IN NORTHERN MISTS 



as well as Mecia de Viladeste's chart of 1413/ and many 

 others.^ 



We find a different representation of the North, especially 

 of the Scandinavian peninsula, in the anonymous atlas of 

 1351, preserved at Florence and commonly called the " Medi- 

 cean Marine Atlas," ^ which is an Italian, probably a Genoese, 

 work. The North is here represented on a map of the world 



1 On this chart there is a picture in the northern ocean to the west of Nor- 

 way of a ship with her anchor out by the side of a whale, with the following 

 explanation [cf. Bjornbo, 1910, p. 121]: "This sea is called 'mar bocceano,' 

 and therein are found great fish, which sailors take to be small islands and 

 take up their quarters on these fish, and the sailors land on these islands and 

 make fires, and cause such heat that the fish feels it and sets itself in motion, 

 and they have no time to get on board and are lost; and those who know this, 

 land on the said fish, and there make thongs of its back and make fast the 

 head of the ship's anchor, and in this way they flay the skin off it, whereof they 

 make saraianes [ropes?] for their ships, and of this skin are made good cover- 

 ings for haystacks." 



We have here a combination of two mythical features. One is the great 

 fish of the " Navigatio Brandani," on which they land and make a fire to cook 

 lamb's flesh, when the fish begins to move, and the brethren rush to the ship, 

 into which they are taken by Brandan, while the island disappears and they 

 can still see the fire they have made two leagues away. Brandan told them 

 that this was the largest of all the fish in the sea; it always tries to reach its 

 tail with its head (like the Midgards-worm, cf. Vol. I, p. 364) and its name is 

 lasconicus. The same myth is referred to in an Anglo-Saxon poem [Codex 

 Exoniensis, ed. Benj. Thorpe, London, 1842, pp. 360 f.] on the great whale 

 Fastitocalon, where ships cast anchor and the sailors go ashore and make 

 fires, upon which the whale dives down with ship and crew. The idea of such 

 a fish resembling an island is also found in the northern myth of the hafgufa 

 [cf. the "King's Mirror"], or krake, and is doubtless derived from the East. 

 Tales of landing on an apparent island which suddenly turns out to be a fish 

 are found in Sindbad's first voyage, in Qazwini (where the fish is an enormous 

 turtle), and even in Pseudo-Callisthenes in the second century [iii. 17; cf. E. 

 Rohde, 1900, p. 192]. 



The second feature of flaying the skin is evidently the same as already 

 found in Albertus Magnus (ob. 1280), and must be referred to fabulous ideas 

 about the hunting of walrus, which was also called whale (see above, p. 163). 

 That walrus hide was used for ships' ropes is, of course, well known, but that 

 it should be also used for coverings of haystacks is not likely, as it was cer- 

 tainly far too valuable for that. 



2 Cf. also the anonymous Catalan chart in the Biblioteca Nazionale at 

 Naples, reproduced in Bjornbo and Petersen, 1908, pi. i. 



" Cf. Nordenskiold, 1897, pp. 21, 58, pi. x.; Hamy, 1889, pp. 414 f.; Fischer- 

 Ongania, pi. v. 



234 



