Northern Europe on the Genoese mappamundi of 1447 or 1457
Globes of the fifteenth century
Behaim’s globe, 1492
Towards the close of the fifteenth century the discovery was made of representing the surface of the earth, with land and sea, on globes. It was evidently the efforts of Toscanelli that led to the general adoption of this mode of representation, which had been used by the Greeks at an early time (cf. vol. i. p. 78); in 1474 he announced that his idea of the western route to India could best be shown on a sphere. Columbus seems to have taken a globe with him on his voyage of 1492, according to his own words in the ship’s log. The oldest known terrestrial globe that is preserved was made in 1492 by the German Martin Behaim (born at Nuremberg in 1459).[276] He spent much time in Portugal, and also in the Azores, after making a distinguished marriage with a native of those islands, a sister-in-law of Gaspar Corte-Real’s sister. But it was during a visit to his native town (1490-93) that he constructed his globe. The sources of Behaim’s representation of the North were principally Nicolaus Germanus’s mappamundi in the Ulm editions of Ptolemy, of 1482 and 1486, where Greenland is placed to the north of Norway, and Marco Polo’s travels, which speak of the northern regions of Asia. Besides these a name like “tlant Venmarck” (the land of Finmark), for instance, points to a use of the same older authority as in the anonymous letter to Pope Nicholas V., of about 1450, where in the existing French translation there is mention of “lieux champestres de Venmarche” [the plains of Finmark].[277] Thus we are here again led to the lost work of Nicholas of Lynn, “Inventio fortunata” (1360), as the possible source. That it really was this work that was used seems also to result from the fact that the countries about the North Pole on Behaim’s globe bear a remarkable resemblance to Ruysch’s map of 1508, where this note is given at the North Pole:
“In the book ‘De Inventione fortunata’ it may be read that there is high mountain of magnetic stone, 33 German miles in circumference. This is surrounded by the flowing ‘mare sugenum,’ which pours out water like a vessel through openings below. Around it are four islands, of which two are inhabited. Extensive desolate mountains surround these islands for 24 days’ journey, where there is no human habitation.”
Northernmost Europe and the north polar regions on Behaim’s globe, 1492
What is new in Behaim’s picture of the North is chiefly this circle of land and islands around the North Pole, which he evidently took from Nicholas of Lynn, and which is not represented on any older map known to us. It consists of a continuous mass of land proceeding from his Greenland-Lapland to the north of Scandinavia, and extending eastward nearly to the opposite side of the Pole, where the Arctic Ocean (“das gefroren mer septentrional”) to the north of the continent becomes an enclosed sea. On the other side of the Pole are two large islands and a number of smaller ones. On one of the large islands is a picture of an archer in a long dress attacking a polar bear (which may be connected with myths about Amazons ?), and on the other side is written: “Hie fecht man weisen valken” [here they catch white falcons]. It might be supposed that this was derived from statements about Scandinavia or Iceland (cf. e.g., the legends of the compass-charts); but, as assumed by Ravenstein [1908, p. 92] and Björnbo [1910, p. 156], it is more likely to come from Marco Polo’s travels, where the Arctic coast of Siberia is spoken of. The many correct names, in a German form, in Martin Behaim’s Scandinavian North point to the possibility of his also having received oral information, though they may equally well be derived from older German maps.
A portion of the Laon globe of 1493. (After d’Avezac.)