IN NORTHERN MISTS 



example: Bergen is originally called " bergis " (cf. p. 221), 

 a draughtsman corrupts this to " bregis," and that becomes 

 the name of the town in later charts (c£. p. 232). Whence 

 these names first came, we do not know; partly, no doubt, 

 from sailors, and partly from literary sources. The latter must 

 be true of names in the interior. There are also various legends 

 or inscriptions on these charts, e.g., in Norway, in Sweden, in 

 the Baltic, on the islands in the northern ocean, and in Iceland. 

 Many of these legends can be certainly proved to have a literary 

 origin. Some of them (e.g., that attached to Norway) may be 

 derived in part from the " Geographia Universalis." Others are 

 connected with such authors as Giraldus Cambrensis, Higden, 

 and others. Certain resemblances to Arabic writers, especially 

 Edrisi, might also be pointed out; but it is uncertain whether 

 these are not due in part to their being derived from a common 

 source. 



The first known compass-chart, the so-called " Carte 

 Pisane," of about 1300,^ goes no farther north than to the 

 coast of Flanders and southern England. But the compass- 

 chart 2 drawn by the Genoese priest, Giovanni da Carignano (ob. 

 1344), evidently a little after 1300, already gives a delineation of 

 Great Britain, Ireland, the Orkneys, and Scandinavia, with the 

 Baltic. That these regions are only represented hypothetically, 

 and do not belong to the compass-chart proper, is also indicated 

 by their partly lying outside the network of compass-lines. It 

 is in the main a land map, with many names in the interior of 

 the continents, but the delineation of the known coasts (to the 

 south of Flanders) is evidently taken from the sea-charts. The 

 representation of the British Isles and of the North reminds one 

 a good deal of the Cottoniana map (cf. Vol. I, p. 183), and of 

 Edrisi's representation (cf. p. 203) f as an example, it is 



1 Reproduced by Jomard, 1879; Nordenskiold, 1897, p. 25. 



2 Reproduced by Th, Fischer-Ongania, 1887, pi. iii. [cf. pp. 117 f.]; Nor- 

 denskiold, 1897, pi. V. Cf. Bjornbo, 1909, pp. 212 f.; Hamy, 1889, pp. 350 f. 



^ That, on the other hand, it should be directly connected with Ptolemy's 

 representation, as alleged by Hamy [1889, p. 350], is difficult to understand [cf. 

 220 



