this is evidently something similar to what Clavus says; but the latter’s words as to the voyage which he attributes to Mandeville from the Indian Seres to Norway being more probable because there is land at the North Pole are somewhat incomprehensible.
John Mandeville’s book about a voyage through many lands to the far east and China dates from between 1357 and 1371, and is put together from various accounts of voyages, with the addition of all kinds of fables. Mandeville does not himself claim to have made any such voyage from China to Norway; on the other hand, he has much to say, in chapter xvii., about the possibility of sailing round the world, which he declares to be practicable, and if ships were sent out to explore the world, one could sail round the world, both above and below. He says that when he was young he heard of a man who set out from England to explore the world, and who went past India and the islands beyond it where there are more than five thousand islands, and so far did he travel over sea and land that he finally came to an island where he heard them calling to the ox at the plough in his own language, as they did in his own country. This island afterwards proved to be in Norway.[262]
Clavus’s assertion that he himself saw (“ut uidi”) Karelians in Greenland is impossible. As it is expressly stated that there was land at the North Pole, and as it is not mentioned that these Karelians had hide-boats like the Pygmies, the meaning must be that their armies came marching by the land route, which, of course, is an impossibility, which, if he had been in Greenland, would make him a worse romancer than if we suppose his “ut uidi” to mean that he had seen something of the sort stated in a narrative; but even this may be doubtful. In the Bruges itinerary [cf. Storm, 1891, p. 20] or some similar older authority, which we know he may have used, he may have seen “Kareli” beyond Greenland spoken of as “in truth a populus monstrosus.” We have already said that on the maps accompanying Marino Sanudo’s work he may have seen “Kareli infideles” marked on the mainland to the north-east of Norway, or even on an island out in the northern sea, and he would then naturally have connected the Karelians of the itinerary with these Karelians north of Norway. If we add to this that on the Medicean map of the world he saw the mass of the continent extending from Scandinavia and the peninsula corresponding to Greenland, northwards into the unknown, and that in the “Rymbegla” tract he saw mention of land at the North Pole—then, indeed, his whole statement seems to admit of a perfectly natural explanation.
His lack of knowledge of the conditions in Greenland appears again in his speaking of Pygmies and Karelians as two different peoples, one apparently on the sea, and the other marching in armies on land; and in his mentioning hide-boats as something peculiar to the former in the fabulous northern country, while he does not say that the Karelians in Greenland had boats or went to sea. If he had only spoken to people who had been in Greenland, he could hardly have avoided hearing of the Skrælings who come to meet every traveller in their hide-boats.
Map constructed by Dr. Björnbo after Clavus’s later description (the Vienna text).
(Björnbo and Petersen, 1904, Pl. II.)
Clavus’s west coast of Greenland taken directly from the Medici map
It is an important difference between Clavus’s first and second maps (and also between his first and second texts) that on the latter Greenland is given a west coast. Its form bears an altogether striking resemblance to the west coast of the corresponding peninsula on the Medicean mappamundi, so that there can be no doubt that this coast is copied from it.[263] This is notably the case if we confine ourselves to Björnbo and Petersen’s reconstruction of the coast after the text of Clavus, from which it appears plainly enough that there are the same number of bays as on the Medici map; they are closest together near the southern point of the country; then come two larger bays to the north, then a very broad bay, longer than the two others together, and then a straighter coast-line to the north of that (cf. [p. 236]). The east coast of Greenland has in part been provided with corresponding bays, although this coast is almost straight on the Medici map; but this answers to the north coast of Scandinavia on the Nancy map having very nearly the same indentations as the south coast. In taking the Medici map as the foundation of Clavus’s Greenland coast we also have a natural explanation of the relation between his distribution of names on the east coast and the west. In his later text it is striking that his description of the east coast of Greenland does not reach farther than to his “Thær promontorium” in 65° 35′, while the description of the west coast goes as far north as 72°. This might seem to be connected with real local knowledge, since the latitude 65° 35′ on the east coast agrees in a remarkable way with the latitude of Cape Dan, 65° 32′, where the coast turns in a more northerly direction. To the north of this the coast is usually blocked with ice, and this place has therefore frequently been given as the northern limit of the known east coast, and probably it was there that the Icelanders first arrived off the land on their voyage westward to the Greenland settlements. But this is one of those accidental coincidences that sometimes occur, and that warn us to be careful not to draw too many conclusions from evidence of this nature.[264] We find the explanation in the Medici map ([p. 236]), where the east coast of the peninsula corresponding to Greenland does not go farther north than to about the same latitude as the promontory on the south side of the broad bay already referred to on the west coast, which promontory Clavus calls “Hynth” [“Hyrch”]; it lies in 65° 40′. As Clavus’s coast from this point of the east coast northward had no map to depend on, he did not venture to go farther in his description this time, though in the Nancy text he goes to 71° with his northernmost cape.
The Medicean map of the world gives us at the same time a simple explanation of Clavus’s designations for the two most northerly points on the west coast of Greenland. If we confine ourselves to the scale of latitude for the Medici map, which, as stated above ([p. 259]), we have found by using Ptolemy’s latitudes for more southern places on the map (Gibraltar and Brittany), and which is inserted in the left-hand margin of the reproduction, [p. 236], we shall find the following: just at the spot of which Clavus declares: “New, the uttermost limit of the land which we know on this side, lies in 70° 10′,”[265] the heavy colouring of the land on the Medici map comes to an end (judging from the photograph in Ongania, Pl. V.). Farther to the north extends the coast of the lightly coloured mass of land; but just at this point, in 72°, where Clavus has his “ultimus locus uisibilis” [last point visible][266] this coast-line disappears into the oblique frame which cuts off the upper left-hand corner of the map. The agreement is here so exact and so complete that it would be difficult to find any way out of it.
The position of Iceland