Septentrionalium Terrarum descriptio.

1595 First Edition Mercator Map of the Arctic (1st Map of the North Pole)

Publication Date: 1595

About this Item

Very good. Generous margins. Minor corner reinstatement upper right - limited out outer margin. Size 15 x 16 Inches. This is the first edition, first state of Gerard Mercator's seminal 1595 map of the Arctic, the great cartographer's most interesting and important atlas map. In this first edition, it is the scarcest of Mercator's atlas maps and a holy grail for any Arctic collector. For all its flaws and inaccuracies, it is a schematized interpretation of factual voyages between Norway, England, Iceland, Greenland, and Labrador (Markland). Context of this Polar Projection Mercator's Arctic projection has its roots in a magnificent 1569 wall map of the world in which Mercator first introduces his revolutionary projection. The difficulty with the Mercator Projection is that it dramatically inflates the appearance of size it draws near to the poles: its application to the polar regions themselves would result in an infinitely tall map. Mercator therefore included a polar projection, very similar to the map shown here, in the lower-left corner of his wall map. Mercator produced the present map, expanded and updated from his wall map, for inclusion in the first edition of his Atlas , published posthumously in 1595. As such, it is the first specific separate map of the Arctic. Taking it from the Top At the North Pole, Mercator depicts a large black rock, the Rupes Nigra , surrounded by a great whirlpool fed by four powerful rivers - 'the Indrawing Seas'. These divide a massive continent-sized landmass into four distinct islands. When the English polymath John Dee wrote to Mercator asking about his sources for this map, Mercator returned the following letter which survives in his own hand (April 20, 1577, British Library): In the midst of the four countries is a Whirl-pool, into which there empty these four indrawing Seas which divide the North. And the water rushes round and descends into the Earth just as if one were pouring it through a filter funnel. It is four degrees wide on every side of the Pole, that is to say eight degrees altogether. Except that right under the Pole there lies a bare Rock in the midst of the Sea. Its circumference is almost 33 French miles, and it is all of magnetic Stone (…) This is word for word everything that I copied out of this author years ago. The author to which Mercator referred is the Dutch traveler Jacobus Cnoyen van Tsertoghenbosche, whose report combined firsthand encounters with interpretations of an enigmatic lost work, the Inventio Fortunata (Fortunate Discoveries). This 14th century work, now largely forgotten, was a well-known resource for cartographers of the 15th and 16th centuries. The mysterious author may have been Nicholas of Lynn, Thomas Kingsbury, or Hugh of Ireland. The work told of a Minorite monk from Oxford who traveled extensively in northern lands, including Iceland, Greenland, Norway, and possibly even Labrador. The Inventio also cited far older lost works, the Principio Gestorum Arturi and the Leges Anglorum Londoniis Collectae , which contributed a chapter to the legend of King Arthur, casting him as a 6th century Arctic explorer, and describing Arthurian conquests of Iceland, Greenland, the Faeroes, parts of Norway, and even the North Pole. King Arthur - Arctic Explorer The Inventio described Arthur's invading Arctic army as consisting of some 4000 men on 12 ships. He sent the army into one of these 'indrawing seas', apparently the only way to bypass the 'Encircling Arctic Mountains'. According to John Dee, in Arthur's time there were cities lying beyond those mountains. Perhaps unsurprisingly, no further report of this momentous invasion appears in Arthurian record. In the fourteenth century, at the court of King Håkan Magnusson (1340 - 1380) in Norway, Cnoyen met and interviewed eight travelers from northern regions. One, a priest, even carried an astrolabe. Historian E. G. Taylor ('A letter dated 1577 from Mercator to John Dee.' Imago Mundi 13:56 68) believed Cnoy.

Seller Inventory # NorthPole-mercator-1595

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Septentrionalium Terrarum descriptio.
• Publication Date: 1595
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Seller catalogs:
  • POLAR-ARCTIC-ANTARCTIC