In Northern Mists Volume Ii Part 19

At the northernmost limit of Norway, between two places called "Ynesegh"

and "Mestebrodh," Clavus connected the Polar Sea ("Nordhinbodhn") by a narrow channel with the Gotland Sea [the Baltic], and a little farther north, in 67, he says that

"the uttermost limit is marked with a crucifix, so that Christians shall not venture without the king's permission to penetrate farther, even with a great company." "And from this place westwards over a very great extent of land dwell first Wildlappmanni [Wild Lapps, i.e., Mountain Lapps, Reindeer Lapps ? cf. vol. i. p. 227], people leading a perfectly savage life and covered with hair, as they are depicted; and they pay yearly tribute to the king. And after them, farther to the west, are the little Pygmies, a cubit high, whom I have seen after they were taken at sea in a little hide-boat, which is now hanging in the cathedral at Nidaros; there is likewise a long vessel of hides, which was also once taken with such Pygmies in it."

Two things are to be remarked about this a.s.sertion that he himself had seen these Pygmies (one might suppose in Norway): (1) if he had really seen a captive Eskimo brought to Norway (by whom ?), he could hardly have been ignorant that this remarkable native was from Greenland, and not from a fabulous northern land. And (2), how could he then give their height as no more than a cubit, like the Pygmies of myth? It appears to me that in one's zeal to defend Clavus, one would thus have to attribute to him two serious falsehoods, instead of a more innocent rhetorical phrase about having seen this, that, and the other.

Clavus's statement about the Pygmies' small hide-boats, and the long hide-boat, that hung in Trondhjem cathedral, is, however, of great interest from the fact that this is the first mention in literature of the two forms of Eskimo boat: the kayak and the women's boat ("umiak").

Perhaps he got this from the same unknown source (in the Vatican ?) in which he found the statement of the lat.i.tude of Trondhjem (?). In the fact that the Wild Lapps are mentioned first, and after them the Pygmies, Clavus's text again bears a great resemblance to the anonymous letter to Pope Nicholas V. (of about 1450). In the northernmost regions (to the north-west of Norway) this letter mentions [cf. Storm, 1899, p. 9]

"the forests of Gronolonde, where there are monsters of human aspect who have hairy limbs, and who are called wild men."... "And as one goes west towards the mountains of these countries, there dwell Pygmies," etc. (cf. above, p. 86).

Michael Beheim also mentions "Wild lapen," who live in the forests to the north of Norway, and who carry on a dumb barter of furs with the merchants, like that described by the Arab authors as taking place in the country north of Wisu (cf. p. 144), and he goes on to speak of the Skraelings, three spans high, etc. (cf. above, p. 85). Beheim's statement differs from Clavus's text, and this again from the letter to Nicholas V., so that one cannot be derived from the other. It is therefore most probable, as suggested already (p. 86), that they have all drawn from some older source, and it may be supposed that this was Nicholas of Lynn. We have seen that there are other points in Clavus that lead one's thoughts in the same direction.

Clavus proceeds:

"The peninsula of the island of Greenland stretches down from land on the north which is inaccessible or unknown on account of ice.

Nevertheless, as I have seen, the infidel Karelians daily come to Greenland in great armies (bands of warriors, 'c.u.m copioso exercitu'), and that without doubt from the other side of the North Pole.

Therefore the ocean does not wash the limit of the continent under the Pole [Arctic Circle ?] itself, as all ancient authors have a.s.serted; and therefore the n.o.ble English knight, John Mandevil, did not lie when he said that he had sailed from the Indian Seres [i.e., China ?]

to an island in Norway."

If we compare this with the "Rymbegla" tract already mentioned [1780, p.

466], we see that these are much the same ideas as there expressed. We read there

"that it is the report of the same men that the sea is full of eternal ice to the north of us and under the pole star, where the arms of the Outer Ocean meet...."

When it is there stated that

"those sh.o.r.es [under the pole star] hinder the ring of the ocean from coming together [i.e., round the earth]" ... and "that one can go on foot ... from Greenland to Norway" [cf. above, p. 239],

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 s.h.i.+ps 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 a.s.sertion 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 ma.s.s 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 Skraelings who come to meet every traveller in their hide-boats.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map constructed by Dr. Bjornbo after Clavus's later description (the Vienna text). (Bjornbo and Petersen, 1904, Pl. II.)]

[Sidenote: 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 Bjornbo 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 "Thaer 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 lat.i.tude 65 35'

on the east coast agrees in a remarkable way with the lat.i.tude 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 lat.i.tude 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 lat.i.tude for the Medici map, which, as stated above (p. 259), we have found by using Ptolemy's lat.i.tudes 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 ma.s.s 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.

[Sidenote: The position of Iceland]

Bjornbo and Petersen have a.s.serted that Iceland, on the later map and in the Vienna text, has been given a position more in agreement with the sailing directions than on the Nancy map. I cannot see the necessity for this supposition, as it has almost exactly the same position in relation to the southern point of Greenland and to Norway in both works; the chief difference is merely that the longitude of all three countries is made 3 farther east in the later work (and the lat.i.tude of the southern points of Iceland and Greenland is put somewhat farther south), and that the east coast of Greenland has a more oblique north-eastward direction than the corresponding north-east coast on the Medici map, with the direction of which the Nancy map agrees fairly well. In this way it is brought nearer to Iceland; but that this should be due to a knowledge of the sailing directions seems very uncertain, and is not disclosed, so far as I can see, elsewhere in the later work. The only things I have found which might possibly point to northern authorities having been consulted since the production of the Nancy work, are the accurate lat.i.tude of Trondhjem, already referred to, and the island of "Byorno" between Iceland and Greenland. The latter might be the Gunnbjornskerries (or Gunnbjarnar-eyar) mentioned, amongst other places, in Ivar Bardsson's description of Greenland; but the abbreviation of the name is curious. Perhaps the island may be due to some oral communication, or an erroneous recollection of something the author may have heard of in Denmark in his youth.

[Sidenote: Clavus's merits]

On the whole we shall be compelled after all to detract considerably from Claudius Clavus's reputation as a Northern traveller and cartographer. His journey did not extend farther north than the Danish islands, and perhaps Skne. On the other hand, he was in Italy, where he drew his maps or had them drawn, and where he also found his most important authorities. His chief merit as a cartographer is that he is the first we know of to have adopted Ptolemy's methods, and that he gave the name of Greenland to the westernmost tongue of land in Norway on the Medicean mappamundi, and altered this a good deal with the help of other compa.s.s-charts and Vesconte's mappamundi, to make it agree better with the ideas of the North which he may have acquired to some extent in his youth through legendary tales, and later through Saxo and other writers.

[Ill.u.s.tration: North-western portion of Nicolaus Germa.n.u.s's first revision of Ptolemy's map of the world (after 1466). (J. Fischer, 1902, Pl. I.)]

[Sidenote: Clavus's influence on later cartography]

[Sidenote: Nicolaus Germa.n.u.s, circa 1460-1470]

Claudius Clavus's later map of the North exercised for a long period a decisive influence on the representation of Scandinavia and to some extent of Greenland. This was chiefly due to the two well-known cartographers, Nicolaus Germa.n.u.s and Henricus Martellus.[267] The former must have become acquainted with Clavus's map soon after 1460, and included copies of it in the splendid MSS. of Ptolemy's Geography which proceeded from his workshop at Florence. In these copies, of which several are known (cf. p. 251), he has redrawn Clavus's map in the trapezoidal projection invented by himself, whereby his Greenland has been given a more oblique position than the Greenland of the original map and the corresponding peninsula on the Medici map. He also introduced this Greenland into his map of the world [cf. J. Fischer, 1902, Pl. I., III.; Bjornbo, 1910, p. 136]; but, in order to make it agree better with the learned mediaeval view of the earth's disc surrounded by ocean, he surrounded it by sea on the north, so that it came to form a long and narrow tongue of land projecting from northern Russia, instead of the northern ma.s.s of land extending to the North Pole according to Clavus. But this long peninsula does not seem to have entirely satisfied this priest's erudite ideas of the continent, and on later maps (which were printed after his death in the Ulm editions of Ptolemy of 1482 and 1486) he shortened it so much that it became a rounded peninsula to the north of Norway, with the name "Engronelant,"[268] and at the same time he moved Iceland out into the ocean to the north-west. This apparently quite arbitrary alteration may perhaps be due to a desire to bring the map as far as possible into agreement with the learned dogma of the continent [cf. Bjornbo, 1910, pp. 141, ff.]; but older conceptions of Greenland may also have contributed towards it [cf. J. Fischer, 1902, pp.

87, ff.]. We have already seen that Adam of Bremen regarded Greenland as an island "farther out in the ocean opposite the mountains of Suedia" (see vol i. p. 194), and in his additions to the copy of Ptolemy, Cardinal Filastre (before 1427) states that Greenland lay to the north of Norway; we find the same view in the letter of 1448 from Pope Nicholas V. (see above, p. 113).[269] It is also somewhat remarkable that on the Genoese mappamundi of 1447 (or 1457) there occurs a peninsula north of Scandinavia just at the place where Clavus's Greenland should begin (see p. 287).[270]

On Fra Mauro's mappamundi (1457-59) there are several peninsulas to the north of Scandinavia, some of which proceed from Russia (see p. 285).

[Ill.u.s.tration: Map of the North by Nicolaus Germa.n.u.s (before 1482), after Claudius Clavus, but with Greenland transferred to the north of Norway]

[Sidenote: Henricus Martellus, circa 1490]

The cartographer Henricus Martellus, who succeeded Nicolaus Germa.n.u.s, again adopted Clavus's form of Greenland, wholly or in part, on his maps dating from about 1490.

In this way there arose on the maps of the close of the Middle Ages two types of the North: one with Greenland in a comparatively correct position to the west of Iceland, though far too near Europe and connected therewith, and another type with "Engronelant" as a peninsula to the north of Norway. The latter remained for a long time the usual one in all editions of Ptolemy, in other cartographical works and on many globes.

After the rediscovery of Greenland we even get sometimes two delineations of this country on the same map, one to the north of Norway and the other in its right place in the west.

[Sidenote: Illa verde]

Greenland seems to have been given a wholly different form on a Catalan compa.s.s-chart from Majorca, of the close of the fifteenth century, where in the Atlantic to the west of Ireland and south-west of Iceland ["Fixlanda"] there is an island called "Illa verde" [the green isle]. It seems, as a.s.sumed by Storm [1893, p. 81], that the name must be a translation of Greenland, which is called in the Historia Norwegiae "Viridis terra." The representation of Iceland ["Fixlanda"] on this map is incomparably better than on all earlier maps, and gives proof of new information having come from thence. As the place-names point to an English source, it is possible that the cartographer may have received information from Bristol, which city was engaged in the Iceland trade and fisheries, and his island, "Illa verde," may be due to an echo of reports about the forgotten Greenland in the west. It is worth remarking that the island is connected with the Irish mythical "Illa de brazil," which lay to the west of Ireland and which appears in this map twice over in its typical round form (cf. above, p. 228).[271] If we remember that this happy isle is in reality the Insulae Fortunatae, and that in the Historia Norwegiae (see above, p. 1) it is said that Greenland ["Viridis terra"]

nearly touches the African Islands (i.e., Insulae Fortunatae), then we possibly have an explanation of this juxtaposition. But as it is said in the same pa.s.sage that Greenland forms the western end of Europe, we cannot suppose that the cartographer was acquainted with this work. The probability is, no doubt, that Greenland [Illa verde] together with Brazil or the Insulae Fortunatae had become transformed into mythical islands out in the ocean.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Part of a Catalan compa.s.s-chart of the fifteenth century, preserved at Milan. (Nordenskiold, 1892, Pl. 5)]

On another compa.s.s-chart, bound up in a Paris MS. of Ptolemy of the latter part of the fifteenth century, a similar island (or peninsula ?), with the same round island to the south of it, is seen to project southwards from the northern border of the chart out into the Atlantic, and a little farther east than the Insulae Fortunatae. On the island is written: "Insula uiridis, de qua fit mentio in geographia" [the green island, of which mention is made in the geography].[272] We do not know what geographical work may here be meant; Bjornbo suggests that it might be the lost work of Nicholas of Lynn, who again may have used the Historia Norwegiae. It is striking that the island, besides being connected with a round island like Brazil, but without a name, is placed on this map near the Insulae Fortunatae.

This "green island," which thus is probably a remnant of old Greenland, occurs again in various forms and in various places on many sixteenth-century maps.

[Sidenote: Lascaris's journey to Norway and Iceland, fifteenth century]

It is not surprising that information about the northern lands made its appearance also on the maps of this time, as we know that the North was visited more frequently, and sometimes by eminent southerners, from the year 1248, when the well-known Matthew Paris, who, amongst other things, drew a map of England remarkable for his time, visited Norway. Rather is it strange that the direct knowledge thus obtained did not leave more definite traces. Early in the fifteenth century (some year between 1397 and 1448) a Byzantine, Cananos Lascaris, travelled in the North and wrote about it (in Greek). He mentions amongst other things that in Bergen, the capital of Norway ("Bergen Vagen"), money was not used in trading [this must have been due to scarcity of coin]; but in Stockolmo, the capital of Sweden, they had money of alloyed silver. Bergen had a month of daylight from June 24 to July 25. He also says that he himself went to the land of the Ichthyophagi (fish-eaters), "Islanta," from "Inglenia," and stayed there for twenty-four days. The people were strong and powerfully built, they lived only on fish, and they had a summer day of six months [cf.

Lampros, 1881].

[Sidenote: Fifteenth-century maps of the world]

It would take us too far here to attempt a mention of all the fifteenth-century maps which have a different representation of the North; but perhaps some of the mappemundi in wheel-form, which were still current at this time, ought to be referred to. We saw that on Vesconte's map of the world accompanying Marino Sanudo's work the coast-lines of the compa.s.s-charts in the Mediterranean, etc., had already been introduced. On the Modena map (p. 231) this has also been carried out as regards the North. In the fifteenth century we have various wheel-maps, of which some seem to be more antiquated. Lo Bianco's round mappamundi, in his atlas of 1436, is connected with the compa.s.s-charts of that time. Johannes Leardus's round mappamundi, in many editions of 1448 and earlier,[273]

likewise shows a strong affinity to the compa.s.s-charts, although there is little detail in the delineation of the North. The same is the case with the anonymous round mappamundi in a codex in the Library of St. Mark at Venice [cf. Kretschmer, 1892, atlas, Pl. III., No. 13], but this map has also points of similarity to Vesconte's mappamundi in Sanudo's work, and, amongst other things, it has the same mountain-chain along the north coast of the continent, and the same form of the Baltic.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Europe on the mappamundi in the Geneva MS. of Sall.u.s.t of about 1450. (The south should be at the top)]