of Nicolay’s map of 1560[180] ([Fig. 6]), which carries Verde into the Newfoundland Banks, even nearer than his Brazil to a broken-up Newfoundland; and of Zaltieri’s map of 1566,[181] which plants Verde rather close to “C. Ras” (Cape Race), with only a narrow strip of water between. These cartographers undoubtedly indicated American habitats for their little island; but they can have had no thought of confusing it with Greenland, which they well knew and which Zaltieri distinctly shows as Grutlandia. They would be far from admitting a common origin. Perhaps in most of such northern cases a conception like Coppo’s of Greenland as an oceanic island is at the root of the derivation; but successive copyings, modifications, and shiftings may have altered the area, form, and location, while the clue was gradually lost and only the name remained—hardly as a reminder, for it is of too general descriptive application.