1598 Munster View of Scandinavia, the North Atlantic, and the Arctic

This is an attractive woodcut map of Scandinavia and the north parts of the European world, added to Sebastian Münster's Cosmographia in 1588. It is one of the earliest maps to introduce Gerard Mercator's Arctic geography, as well as one of the most influential maps to adopt the Zeno 'Frisland' fraud.

A Closer Look

The map covers from the English Channel to the just south of the North Pole and from America to Russia, including England, Scandinavia, Finland, Denmark, Iceland, and Greenland, as well as parts of America (Estotiland), the phantom islands of Frisland and Icaria, and Mercator's speculative Arctic islands. At the time, this region was as remote and inaccessible as the distant coasts of America, Africa, and Asia.

Updated Cartography

It replaced the then obsolete map from editions issued from 1544 - 1578. Sebastian Petri, who inherited the publishing rights of Münster's masterpiece from his father, knew that its maps were no longer state of the art. To keep the book current, he ordered the production of a new maps based on the maps of Antwerp publisher Abraham Ortelius, and a selection of new city views derived from Braun and Hogenberg. The present map, although retaining the title of the earlier Münster map, is an artful woodcut derivative of Ortelius' copperplate Septentrionalium Regionum Desrip. Being a woodcut, the Münster / Petri map presents very differently from its copperplate source. It also includes a brief descriptive text not present on the Ortelius: 'Sweden is rich in mines, fish, cattle, game, and grain. The Royal Court of Stockholm lies, like Venice in a lake: stockfish are brought to Norway.'

Ortelius's Sources

Just as Münster before him, Ortelius was an apt compiler and editor, synthesizing the best available sources. Like Münster, Ortelius drew upon the 1539 Olaus Magnus Carta marina for the general forms of Scandinavia and Iceland. Ortelius' map, however, had a broader scope and tapped sources not available during Münster's lifetime. Nicolo Zeno's 1558 Carta Da Navegar De Nicolo et Antonio Zeni Furono In Tramontana Lano MCCCLXXX by Nicoló Zeno the Younger, through the channel of Ruscelli's 1561 derivative, provided the basis for Ortelius' Estotiland, Iceland, Greenland, Icaria, and Frisland. Anthony Jenkinson's 1562 map of Russia, and Gerard Mercator's world maps of 1564 and 1569 for the high Arctic inform those coasts both on Ortelius' original, and this map produced for Petri.

Zeno's Spurious yet Tenacious Geography

This is one of the earliest maps to depict Frisland, Icaria, Estotiland, and Drogeo, drawn from the narrative of the Zeno brothers, as related by their descendant the Venetian merchant and statesman Nicolo Zeno the Younger. The account was supposedly written in the 14th century but did not see light until it was published in 1558. It might have disappeared, except that Ruscelli included a copy of Zeno's map in his 1561 Ptolemy, conferring upon the map the dual authority of Ptolemy and Gastaldi. Thus, upon its publication, Ortelius and Mercator took Zeno's map at face value, reproducing its phantom islands and imaginary Greenland geography in their maps, establishing it as canon for a century. Despite Zeno's work being a fraudulent Venetian attempt to co-opt the achievements of the Genoese Christopher Columbus, it remained influential in the 16th and 17th centuries absent better cartographic reconnaissance of the North Atlantic. Not only Ortelius, but also his competitor De Jode and his colleague Mercator embraced the Zeno geography with the result that it remained on Dutch maps well into the 17th century.

Mercator's Arctic Islands

This remains one of the earliest maps to illustrate Gerard Mercator's speculative Arctic Islands. When Mercator published his great wall map introducing the famous Mercator Projection in 1569, he recognized the essential problem with his map was that it massively distorted the polar regions. To rectify this, he included a polar projection as an inset. It was this small projection, later refined in his 1595 Arctic map, that introduced Mercator's idea of four arctic islands surrounding an open Arctic Sea, at the center of which was a great whirlpool. Two of those islands are visible here, one unnamed, and the other just north of Norway, labeled Pigmei hic habitant, for Mercator's assertion that it was the home of a race of female pygmies. The channel between the islands, possibly Mercator's interpretation of Davis Strait, was described as having violent currents. Variants on Mercator's Arctic islands continued to appear in various forms well into the 17th century, until the discoveries of Spitzbergen and other factual Arctic islands began to intrude upon the speculation. The islands disappeared entirely in Hondius's 1636 Arctic map Poli Arctici et Circumiacentium Terrarum Descriptio Novissima. So as derivative as the Petri/Münster map may have been, it remained representative of the best geographical knowledge of the north parts of the world well into the 17th century.

Publication History and Census

This map was among the newly-produced woodcut maps added to the German edition of Cosmographia in 1588 by Sebastian Petri, who had inherited the print shop from his father Heinrich Petri. It remained in the subsequent editions without material change. The present example conforms typographically to the map found in the 1598 German edition of the book. The German and Latin editions of Cosmographia are well represented in institutional collections. Various editions of the separate map are listed in OCLC by six libraries. The map appears on the market from time to time.