The North on Dalorto’s map of 1325. The network of compass-lines is omitted
for the sake of clearness. Only a few of the names are given

The type which is first known from Angellino Dalorto’s map of 1325 (or 1330 ?), and from that of 1339 signed Angellino Dulcert, which is undoubtedly by the same man, was of fundamental importance to the representation of the North on the Catalan compass-charts. It has been thought that he belonged to a well-known Genoese family named Dalorto, and that the first map was drawn in Italy, while the latter was certainly drawn in Majorca, either by a copyist who corrupted the name of Dalorto to Dulcert, or by himself, who in that case must be supposed to have given his name a more Catalan sound on settling in Majorca. But in any case these maps had Italian models; this appears clearly in the form of the names [cf. Kretschmer, 1909, pp. 118, f.].

The two maps are much alike. The oldest, of 1325 (1330 ?),[220] gives a more complete representation of the North and of the Baltic than any earlier map known (see illustration). In its names it shows a connection both with Carignano’s map and with Marino Sanudo, but new names and fresh information have been added, the delineation of Great Britain and Ireland is more correct, and there is also a more reasonable representation of Scandinavia and of the extent of the Baltic than on Carignano’s map. Amongst new names in the North may be mentioned “trunde” [Trondhjem, cf. “Throndemia” in the Historia Norwegiæ], and “alogia” for a town on the west side of Norway; this is evidently Halogia [Hálogaland], a form of the name which was used, for instance, in the Historia Norwegiæ and by Saxo. Another name in the far north, and again at the south-western extremity of Norway, is “alolandia” (see illustration, p. 226). One might suppose that the form of the name and its assignment to these two places are due to a confusion of the name Hálogaland with Hallandia (in Saxo) and “alandia” on the Sanudo-Vesconte map (see p. 224).

It will be seen that Norway, which is represented as a pronouncedly mountainous country,[221] has on this map been given a great increase of breadth, so that its west coast is brought to the same longitude as the west coast of Great Britain. In the legends attached to Norway we read that from its deserts are brought “birds called gilfalcos” (hunting falcons), and in the extreme north is the inscription:

The substance of this may be derived in the main from the Geographia Universalis (cf. pp. 189, f.; see also p. 177). Islands in the ocean to the west of Norway are: farthest north, “Insula ornaya” [the Orkneys]; farther south, “sialand” [Shetland, “Insula scetiland” on the map of 1339, and “silland” or “stillanda” on later maps]. The resemblance to “shâsland,” the name of an island in Edrisi (cf. above, p. 207), is great, but it cannot be supposed that we have here a corruption of Iceland. At the north-eastern corner of Scotland is the round island, “Insula tille” (cf. p. 219).

In the ocean to the west of Ireland we find for the first time on this map an island called “Insula de montonis siue de brazile.” This island is met with again on later compass-charts under the name of “brazil” as late as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.[222] It is evidently the Irish fortunate isle “Hy Breasail,” afterwards called “O’Brazil,” that has found its way on to this map, or probably on to the unknown older sources from which it is drawn. On this and the oldest of the later maps the island has a strikingly round form, often divided by a channel.

Angellino Dulcert’s (Dalorto’s) map of 1339[228] differs somewhat from the map of 1325 (1330 ?) in its delineation of the North, in that Norway is given a narrower and more rectangular form, with only those four headlands on the south side which are largest on the map of 1325, while the country with the smaller headlands to the west of these is cut away, whereby the narrower shape is brought about.[229]

Dalorto’s maps of 1325 and 1339 furnish the prototype for the representation of the North in later compass-charts; and this persists without important alteration until well into the fifteenth century. But while later Italian charts (cf. Pizigano’s of 1367) more closely resemble the Italian Dalorto map of 1325, the Majorca map of 1339 represents the type of the later Catalan charts. In the one preserved at Modena, and dating from about 1350,[230] the Catalan compass-chart is combined with the representation of the world of the wheel-maps. We find the picture of the North to be the same in all its main outlines; but here a new feature is added, in that Iceland appears as a group of eight islands in the far north-west, out on the margin of the map, with the note: “questas illes son appellades islandes” (these islands are called Icelands). The southernmost island is called “islanda,” the others have incomprehensible names (“donbert,” “tranes,” “tales,” “brons,” “bres,” “mmau...,” “bilanj” [?]); but the name of Greenland is not found. In the ocean to the north of Norway there is “Mare putritum congelatum” [the putrid, frozen sea]. This is evidently the idea of the stinking Liver Sea (as in Arab myths, cf. p. 51), combined with that of the frozen sea. On the approximately contemporary Catalan compass-chart (see the reproduction, pp. 232-233), preserved in the National Library at Florence (called No. 16), we find the same group of islands called “Island,” with a long inscription (see p. 232; cf. also Björnbo and Petersen, 1908, p. 16), which is partly illegible, but wherein it is stated that “the islands are very large,” that “the people are handsome, tall and fair, the country is very cold,” etc. The name of Greenland does not occur on this chart either.[231]

North-western Europe on the wheel-shaped compass-chart at Modena (circa 1350).
The network of compass-lines, names and legends omitted. Mountains indicated by shading

North-western Europe on the anonymous Catalan mappamundi of the middle of the fourteenth century, in the National Library
at Florence. Reproduced mainly from a tracing of the original made by Dr. A. A. Björnbo. The text of the names and legends has
been somewhat enlarged to render it legible in the reduced reproduction. In the legend on the Baltic the erroneous “gronlandia”
is given, while the original has “gotlandia” (according to O. Vangensten)

The same type of Catalan charts includes Charles V.’s well-known mappamundi, or “Catalan Atlas,” of 1375, as well as Mecia de Viladeste’s chart of 1413,[232] and many others.[233]

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 “Medicean Marine Atlas,”[234] which is an Italian, probably a Genoese, work. The North is here represented on a map of the world and on a map of Europe (reproduced pp. 236, 260). The representation to a great extent resembles the Dalorto type. Its division of western Scandinavia into three great promontories no doubt recalls the Carignano map to such an extent that one may suppose it to have been influenced by some Italian source of that map; but in the names it shows more resemblance to the Dalorto maps: the delineation of the Baltic and of the peninsula corresponding to Skåne is practically the same, it perhaps resembles in particular the Modena map and the anonymous map at Florence (cf. pp. 232, 233). Jutland, on the other hand, has been greatly prolonged and given a different shape. The three great tongues of land in Norway, with a smaller one on the east near Denmark, may correspond to the four headlands on the south coast of Norway on the Dalorto maps (cf. especially that of 1339). Through these being considerably increased in size, and the bays between them being enlarged, the west coast of Norway has been moved even farther to the west than on the map of 1325, and has been given a somewhat more westerly longitude than Ireland. On the map of Europe “C. trobs” [“capitolum tronberg” ? i.e., Tönsberg] is written on the first bay [like “trunberg” on the Dalorto map], “c. bergis” [“capitolum bergis,” i.e., the see of Bergen] and “c. trons” (?) [the see of Trondhjem] on each of the two other bays. Finally, “alogia,” which on the Dalorto map is marked as a town on the northern west coast of Norway, to the north of Nidroxia [Nidaros], has followed the west coast and is placed on the westernmost tongue of land. How the whole of this delineation came about is difficult to say. One might be tempted to think that it was through a misunderstanding of a description of Norway, like that we find in the Historia Norwegiæ, where the country is described as divided into four parts, the first being the land on the eastern bay near Denmark, the second “Gulacia” [Gulathing], the third “Throndemia,” the fourth “Halogia.”[235] The map of the world in the Medici atlas is drawn in the same way as the compass-charts. It has no names of towns in Scandinavia, and the westernmost tongue of land is without a name (see the reproduction). On the other hand, the name “alolanda” occurs inland in eastern Norway, and is there obviously a corruption of “Hallandia” (cf. p. 227). This mappamundi is interesting from the fact that it makes the land-masses of the continent extend without a limit on the north, whereas Africa is terminated by a peninsula on the south.

The north-western portion of the mappamundi in the Medicean Marine
Atlas (1351). The degrees are here inserted after the maps of Ptolemy

The map of the Venetian Francesco Pizigano, of 1367, resembles Dalorto’s of 1325 in its delineation of the North; the south side of Norway has somewhat the same rounded form with seven headlands, and “Alogia” is a town on the west coast.

From the Bayeux tapestry, eleventh century

VIEWS OF THE NORTH AMONG THE NORTHERN PEOPLES

It has been already pointed out that, while the oldest northern authority, Adam of Bremen, regarded the countries of the North, outside Scandinavia, as islands in the ocean surrounding the earth’s disc (in agreement with the learned view and with the wheel-maps), the Scandinavians, unfettered by learned ideas, assumed that Greenland was connected with the continent, for the reason, amongst others, that, as the author of the “King’s Mirror” expresses it, continental animals such as the hare, wolf and reindeer could not otherwise have got there. But, as we have seen, this land communication could only be supposed to exist on the far side of Gandvik (the White Sea) and the Bjarmeland (Northern Russia) that they knew, and to go round the north of the sea that lay to the north of Norway. Thus the sea came to be called Hafsbotn (i.e., the bay or gulf of the ocean). We find the clearest expression of this view in the Icelandic geography already referred to, which may in part be attributed to Abbot Nikulás Bergsson of Thverá[236] (cf. vol. i. p. 313; vol. ii. pp. 1, 172), and where we read:

We have yet a third, later and more detailed variant in the so-called “Gripla,” given in vol. i. p. 288.

The belief in this land connection with Greenland may have originated in, or at any rate have been considerably strengthened by, the discovery of countries such as Novaya Zemlya, Svalbard (Spitzbergen ?), and the northern uninhabited parts of the east coast of Greenland[237] (cf. above, pp. 165, ff.). In addition to this, those sailing the Polar Sea came across pack-ice wherever they went in a northerly direction, closing in the sea and making it like a gulf, and it must therefore have been natural to believe in a continuous coast which connected the countries behind the ice, and which held this fast. The belief in a land connection seems to have been so ingrained that it can scarcely have rested on nothing but theoretical speculations, but must rather have been supported by tangible proofs of this kind.

It was to be expected that the countries on the north of Hafsbotn should become fairylands in popular belief, Jotunheimr and Risaland, inhabited by giants. Even Saxo (beginning of the thirteenth century) says that to the north of Norway

As it can hardly be the Christian settlements in Greenland that Saxo refers to as a land without human civilisation, we must doubtless suppose that his land in the north is a confusion of the eastern uninhabited tracts of Greenland with Jotunheimr, as in Icelandic ideas. For Adam of Bremen already had giants (Cyclopes) on an island in the north, and we have seen that there were similar conceptions in the Historia Norwegiæ (cf. p. 167).

A mediæval Icelandic tale [inserted in Björn Jónsson’s Greenland Annals] says of Halli Geit that

From the Bayeux tapestry, eleventh century

Ideas of this kind led to the view held by some that there was land as far as the North Pole, which appears in an Icelandic tract, included in the “Rymbegla” [1780, p. 466]. Of a bad Latin verse, there reproduced, it is said:

But the mediæval learned idea of the Outer Ocean surrounding the whole disc of earth also asserts itself in the North, and appears in Snorre’s Heimskringla and in the “King’s Mirror,” amongst other works. This ocean went outside Greenland, which was connected with Europe, and made the former into a peninsula. In the work already referred to, “Gripla” (only known in a late MS. in Björn Jónsson of Skardsá, first half of the seventeenth century), we read, in continuation of the passage already quoted (p. 35): “Between Wineland and Greenland is Ginnungagap, it proceeds from the sea that is called ‘Mare oceanum,’ which surrounds the whole world.” Since Wineland [i.e., the Insulæ Fortunatæ], as already stated (pp. 1, ff.), was by some, evidently through a misunderstanding, made continuous with Africa,[238] it is clear that the Outer Ocean must be supposed to go completely round both Greenland and Wineland (cf. the illustration, p. 2). Thus it was also natural to suppose that there was an opening somewhere between these two countries, through which the Outer Ocean was connected with the inner, known ocean between Norway, Greenland, etc.[239]

At least as old as the Norsemen’s conceptions of countries beyond the ocean in the North was probably the idea of the great abyss, Ginnungagap, which there forms the boundary of the ocean and of the world, and which must be derived from the Tartarus and Chaos of the Greeks (cf. p. 150). When the Polar Sea (Hafsbotn) was closed by the land connection between Bjarmeland and Greenland, it was natural that those who tried to form a consistent view of the world could no longer find a place for the abyss in that direction; and G. Storm [1890] is certainly right in thinking that it was for this reason that Ginnungagap was located in the passage between Greenland and Wineland; since, no doubt, the idea was that this “gap” in some way or other was connected with the void Outer Ocean. But this view is first found in the very late copy (seventeenth century) of “Gripla,” and of the somewhat older map of Gudbrand Torlaksson [Torlacius] of 1606 [Torfæus, 1706; Pl. I., p. 21], where “Ginnunga Gap” is marked as the name of the strait between Greenland and America. What Ginnungagap really was seems never to have been quite clear, different people having no doubt had different ideas about it; but when, as here, it is used as the name of a strait through which the Outer Ocean enters, it cannot any longer be an abyss; at the most it may have been a maelstrom or whirlpool, which, indeed, is suggested by the whirlpool on Jón Gudmundsson’s map (cf. p. 34). But even this interpretation of the name became effaced, and in another MS. of the seventeenth century (see p. 35) it is simply used as a name for the great ocean to the west of Spain (that is, the Atlantic).

From an Icelandic MS. of 1363

On the other hand we have seen (pp. 150, ff.) that ideas of whirlpools in the northern seas appear to have been widely spread in the Middle Ages. There is a possibility, as already hinted (vol. i. p. 303), that when in Ivar Bárdsson’s description of the northern west coast of Greenland “the many whirlpools that there lie all over the sea” are spoken of, it was thought that here was the boundary of the ocean and of the world, and that it was formed by the many whirlpools, or abysses in the sea. In that case these cannot be regarded merely as maelstroms like the Moskenström, but more like the true Ginnungagap. But this is extremely uncertain; it may again have been one of those embellishments which were often used in speaking of the most distant regions.

Saxo Grammaticus (first part of the thirteenth century) in the preface to his Danish history gives geographical information about Scandinavia and Iceland, to which we have already referred several times. He does not mention Greenland. He says himself that he has made use of Icelandic literature to a large extent; but he has also mingled with it a good deal of mythical material from elsewhere.

Beyond comparison the most important geographical writer of the mediæval North, and at the same time one of the first in the whole of mediæval Europe, was the unknown author who wrote the “King’s Mirror,”[240] probably about the middle of the thirteenth century.[241] If one turns from contemporary or earlier European geographical literature, with all its superstition and obscurity, to this masterly work, the difference is very striking. Even at the first appearance of the Scandinavians in literature, in Ottar’s straightforward and natural narrative of his voyage to King Alfred, the numerous trustworthy statements about previously unknown regions are a prominent feature, and give proof of a sober faculty of observation, altogether different from what one usually meets with in mediæval literature. This is the case to an even greater degree in the “King’s Mirror,” and the difference between what is there stated about the North and what we find less than two hundred years earlier in Adam of Bremen is obvious. Apart from the fact that the whole method of presentation is inspired by superior intelligence, it shows an insight and a faculty of observation which are uncommon, especially at that period; and in many points this remarkable man was evidently centuries before his time. Although well acquainted with much of the earlier mediæval literature, he has liberated himself to a surprising extent from its fabulous conceptions. We hear nothing of the many fabulous peoples, who were still common amongst much later authors, nor about whirlpools, nor the curdled and dark sea, but instead we have fresh and copious information about the northern regions, and it comes with a clearness like that which already struck us in Ottar. We have a remarkably good description of the sea-ice, its drift, etc. (cf. vol. i. pp. 279, f.); we have also a description of the animal world of the northern seas to which there is no parallel in the earlier literature of the world (cf. pp. 155, ff.). No less than twenty-one different whales are referred to fully. If we make allowance for three of them being probably sharks, and for two being perhaps alternative names for the same whale, the total corresponds to the number of species that are known in northern waters. Six seals are described, which corresponds to the number of species living on the coasts of Norway and Greenland. Besides these the walrus [“rostung”] is very well described. But even the author of the “King’s Mirror” could not altogether avoid the supernatural in treating of the sea. He describes in the seas of Iceland the enormous monster “hafgufa,” which seems more like a piece of land than a fish, and he does not think there are more than two of them in the sea. This is the same that the Norwegian fishermen now call the krake, and certainly also the same that appears in ancient oriental myths, and that is met with again in the Brandan legend as the great whale that they take for an island and land on (cf. p. 234). In the Greenland seas the “King’s Mirror” has two kinds of trolls, “hafstrambr” [a kind of merman], with a body that was like a glacier to look at, and “margygr” [a mermaid], both of which are fully described. There is also mention in the Greenland seas of the strange and dangerous “sea-fences,” which are often spoken of in the sagas [and about which there is a lay, the “hafgerðinga-drápa”]. The author does not quite know what to make of this marvel, for “it looks as if all the storms and waves that there are in that sea gather themselves together in three places, and become three waves. They fence in the whole sea, so that men cannot find a way out, and they are higher than great mountains and like steep summits,” etc. It is probable that the belief in these sea-fences is derived from something that really took place, perhaps most likely earthquake-waves, or submarine earthquakes, which may sometimes have occurred near volcanic Iceland. But it is curious that in the “King’s Mirror” these waves are connected with Greenland. They might also be supposed to be connected with the waves that are formed when icebergs capsize.

Marginal drawing in the Flateyjarbók (1387-1394)

The principal countries described are Ireland, Iceland and Greenland; but it is characteristic of the author that the farther north he goes, away from regions commonly known, the freer his account becomes from all kinds of fabulous additions. In Ireland he is still held fast by the superstition of the period, and especially by the priests’ fables about themselves and their holy men, and by the English author Giraldus Cambrensis.[242] In Iceland, as a rule, he is free of this troublesome ballast, and gives valuable information about the glaciers of Iceland, glacier-falls, boiling springs, etc. In his opinion the cold climate of Iceland is due to the vicinity of Greenland, which sends out great cold owing to its being above all other lands covered with ice; for this reason Iceland has so much ice on its mountains. Although he thinks it possible that its volcanoes are due to the fires of Hell, and that it is thus the actual place of torment, and that Hell is therefore not in Sicily, as his holiness Pope Gregory had supposed, he nevertheless has another and more reasonable explanation of the origin of earthquakes and volcanoes. They may be due to hollow passages and cavities in the foundations of the land, which by the force either of the wind or of the roaring sea may become so full of wind that they cannot stand the pressure, and thus violent earthquakes may arise. From the violent conflict which the air produces underground, the great fire may be kindled which breaks out in different parts of the country. It must not be thought certain that this is exactly how it takes place, but one ought rather to lay such things together to form the explanation that seems more conceivable, for

This idea of a connection between labour (friction) and force (motion), and this explanation of the possible origin of volcanoes are surprising in the thirteenth century, and seem to bring the author centuries in advance of his time; we here have germs of the theory of the conservation of energy.

His statements about Greenland are remarkable for their sober trustworthiness. He gives the first description of its inland ice:

Norwegian MS. of the Gulathings law. Fourteenth century

This, as we see, is an extremely happy description of the mighty ice-sheet. He also describes the climate of the country, both the fine weather that often occurs in summer, and its usually inclement character, which causes so small a proportion of the country to be habitable.

Though in simple and everyday words, this really expresses the idea that Greenland and the neighbouring regions are disproportionately cold, and that, in part at any rate, this is due to the glaciers of Greenland, which have a refrigerating effect (as an anticyclonic pole of maximum cold). This is to a certain degree correct. In crossing Greenland in 1888 we found that a pole of cold [anticyclone] lies over the inland ice, which gives off cold air. Scientific greatness does not always depend on erudition or acute learned combinations; it is just as often the result of a sound common-sense.

The allusion in the “King’s Mirror” to the Norse inhabitants of Greenland and their life has already been quoted in part (vol. i. p. 277); curiously enough the Skrælings are not mentioned. The author gives a graphic description of the aurora borealis, and attempts to explain its cause. As already noted (p. 155), it is curious that he should speak of it as something peculiar to Greenland, when he must of course have known it well enough in Norway.

The cosmography of the “King’s Mirror” is based on older mediæval writers, especially Isidore. The spherical form of the earth and the course of the sun are mentioned, as is Macrobius’s doctrine of zones. In the frigid zones the cold has attracted to itself such power that the waters throw off their nature and are changed to ice, and all the land and sea is covered with ice. They are usually uninhabitable, but nevertheless the author considers that Greenland lies in the north frigid zone. He thinks that “it is mainland, and connected with other mainland,” as already mentioned, because it has a number of terrestrial animals that are not often found on islands. It

This is, as we see, the same idea as already (p. 240) referred to, that the Outer Ocean runs in through a sound between Greenland and another continent to the south, evidently Wineland, which is thus here again regarded as part of Africa (cf. p. 1).

It is moreover striking that neither Wineland, Markland, nor Helluland is mentioned in the “King’s Mirror,” and Bjarmeland, Svalbard, etc., are also omitted. Thus it does not give any complete description of the northern lands, but it must be remembered that what we know of the work is only a fragment, and perhaps it was never completed.

The Nancy map. A copy, of 1427, of Claudius Clavus’s first map of the North.
The lines of latitude and longitude are omitted for the sake of clearness

CLAUDIUS CLAVUS

The credit of having introduced the name of Greenland, with the ancient Norsemen’s geographical ideas about the extreme North, into cartography belongs, so far as is known, to the Dane Claudius Claussön Swart, usually called in Latin Claudius Clavus (sometimes also Nicolaus Niger). He was born in Funen, travelled about Europe, and, as shown by Storm [1891, pp. 17, f.], was probably the “Nicolaus Gothus” who is mentioned at Rome in January 1424, and who is reported to have there given out that he had seen a copy of Livy in the monastery of Sorö, near Roskilde (which was probably a romance on his part). We are told that he was a man of acute intelligence, but a rover and unsteady. His subsequent history is unknown. As a supplement to Ptolemy’s Geography, which just at that time (1409) was becoming known in Western Europe in a Latin translation, he made, probably in Italy, two maps of the North, with accompanying descriptions. The maps must have been drawn either by himself or with his help. They are the first maps known in Western Europe which are furnished, after the model of Ptolemy (or Marinus), with lines of latitude and longitude,[243] and they thus mark the beginning of a more scientific cartography and geography in Western Europe.[244]

His first map (the Nancy map) must have been drawn between the years 1413 and 1427, probably between 1424 and 1427; but it can never have been widely known, as it has exercised no noticeable influence on the cartography of the succeeding period. The French cardinal Filastre (ob. 1428), who was staying in Rome in 1427, became acquainted with it there, and made a reduced copy of it, which, together with a copy of the accompanying text, he had bound up with his copy of the Latin translation of Ptolemy’s Geography with maps. This work was not rediscovered at Nancy until 1835, when it was published; the map is therefore usually called the Nancy map. Clavus’s second map, which seems to have been drawn later than that just mentioned, has on the other hand had considerable influence on the cartographical representation of the northern regions through a period of two centuries.

A copy of the later map was first brought to light by Nordenskiöld at Warsaw in 1889 [1889, p. xxx.]; since then several copies have been rescued from oblivion, while the text accompanying the map was accidentally discovered in 1900 by Dr. A. A. Björnbo in a mediæval MS. at Vienna [Björnbo and Petersen, 1904]. The original map is lost; but except as regards details of no great consequence there can now be no doubt as to what it was like.

The reproductions (pp. 248 and 251) will give an idea of the representation of the North on the two maps. As far as Ptolemy’s map extended (cf. vol. i. pp. 118, f.), it will be seen that its coast-lines and islands are almost slavishly adhered to on both maps. To this the Nancy map adds a Scandinavia, with Iceland, the east coast of Greenland, and a northern land connection between the latter and Russia. On the later map Scandinavia has been given a somewhat altered form, and Greenland has a west coast. The Nancy map has few names, many more being mentioned in the text, especially in Denmark. Even as regards Denmark they are evidently to a great extent taken from an older itinerary like that of Bruges [“Itinéraire Brugeois,” cf. Storm, 1891, p. 19]. Some of the names on the map, like “bergis,” “nidrosia,” etc., may be taken from older compass-charts; both texts have the northern form “Bergen.” Headlands, bays and islands (on the coasts of Norway, Iceland and Greenland), for which he had no names (and which moreover are due to the free imagination of the draughtsman), have been designated in the Nancy text by Latin numerals (“Primum,” “Secundum,” etc.), or are simply named after each other (in Iceland), a sure sign that Clavus neither knew nor had heard anything about these coasts.

Copy, of about 1467, of Claudius Clavus’s later map. The copy was executed by Nicolaus Germanus.
Owing to the map being transferred to the latter’s trapezoidal projection, with converging meridians,
Greenland, for instance, has been given a very oblique appearance