IN NORTHERN MISTS 



is uncertain. We only know that when the Hauksbok was 

 written, at the beginning of the fourteenth century, it was 

 at any rate known in Iceland (cf. Vol. I, p. 248) ; but it may of 

 course have been known before that time, and it does not 

 appear that any long time elapsed between the instrument's 

 being known in the Mediterranean and its reaching the 

 Scandinavians. 



When the compass came into general use on Italian ships 

 in the thirteenth century, it naturally led to the development 

 of an entirely new type of map, the Italian sea-charts or 

 compass-charts, which were to be of fundamental importance 

 to all future cartography. The mediaeval maps of the world 

 already mentioned were learned representations which were of 

 no practical use to the navigator. The Greeks had drawn 

 land maps which were also of no great use at sea, and we do 

 not know that they had sea-charts. On the other hand, sailing- 

 books ("peripli"), which gave directions for coasting voyages, 

 were in use far back in antiquity. In the Middle Ages sailing- 

 books, called "portolani," which gave information about 

 harbors, distances, etc., were an important aid to the navigator, 

 especially in the Mediterranean. It was the Italians before all 

 others who, at that period, developed navigation. When 

 coasting was to some extent replaced by sailing in open sea, 

 after the compass came into use, sea-charts became a necessary 

 adjunct to the written sailing-books or portolani. How early 

 they began to be developed is unknown; we only know that 

 charts were in use on Italian ships in the latter half of the 

 thirteenth century ; ^ and we must suppose that they were 

 employed long before that time. Whether, as some have 

 maintained, there v/as a connection between these charts and 

 the maps of the Greeks, is doubtful, though there may indeed 

 have been an indirect connection through the Arabs, among 

 whom Edrisi, for instance, seems perhaps to have exercised 

 some influence. But in any case it is certain that the Italians 



1 Cf. D'Avezac: Coup d'oeil historique sur la projection des cartes geo- 

 graphiques. Paris, 1863, p. 37; Th. Fischer, i885, pp. 78 f. 

 216 



