CLAUDIUS CLAVUS 



mentioned together with Greenland and " Mare Gronlandicum " 

 in the Bruges itinerary. 



Bjornbo and Petersen maintain that Claudius Clavus has 

 here consciously put forward a new and revolutionary view 

 which was a complete break with the cosmogony of the whole 

 of the Middle Ages, since according to the latter, the disc of 

 the earth was entirely surrounded by sea to the south of the 

 North Pole, as represented on the wheel-maps. I think this 

 is attributing to Clavus rather too much original thought, 

 of which his maps and text do not otherwise give evidence. 

 It is, of course, correct that the idea of land, and inhabited 

 land, too, at the North Pole, or to the north of the Arctic 

 Circle, did not agree with the general learned conception of 

 the Middle Ages; but the same idea had already been clearly 

 enough expressed in Norwegian-Icelandic literature. Even 

 the " Historia Norvegiae " has inhabited land beyond the sea in 

 the north, and the Icelandic legendary sagas and Saxo have 

 it, too. In addition to these, the tract included in the 

 " Rymbegla " says distinctly (see above, p. 239) that this 

 land in the opinion of some lies under the pole-star (cf. Clavus's 

 expression: "sub polo septentrionalis "). The fact that the 

 continent on the Medicean map of the world extended bound- 

 lessly on the north into the unknown (whereas Africa ended 

 in a peninsula on the south) must have confirmed Clavus in 

 the view that the land reached to the pole. To this was added, 

 what, perhaps, weighed most with him, the fact that such a 

 view did not conflict with Ptolemy, whose continent also had 

 no limit on the north. 



On the connecting land in the north is written, on the 

 Nancy map : " Unipedes maritimi," " Pigmei maritimi," 

 " Griff onii regio vastissima," and " Wildhlappelandi." As 

 these names are not mentioned in Clavus's text, it is uncertain 

 whether the fabulous creatures may not be to some extent 

 additions for which he is not responsible. 



After the map was drawn, with its bays and headlands, 

 and the coast of Scandinavia provided with a suitable number 



263 



