IN NORTHERN MISTS 



of islands, Claudius Clavus set himself to describe it; where he 

 had no names from earlier sources, he numbered the headlands, 

 bays, and islands, " Primum," " Secundum," etc. 



A remarkable thing about the Nancy map is that it has two 

 divisions of latitude: one according to Ptolemy on the left- 

 hand side of the map, and another according to Clavus himself, 

 on a scale four degrees lower, on the right-hand side. Accord- 

 ing to the latter, Roskilde would have a longest day of seventeen 

 hours (through a transposition the Nancy map gives seventeen 

 hours thirty minutes), which, as pointed out by Bjornbo [1910, 

 p. 96], exactly agrees with what Clavus may have learnt from 

 a Roskilde calendar ("Liber daticus Roskildensis ") of 1274. 

 Bjornbo has also remarked that Bergen is given a remarkably 

 correct latitude, 60° (the correct one is 60° 24'), and thinks 

 it possible that there may have been a Bergen calendar which 

 Clavus has used. But a more likely source, unnoticed by 

 Bjornbo, is to be found, as mentioned on p. 260, in the 

 " Rymbegla " tract, where the latitude of Bergen is given 

 as 60°. It is true that the same tract gives the latitude of 

 Trondhjem (Nidaros) as 64°, which does not agree with the 

 Nancy map, where there is a difference of only 2° between 

 Bergis and Nidrosia. Even though it is probable that Clavus 

 was acquainted with some such tract, with which his statement 

 as to land at the North Pole also agrees, it may have been 

 a somewhat different version from that which found its way 

 into the " Rymbegla," and perhaps the latitude of Trondhjem 

 was not mentioned there. On the other hand, he may have 

 found, there or elsewhere, the latitude of Stavanger given, 

 15^° farther south than Bergen (?). 



If we assume that Clavus, even in the construction of his 

 first map, made use of the Medicean map of the world, and 

 that his Greenland is the most westerly peninsula of the latter's 

 Norway, it will seem strange that he did not also draw the west 

 coast of that peninsula, which would naturally become the 

 west coast of Greenland. It is true that the Nancy map is 

 only a copy, but as the west coast of Greenland is not mentioned 

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