On his later map Clavus has made up for the want of names in an astonishing way. On some of the coasts he has continued to use Latin numerals for bays, etc., but side by side with this on the shores of the Baltic and in Sweden he has used Danish numerals, such as, “Förste aa fluuii ostia” (First river, river-mouth), “Anden aa” (Second river) ..., etc. The southerners, who did not understand Danish, of course regarded these as names, and subjected them to all sorts of corruptions. Matters became worse when in Gotland and Norway he used as the names of headlands and rivers the words of a meaningless rigmarole: “Enarene,” “apocane,” “uithu,” “wultu,” “segh,” “sarlecrogh,” etc. (evidently corresponding to children’s rigmaroles like “Anniken, fanniken, fiken, foken,” etc.)[245] In Iceland he used the names of the runic characters for headlands and rivers; but most remarkable of all are his names in Greenland, alternately for headlands and the mouths of rivers(!). If, as shown by Björnbo and Petersen, these are read continuously from the most northern headland on the east coast round the south of the country, the following verse in the dialect of Funen is the result:

“Thær boer eeynh manh secundum [== ij ?][246] eyn Gronelandsz aa,
ooc Spieldebedh mundhe hanyd heyde;
meer hawer han aff nidefildh,
een hanh hawer flesk hinth feyde.
Nordh um driuer sandhin naa new new.”

(There lives a man (in ?) a Greenland river,
and Spieldebedh is his name;
he has more vermin (?)
than he has fat bacon, etc.)

The verse, as pointed out by Axel Olrik, is evidently an imitation or travesty of the folk-songs, and, as Karl Aubert has shown,[247] its prototype must certainly have been the first verse of the same folk-song that is now known in Sweden by the name of “Kung Speleman”:

“Dher bodde een kjempe vid Helsingborg,
Kung Speleman månde han heta,
Visst hade han mera boda sölf,
Än andra flesket dhet feta.
Uren drifver noran, och hafvet sunnan för noran.”

(There lived a giant by Helsingborg,
King Fiddler was his name.
Sure he had greater store of silver
Than others of fat bacon, etc.)

This method of fabricating geographical names adopted by Clavus recalls the designation of the notes in the mediæval scale, for which the words of a Latin hymn were used, and it seems likely that this is what he has imitated. But his mystification, with all these strange names which no one in Southern Europe understood, and which in course of time underwent many corruptions, has caused a good deal of trouble; many intelligent men have racked their brains to discover learned etymological interpretations of their origin, until Björnbo’s lucky find of the later text of Clavus solved the riddle.

Björnbo and Petersen, who by their valuable work on Claudius Clavus with a reproduction of this text have the credit of throwing light on the relation between his first and second maps, have put forward the view that Clavus must have made his first map (the Nancy map) with its Latin text in Italy; but curiously enough they think he entirely rejected the Italian compass-charts as unsuitable for the representation of the North, and constructed his delineation of the northern regions independently of them, as an addition to Ptolemy’s coast-lines, simply from information he had derived from northern sources. After this we are to suppose that, in order to extend his geographical knowledge, he went back to Denmark; and since the authors place reliance on Clavus’s assertion (in his later text) that he had seen the places himself, they even credit him with having made a voyage of geographical exploration, first to Norway (Trondhjem) and then to Greenland. And then he is supposed to have drawn his later map, and written the text for it (in Latin), in the North.

I have come to an entirely different conclusion. His older map must be based, in my opinion, not only on Ptolemy, but to a great extent on Italian maps. His later map and text, I consider, show beyond doubt that he cannot have been either in Norway or Greenland, and I cannot find a single statement in the Vienna text, or any coast-line in his later map, which shows that he was outside Italy in the period between the two works. Doubtless the delineation of Denmark, especially Sealand, is more detailed in the second map; but the additions do not disclose any more local knowledge than might be attributed to Clavus as a native of Funen before his first map was drawn, even though he had not then ventured to change the form of Ptolemy’s Scandia, which to him, of course, became Sealand. After this first attempt, however, he may have gained courage to launch out further with his knowledge. He may also have discovered a few fresh pieces of information, in the papal archives, for instance. Besides this, he may, of course, have received oral communications from people from the northern countries; but even of this I am unable to find sure signs. In consideration of the imaginative tendencies shown by Clavus in his distribution of names, and to some extent in the coast-lines on his map, which perhaps may also have asserted themselves in his statement that he had seen a complete MS. of Livy in Sorö monastery,[248] we shall scarcely be insulting him if we believe his statements (in two passages of the Vienna text) that he himself had seen Pygmies from a land in the North, and Karelians in Greenland, to be rhetorical phrases, calculated to strengthen the reader’s confidence, and to mean at the outside that he had seen something about these people in older authorities.

After having heard my reasons, Björnbo and Petersen have in all essentials come round to my views. In particular they agree with me that Clavus cannot have been in Greenland, but that the delineation of that country on his later map is based on the Medicean map of the world, which will be mentioned later. I therefore consider it superfluous to combat any further here the reasons given in their work for their former view.

Claudius Clavus’s task must have been to supplement the newly discovered atlas of Ptolemy by what he knew of the North; and to this end his maps were drawn, either by himself or by a professional draughtsman in Italy from his instructions. The text was prepared after each of the maps, as a description of it; and the latitudes and longitudes are taken from the map [cf. Björnbo and Petersen, 1904, p. 130]. With the superstitious respect of the period for older learned authorities in general, and for Ptolemy in particular, he did not venture to alter the latter’s coast-lines or latitudes as far as they extended; even in the Danish islands he has done so with hesitation, thus Sealand in his first sketch [the Nancy map] has still the same form as Scandia in Ptolemy, etc. He then added to the latter’s coast-lines what he knew or could get together from other quarters.

His first map [the Nancy map] may presuppose the following sources, besides Ptolemy’s various maps of Northern Europe; Pietro Vesconte’s mappamundi (circa 1320) in Marino Sanudo’s work,[249] and the anonymous mappamundi, now preserved in the so-called Medicean Marine Atlas, of 1351, at Florence.[250] In addition to these, either the Bruges itinerary itself [Itinéraire Brugeois, cf. Storm, 1891, p. 19], or one of its earlier sources. Possibly he also had, in part at all events, a tract [in Icelandic ?] that is included in the fourth part of the “Rymbegla” [1780]; that he also knew of the Icelandic sailing directions, as assumed by Björnbo and Petersen, I regard as less certain, although not impossible; perhaps it would be safer to suppose that he may have seen some statements from Ivan Bárdsson’s description of Greenland, in an itinerary, for instance. I have not been able to find any certain indication of his having been acquainted with the Icelandic geography mentioned on p. 237; perhaps he may rather have known of the land connection between Greenland and Russia from some tale or other, or from a legendary saga;[251] from the same source (or from Ivar Bárdsson’s description ?) may also be derived the name Nordbotn (cf. p. 171, note 1), which is not known in the Icelandic geography, but which seems most probably to be a legendary form. Certain names, such as those of the bishops’ sees in Norway and Iceland, Clavus may easily have found in the papal archives in Rome.

In the first place, exactly following Ptolemy, the draughtsman has marked Ireland with the islands around it and six Hebrides to the north-east, Scotland with the island of Dumna and the archipelago “Orcadia” to the north (the island of Ocitis a little farther east), and the south coast of Thule farther north; next Jutland with its small islands round about, and with the large island of Scandia, which, of course, became Sealand (he has added Funen and a number of other islands); finally the coast of Germany and Sarmatia eastwards to 63° N. lat., and with the same number of river-mouths as in Ptolemy. As this coast does not extend nearly so far to the east as does the Baltic on the compass-charts, it resulted that Clavus’s Baltic became much shorter than that of the charts, and its shape had to be altered to suit Ptolemy’s coast-line. Then, at its northern end, the draughtsman has placed possibly Pietro Vesconte’s Scandinavian peninsula, going out towards the west (see the two maps, pp. 223, 224); but as he saw Norway on the compass-charts extending west as far as to the north of Scotland, where on Ptolemy’s map he found Thule, it was natural that he should take the latter to be the southern point of Norway, and he was obliged to move Vesconte’s peninsula farther to the west. Its south coast may have been drawn with the Medici map, or a similar one, as model. As the southern coast of the Baltic was moved far to the south, after Ptolemy, and Jutland was given a different and smaller form than on the Medici map, besides a marked inclination to the east, and as Skåne had to be near Sealand (Scandia), the draughtsman was obliged to move the peninsula corresponding to Skåne about five degrees to the south. The south coast of the peninsula on the north of Scotland on the Medici map (see pp. 236, 260) corresponded very nearly to the south coast of Thule (with an east-south-easterly direction) on Ptolemy’s map; it lay in an almost corresponding latitude, but on account of the puzzling prolongation of Scotland to the east on Ptolemy’s map, it had to be moved a good fifteen degrees of longitude to the east. Thule was thus united to Norway[252] and its south coast was given exactly the same shape as the south coast of the peninsula in question, with three arched bays (the broadest on the east) and a projecting point towards the south-east. The coast between this promontory and Skåne may then have been drawn with the same number of four large bays as on the Medici map: a deeper one farthest west, then a broad peninsula, next two wide, open bays, with a narrow peninsula between them, and finally a smaller bay opposite Sealand. The “Halandi” of the Nancy map is thus brought to the corresponding place with the “Alolanda” of the Medici map (p. 236).[253]

Thus far it may be fairly easy to compare the maps; but then Norway according to most of the compass-charts ought not to have any considerable farther extension to the west, while on the other hand Northern ideas demanded a Greenland in the far west, as well as a land in the north between that and Russia. With the latter the westernmost tongue of land in Norway on the Medicean mappamundi[254] agrees remarkably well. The southern point of Clavus’s Greenland has also the same length in proportion to the west coast of Ireland, and about the same breadth, as on this map. There was also an extensive mass of land in the north. According to various representations, such as those of Vesconte’s mappamundi, Saxo’s description (cf. p. 223), and others, there should be a gulf on the north side of the Scandinavian Peninsula. According to representations like that of the Lambert map at Ghent (cf. p. 188), this arm of the sea had the same form as that on the south side of Scandinavia, and there should only be a narrow isthmus between these two arms of the sea, connecting the peninsula with the mainland (cf. Saxo). On the Nancy map, too, the north coast of Scandinavia is drawn almost exactly like the south coast, with the same number of promontories and bays, which correspond very nearly even in their shape. In this way Clavus’s “Nordhindh Bondh” [Norðrbotn], also called “Tenebrosum mare” [i.e., the dark sea] or “Quietum mare” [the motionless sea], may have originated. This remarkable bay is connected on his map with the Baltic by a canal (which is also mentioned in the Vienna text). By this means Scandinavia really becomes an island. Clavus cannot have acquired such an idea from any known source, although, as already mentioned, Saxo says that it is nearly an island (p. 223); but similar conceptions seem to have arisen in Italy (cf. above on Pietro Vesconte’s mappamundi, p. 223).

Scandinavia on the map of Europe in the Medici Atlas (of 1351).
The scales of latitude and longitude are here added from Ptolemy’s
maps. The network of compass-lines is omitted

The south coast of Norway [with “Stauanger”] and the southern point of Greenland retained on Clavus’s map the same relation of latitude, a difference of 1½°, as the corresponding localities on the Medici map, with very nearly the same degrees of latitude as on the latter, if we there employ a scale of latitude calculated upon this map’s representation of Spain (the Straits of Gibraltar) and France (Brittany), and use Ptolemy’s latitudes for these countries. This has been done in the reproduction of the Medicean mappamundi on p. 236.[255] The scale of longitude is calculated in the same proportion to the latitude as in Ptolemy. In some tract like that included in the fourth part of the “Rymbegla” [1780, p. 466] Clavus may have found that Bergen lay in latitude 60° and so placed the town on the west coast of Norway in this latitude according to his own scale (on the right-hand side of the Nancy map, see p. 474). In relation to the south coast of Norway Bergen was thus brought ¾° farther south than “c. bergis” on the Medici map (above). Calculated according to Ptolemy’s scale of latitude (on the left-hand side of the Nancy map), Bergen was consequently placed in Clavus’s text in 64°, while the southern point of Greenland is placed in 63° 15′,[256] a difference in latitude of 45′ (in the Vienna text the difference is 35′), while in reality it is 38′; a remarkable accidental agreement. According to Clavus’s own scale of latitude on the right-hand side of the Nancy map, we get the following latitudes: Bergen 60°, the southern point of Greenland 59° 15′, Stavanger 58° 30′. In reality the latitudes of these places are: 60° 24′, 59° 46′, and 58° 58′. This agreement is remarkable, as a displacement of the scale of latitude half a degree to the north on the Nancy map would give very nearly correct latitudes.[257] The mutual relation between the latitudes of the three places may, as we have seen, be explained from the Medici map, but hardly from a possible acquaintance with the Icelandic sailing directions; for according to these Bergen and the southern point of Greenland would be placed in the same latitude, since we are told that from Bergen the course was “due west to Hvarf in Greenland.”[258] The Medici map may also give a natural explanation of places like Bergen and the southern point of Greenland having been given by Clavus a latitude so much too northerly (even in the Nancy map), and of the southern point of Greenland having only half a degree more westerly longitude than the west coast of Ireland.[259]

Iceland lay, according to the Bruges itinerary, midway between Norway and Greenland, precisely as on the Nancy map. Between Norway and Iceland, according to the same itinerary, lay “Fareö” [Færö], and the fabulous island “Femöe,” “where only women are born and never men.”

After speaking of the “third headland” in 71° on the east coast of Greenland, the Nancy text goes on:

It is probable, as suggested by Björnbo and Petersen, that these “Careli infideles” are identical with those who are found almost in the same place, in the ocean to the north of Norway, on one of the maps in Marino Sanudo’s work (in the Paris MS., see above, p. 225), and who on other maps belonging to that work are placed on the mainland to the north-east of Scandinavia. As pointed out by Storm, “Kareli” are also mentioned together with Greenland and “Mare Gronlandicum” in the Bruges itinerary.

Björnbo 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 Norwegiæ 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 boundlessly 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,” “Griffonii 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 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. According 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 Björnbo [1910, p. 96], exactly agrees with what Clavus may have learnt from a Roskilde calendar (“Liber daticus Roskildensis”) of 1274. Björnbo 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 Björnbo, 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, 1½° 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 in the copy of Clavus’s text either, we are bound to believe that he did not include it. The margin on the western side of Clavus’s first map was evidently determined by that of Ptolemy’s map of the British Isles, and follows precisely the same meridian. Thus there was no room for the Medici map’s peninsula corresponding to Clavus’s Greenland. As already stated, it is difficult to get away from the belief that the Medici map was used for the east coast of Greenland, the south coast of Norway, etc.; the resemblances are too great, and otherwise inexplicable (cf. p. 261, note 3).

After the first map was drawn, Clavus may have made further cartographical studies in Italy, and may thus have become acquainted with other compass-charts, especially those of the Dalorto type. At the same time he may have obtained a new and more accurate determination of the latitude of Trondhjem, probably by the length of its longest day. As Trondhjem was an archbishopric, it is not unlikely that he found such a piece of information in the papal archives at Rome. He may then naturally have wished to bring his map more into agreement with his new knowledge, and this may have led to his later map, which is now known to us through several somewhat varying copies. To this he then wrote a new text (the Vienna text), which in all important points resembles the former, but has various additions and alterations. The later map has not the double scale of latitude on any of the copies known, but curiously enough only Ptolemy’s degrees. Besides a more accurate delineation of Jutland and the Danish islands, especially Sealand, Bornholm and Gotland are drawn in closer resemblance to the Medici map; the south coast of Scandinavia has been altered to agree more with compass-charts of the Catalan type. In particular the south coast of Norway has been given the four characteristic promontories (as on the Dalorto map of 1339, and on the Modena map, etc.; cf. the reproductions, pp. 226, 231), and Bergen (“Bergis”) has been placed at the head of the westernmost of the three bays thus formed, which is also a peculiarity of the maps of this type (the Catalan chart of 1375 has five promontories with four bays, cf. Nordenskiöld, 1896, Pl. XI.). The other two diocesan towns, Stavanger and Hamar, are placed at the heads of the other two bays to the east, and Stavanger has thus lost the remarkably correct position in relation to Bergen and the south point of Greenland which it had on the older map. Trondhjem has been placed at the extremity of the westernmost promontory, possibly because there had been found a more correct determination of the latitude of the town, which was to be fitted into Ptolemy’s graduation; thereby the shape of Norway has become still narrower and farther removed from reality.

From the “lac scarsa” (Lake Skara, i.e., Vener) with its river is derived the great lake “Vona” (Vener) in the centre of Scandinavia on all the copies of Clavus’s later map, from which the river “Vona” (also mentioned in the Vienna text) runs into the deep bay by “Aslo” (Oslo) and the island of “Tunsberg.” A connection, especially with Dalorto’s map of 1339, seems again to be implied by Clavus’s statement in the Vienna text that on Lister Ness “white falcons are caught” (“Liste promontorium, ubi capiuntur falcones albi”). On Dalorto’s map there is a picture of a white falcon on the headland to the west of that which Clavus has made into Lister, and the words “hic sunt girfalcos” (here are hunting falcons). That Clavus has moved the hawks to a headland farther east is of small importance. Either he may have taken his hawks from Dalorto’s or a similar map, or else they are derived from an older common source.

Through the alteration of the south coast of Norway, it became necessary to separate it from Thule, which again became an island as originally in Ptolemy; but on the copies of the map it has in addition the name “Bellandiar,” which may be a corruption of Hetlandia (Shetland). The north-west coast of Norway has also been given a form which agrees better with the compass-charts, although it has a much more east-north-easterly direction than even on the Modena map; but this was, of course, necessary to make room for the sea “Nordhenbodnen” (Nordbotn). That the compass-charts might lead to something resembling Clavus’s last form of Scandinavia, and especially of the south coast of Norway, is shown by the map of Europe in Andrea Bianco’s atlas of 1436, which must have been drawn without knowledge of Clavus’s work. If on this map we move the coast of the Baltic farther south and Skåne also, which would be necessitated by a better knowledge of Denmark (and by the alteration of the map following Ptolemy), and draw the coast-line of Norway towards the east-north-east from the south-western promontory (instead of making it go in a northerly direction), we shall get a Scandinavia of very similar type to that in Clavus’s later map.

The north-western portion of the map of Europe in Andrea Bianco’s
atlas of 1436. The compass-lines are omitted

Björnbo and Petersen have maintained in their monograph that Clavus must have been in Norway before he drew this map, and that amongst other things his remarkably correct latitude for Trondhjem must be due to his own observation of the length of the day at the summer solstice. Storm [1889, p. 140] seems also to have supposed that Clavus may really have been in Norway. To me it appears that his map and text are conclusive evidence against his ever having been there; for a man who had sailed to Trondhjem along the coast of Norway could not possibly have produced a cartographical representation of the country so entirely at variance with reality as Clavus has done, however ignorant we may suppose him. The fact in itself that “Trunthheim” (Trondhjem) or “Nedrosia” is placed at the extremity of the south side of the south-western promontory of the country is extraordinary. If he had come there asleep he could not have got any such idea; and for a man who had sailed in through the long channel of the Trondhjem fjord up to the town it is incredible. It is equally incredible that a man who had sailed along the coast from Stavanger and Bergen to Trondhjem could place the latter town in a latitude 10′ to the south of Bergen, and only 10′ to the north of Stavanger. We are not justified in attributing to Clavus such an entire lack of power of observation, especially if we are to suppose him capable of determining with remarkable accuracy the length of the longest day at Trondhjem. That Trondhjem is placed to the west of Bergen and Stavanger, that the Dovrefjeld is called a high promontory, while on the Nancy map it was inland, that Hamar (“Amerensis”) is put on the sea-coast, etc., all shows the same want of knowledge of the country and its configuration. The names he may have taken from an itinerary or other sources, and, as already suggested, it is not unlikely that he may have found in the papal archives a fairly correct statement of the latitude (or length of the longest day) of Trondhjem, which was an archbishop’s see. That the towns he gives are just those that are the heads of dioceses is perhaps an indication of a connection with the Vatican.

Clavus tells us further that

This discloses an extraordinary lack of knowledge of Northern conditions. Such a connection of the islands with the mainland by ice occurs, of course, nowhere on the whole outer coast of Norway from Færder to the Murman Coast. On the other hand, the Gulf of Bothnia and the Åland archipelago are frozen over for a long time in winter, and it might be supposed that Clavus had heard reports of this. But I have not been able to discover any source from which he may have derived these fables. Most probably they are embellishments of the same kind as the eighteen islands of Norway, that form an arbitrary decoration of the coast-line of his map, a circumstance which does not hinder him from describing them as real. Clavus has used the ice as a transition between the representation of his older map, where Thule was part of the mainland, and that of the later one, where it was made into an island.

At the northernmost limit of Norway, between two places called “Ynesegh” and “Mestebrodh,” Clavus connected the Polar Sea (“Nordhinbodhn”) by a narrow channel with the Gotland Sea [the Baltic], and a little farther north, in 67°, he says that

Two things are to be remarked about this assertion that he himself had seen these Pygmies (one might suppose in Norway): (1) if he had really seen a captive Eskimo brought to Norway (by whom ?), he could hardly have been ignorant that this remarkable native was from Greenland, and not from a fabulous northern land. And (2), how could he then give their height as no more than a cubit, like the Pygmies of myth? It appears to me that in one’s zeal to defend Clavus, one would thus have to attribute to him two serious falsehoods, instead of a more innocent rhetorical phrase about having seen this, that, and the other.

Clavus’s statement about the Pygmies’ small hide-boats, and the long hide-boat, that hung in Trondhjem cathedral, is, however, of great interest from the fact that this is the first mention in literature of the two forms of Eskimo boat: the kayak and the women’s boat (“umiak”). Perhaps he got this from the same unknown source (in the Vatican ?) in which he found the statement of the latitude of Trondhjem (?). In the fact that the Wild Lapps are mentioned first, and after them the Pygmies, Clavus’s text again bears a great resemblance to the anonymous letter to Pope Nicholas V. (of about 1450). In the northernmost regions (to the north-west of Norway) this letter mentions [cf. Storm, 1899, p. 9]

Michael Beheim also mentions “Wild lapen,” who live in the forests to the north of Norway, and who carry on a dumb barter of furs with the merchants, like that described by the Arab authors as taking place in the country north of Wîsu (cf. p. 144), and he goes on to speak of the Skrælings, three spans high, etc. (cf. above, p. 85). Beheim’s statement differs from Clavus’s text, and this again from the letter to Nicholas V., so that one cannot be derived from the other. It is therefore most probable, as suggested already (p. 86), that they have all drawn from some older source, and it may be supposed that this was Nicholas of Lynn. We have seen that there are other points in Clavus that lead one’s thoughts in the same direction.

Clavus proceeds:

If we compare this with the “Rymbegla” tract already mentioned [1780, p. 466], we see that these are much the same ideas as there expressed. We read there

When it is there stated that

this is evidently something similar to what Clavus says; but the latter’s words as to the voyage which he attributes to Mandeville from the Indian Seres to Norway being more probable because there is land at the North Pole are somewhat incomprehensible.

Clavus’s assertion that he himself saw (“ut uidi”) Karelians in Greenland is impossible. As it is expressly stated that there was land at the North Pole, and as it is not mentioned that these Karelians had hide-boats like the Pygmies, the meaning must be that their armies came marching by the land route, which, of course, is an impossibility, which, if he had been in Greenland, would make him a worse romancer than if we suppose his “ut uidi” to mean that he had seen something of the sort stated in a narrative; but even this may be doubtful. In the Bruges itinerary [cf. Storm, 1891, p. 20] or some similar older authority, which we know he may have used, he may have seen “Kareli” beyond Greenland spoken of as “in truth a populus monstrosus.” We have already said that on the maps accompanying Marino Sanudo’s work he may have seen “Kareli infideles” marked on the mainland to the north-east of Norway, or even on an island out in the northern sea, and he would then naturally have connected the Karelians of the itinerary with these Karelians north of Norway. If we add to this that on the Medicean map of the world he saw the mass of the continent extending from Scandinavia and the peninsula corresponding to Greenland, northwards into the unknown, and that in the “Rymbegla” tract he saw mention of land at the North Pole—then, indeed, his whole statement seems to admit of a perfectly natural explanation.

His lack of knowledge of the conditions in Greenland appears again in his speaking of Pygmies and Karelians as two different peoples, one apparently on the sea, and the other marching in armies on land; and in his mentioning hide-boats as something peculiar to the former in the fabulous northern country, while he does not say that the Karelians in Greenland had boats or went to sea. If he had only spoken to people who had been in Greenland, he could hardly have avoided hearing of the Skrælings who come to meet every traveller in their hide-boats.

Map constructed by Dr. Björnbo after Clavus’s later description (the Vienna text).
(Björnbo and Petersen, 1904, Pl. II.)

It is an important difference between Clavus’s first and second maps (and also between his first and second texts) that on the latter Greenland is given a west coast. Its form bears an altogether striking resemblance to the west coast of the corresponding peninsula on the Medicean mappamundi, so that there can be no doubt that this coast is copied from it.[263] This is notably the case if we confine ourselves to Björnbo and Petersen’s reconstruction of the coast after the text of Clavus, from which it appears plainly enough that there are the same number of bays as on the Medici map; they are closest together near the southern point of the country; then come two larger bays to the north, then a very broad bay, longer than the two others together, and then a straighter coast-line to the north of that (cf. p. 236). The east coast of Greenland has in part been provided with corresponding bays, although this coast is almost straight on the Medici map; but this answers to the north coast of Scandinavia on the Nancy map having very nearly the same indentations as the south coast. In taking the Medici map as the foundation of Clavus’s Greenland coast we also have a natural explanation of the relation between his distribution of names on the east coast and the west. In his later text it is striking that his description of the east coast of Greenland does not reach farther than to his “Thær promontorium” in 65° 35′, while the description of the west coast goes as far north as 72°. This might seem to be connected with real local knowledge, since the latitude 65° 35′ on the east coast agrees in a remarkable way with the latitude of Cape Dan, 65° 32′, where the coast turns in a more northerly direction. To the north of this the coast is usually blocked with ice, and this place has therefore frequently been given as the northern limit of the known east coast, and probably it was there that the Icelanders first arrived off the land on their voyage westward to the Greenland settlements. But this is one of those accidental coincidences that sometimes occur, and that warn us to be careful not to draw too many conclusions from evidence of this nature.[264] We find the explanation in the Medici map (p. 236), where the east coast of the peninsula corresponding to Greenland does not go farther north than to about the same latitude as the promontory on the south side of the broad bay already referred to on the west coast, which promontory Clavus calls “Hynth” [“Hyrch”]; it lies in 65° 40′. As Clavus’s coast from this point of the east coast northward had no map to depend on, he did not venture to go farther in his description this time, though in the Nancy text he goes to 71° with his northernmost cape.

The Medicean map of the world gives us at the same time a simple explanation of Clavus’s designations for the two most northerly points on the west coast of Greenland. If we confine ourselves to the scale of latitude for the Medici map, which, as stated above (p. 259), we have found by using Ptolemy’s latitudes for more southern places on the map (Gibraltar and Brittany), and which is inserted in the left-hand margin of the reproduction, p. 236, we shall find the following: just at the spot of which Clavus declares: “New, the uttermost limit of the land which we know on this side, lies in 70° 10′,”[265] the heavy colouring of the land on the Medici map comes to an end (judging from the photograph in Ongania, Pl. V.). Farther to the north extends the coast of the lightly coloured mass of land; but just at this point, in 72°, where Clavus has his “ultimus locus uisibilis” [last point visible][266] this coast-line disappears into the oblique frame which cuts off the upper left-hand corner of the map. The agreement is here so exact and so complete that it would be difficult to find any way out of it.