FIFTEENTH CENTURY MAPS 



green island, of which mention is made in the geography ").^ We 

 do not know what geographical work may here be meant; 

 Bjornbo suggests that it might be the lost work of Nicholas of 

 Lynn, who again may have used the " Historia Norvegiae." It 

 is striking that the island, besides being connected with a round 

 island like Brazil, but without a name, is placed on this map 

 near the Insulas Fortunatae. 



This " green island," which thus is probably a remnant of old 

 Greenland, occurs again in various forms and in various places 

 on many sixteenth-century maps. 



It is not surprising that information about the northern 

 lands made its appearance also on the maps of this time, as 

 we know that the North was visited more frequently, and 

 sometimes by eminent Southerners, from the year 1248, when 

 the well-known Matthew of Paris, who, among other things, 

 drew a map of England remarkable for his time, visited Norway. 

 Rather is it strange that the direct knowledge thus obtained 

 did not leave more definite traces. Early in the fifteenth century 

 (some year between 1397 ^''^^ 1448) a Byzantine, Cananos 

 Lascaris, traveled in the North and wrote about it (in Greek). 

 He mentions among other things that in Bergen, the capital 

 of Norway (Bergen Vagen) money was not used in trading 

 (this must have been due to scarcity of coin) ; but in Stockolmo, 

 the capital of Sweden, they had money of alloyed silver. Ber- 

 gen had a month of daylight from June 24 to July 25. He also 

 says that he himself went to the land of the Ichthyophagi (fish- 

 eaters), Islanta, from Inglenia, and stayed there for twenty-four 

 days. The people were strong and powerfully built, they lived 

 only on fish, and they had a summer day of six months [cf. Lam- 

 pros, 1881]. 



It would take us too far here to attempt a mention of all 

 the fifteenth-century maps which have a different repre- 

 sentation of the North; but perhaps some of the mappamundi 

 in wheel-form, which were still current at this time,, ought 



1 See J. Fischer, 1902, p. 99. Cf. also Bjornbo [1910, pp. 125 f.], who gives 

 a drawing of the map. 



281 



