MEDIEVAL CARTOGRAPHY 



do according to Orosius. This map does not, therefore, indicate, 

 any more than the others, any particular increase of knowledge 

 of the North, and compared with King Alfred's work it is still 

 far behind in the dark ages. 



The zone-maps, already alluded to, which are derived from 

 Macrobius (cf. Vol. I, p. 123), gave a formal representation of 

 the earth of a peculiar kind, which was common throughout 

 the whole of the Middle Ages ; they may be regarded as mathe- 

 matical geography more than anything else. The earth is 

 divided in purely formal fashion into five zones, two of which 

 are habitable: our temperate zone, and the unknown temperate 

 zone of the antipodes (in the southern hemisphere) and three 

 uninhabitable: the torrid zone with the equatorial ocean, and 

 the two frigid zones, north and south. These conceptions also 

 reached the North at an early time, and are mentioned in the 

 " King's Mirror," among other works, although its author 

 thought that the inhabited part of Greenland really lay in the 

 frigid zone. A zone-map from Iceland is also known of the 

 thirteenth century. Another of the fourteenth century and a 

 kind of wheel-map of the twelfth century, but with geographical 

 names only without coast-lines, are also found in Icelandic 

 MSS., besides a small wheel- and T-map.^ Otherwise it is not 

 known that maps were drawn in the North during the Middle 

 Ages. A purely formal wheel- and T-map is known from Lund 

 before 11 59 [see Bjornbo, 1909, p. 189]. Another Danish wheel- 

 map of the sixteenth century is known [see Bjornbo, 1909, 

 p. 192], and Bjornbo reproduces [1909, p. 193 f.] two wheel- 

 maps of i486 from Llibeck, belonging to Professor Wieser, 

 where the lands and islands of the North are drawn as round 

 discs (with names) in the outer universal ocean. 



iCf. Rafn, Antiquites Russes, ii. pp. 390 f., PI. IV.; K. Miller, iii. 1895, 

 p. 125. 



193 



