[253] Of course there is always the possibility that Clavus may have had maps of the Medici type which resembled the Nancy map even more closely than that with which we are acquainted.
[254] On this map the tongue of land in question is nameless, while on the map of Europe in the Medicean Atlas it is given the name of “alogia,” which shows it to have been regarded as a part of Norway (see the reproduction, [p. 260]).
[255] As there is considerable difference between the coast-lines of Europe on Ptolemy’s maps and those on the Medici maps, one’s scale of latitude will vary according to the points one may choose for determining it. The points here given were the first I tried, and as the resulting scale seems to agree remarkably well with Clavus’s later map I have kept to it, although of course Clavus may have proceeded in a somewhat different way in determining the scale on his map; in particular he seems on the older map to have arranged it so that the parallel for 63° passed through the southernmost part of Norway, corresponding to Ptolemy’s Thule. In order better to agree with this (cf. the left-hand scale of latitude of the Nancy map) the degrees of latitude on the map above ought therefore to be increased half a degree, and on the map, [p. 236], nearly a degree.
[256] On the Nancy map the southern point of Greenland lies in 63° 30′; but as we do not know how accurately this copy reproduces Clavus’s original map, it is safer to confine ourselves to Clavus’s text.
[257] Gerard Mercator writes that according to a tradition an English monk and mathematician from Oxford [i.e., Nicholas of Lynn] had been in Norway and in the islands of the north, and had described all these places and determined their latitude by the astrolabe [cf. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1903, p. 301]. It is therefore possible that Clavus may have obtained the latitudes of some places, such as Stavanger and Bergen, from his work; but in any case he cannot have got the latitude of the southern point of Greenland from it. Moreover, if he had had such accurate information to depend on, it would be difficult to understand why he retained the incorrect latitudes which he obtained by introducing those of Ptolemy on the Medici map; in his later map, indeed, he has used nothing else.
[258] Cf. Sturlubók and Ivan Bárdsson’s description of Greenland. In Hauk’s Landnáma we read that it was from Hernum (that is, north of Bergen) that they sailed west to Hvarf. According to this, then, the southern point of Greenland would be brought even farther north than Bergen.
[259] Although Dr. Björnbo now admits that the Medici map must have been used for Clavus’s later map, he is still in doubt as to this being the case with the older one (the original of the Nancy map); he is inclined to think that this map may have been constructed from Northern sources, sailing directions, etc. But there appear to me to be too many striking agreements between the Medici map and the Nancy map for such an assumption to be probable; and the following may be given as instances: the number of bays between Skåne and the south coast of Norway, with the deepest bay on the west; the resemblance between the south coast of Norway with its three bays on the Nancy map and the south coast of the corresponding peninsula to the north of Scotland on the Medici map; the high latitude of this south coast on both maps; the agreement in latitude between the southern point of Greenland and that of “alogia” in the Medici map; the remarkable similarity in the relation between the longitudes of these two southern points and the west coast of Ireland on both maps; the mutual relation in latitude between the southern point of Greenland and the south coast of Norway (with Stavanger); the far too northerly latitude of all these places; the east coast of Greenland having the same main direction as the east coast of the corresponding peninsula on the Medici map, etc. To these may be added the similarity in the way the coast-lines are drawn, with round bays. Each of these points of agreement may no doubt be explained, as Björnbo suggests, as a coincidence and as having arisen in another way; but when there are so many of them it must be admitted that a connection is more natural.
[260] “Serica” on Ptolemy’s map of the world lies in the extreme north-east of Asia, and is most likely China.
[261] It seems possible, as Mr. O. Vangensten has suggested to me, that this name may here be due to a confusion of Vermeland with Bjarmeland. Peder Claussön Friis [Storm, 1881, p. 219] says that Greenland extends round the north of the “Norwegian Sea” “eastward to Biarmeland or Bermeland.”
[262] Cf. Mandeville, 1883, pp. 180, 182, 183, f. Mandeville also says that in the opinion of the old wise astronomers the circumference of the world was 20,425 English miles; but he himself maintains that it is 31,500 miles.