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.
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]).
Northern portion of Carignano’s chart (a few years later than 1300)
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.”
Northern Europe in Vesconte’s mappamundi (1320)
in the Vatican (Kretschmer, 1891)