Theater of the World

by Thomas Reinertsen Berg

  Ultima Thule is an island of the Ocean in the northwestern region, beyond Britannia, taking its name from the sun, because there the sun makes its summer solstice, and there is no daylight beyond (ultra) this. Hence its sea is sluggish and frozen.

  Isidore’s Etymologies was used as a source of knowledge over the next 900 years. It was the most popular book in medieval libraries–almost 1,000 handwritten copies of it have survived, and we can safely assume that Snorri Sturluson read it. Around the year AD 800, a copy of the Etymologies could be found in every cultural hub in Europe. It paved the way for similar books that were written and published in other parts of the world.

  The cover of one edition of the Etymologies features a map that attempts to illustrate the geography the book describes. The book is from the 800s, but various studies have concluded that the map is from the late 600s or early 700s, making it the oldest surviving medieval map we know of. The map is simple–it looks like something a student might scribble down while listening to a lecture given by a tutor–but it nonetheless says something about the direction in which cartography was moving. Asia is marked with the name of Shem, Africa with Ham and Europe with Japheth; the map is oriented towards the east, with the Mediterranean extending up from the bottom to branch out into the River Nile to the south and River Don to the north. From the very top, Christ rules over all below him, his hands pierced by nails and his arms spread wide above the globe to signal his protection of it.

  CHRISTIANISATION | This religious shift became even clearer when the Spanish abbot Beatus of Liébana drew a map for inclusion in a book about the coming apocalypse–the year AD 800 was looming perilously close when he started his work. Theologists at the time believed that doomsday would arrive that year because 6,000 years had passed since the Earth’s creation. Every thousand years that passed was equivalent to one of the six days God used on the creation of the world, and on the seventh day–7,000 years–after God had defeated Satan and condemned living and dead to heaven and hell, the world would enter a state of eternal Sunday peace.

  Beatus counted all the years in the Bible–from the creation to the Flood, from Noah to Abraham, from Abraham to King David, from David to the Babylonian exile and from Babylon until the birth of Jesus–and concluded that 5,987 years had passed since God created the Earth. The end was therefore only thirteen years away. His map was intended to illustrate biblical history from creation to doomsday; in the east he drew Paradise with Adam and Eve, where history began, and the twelve apostles in the areas to which, as legend would have it, they had travelled–Matthew in Macedonia, Thomas in India, Simon in Egypt and John in Spain–to illustrate that doomsday would come when all the peoples of the world had been converted to Christianity.

  Augustine and Orosius had presented a view of history that moved from east to west. The creation had taken place in the Far East, but after the fall history moved further and further west, via Babylonian, Assyrian and Macedonian empires, to the Roman Empire and its conquests of Spain, France and Britain–the world’s westernmost outposts, where the Sun set over the sea. Now, history had no more geography upon which to unfold. Soon, everything must come to an end.

  The dragons at the very bottom of the map in the English prayer book, in the west, are a part of this history, and Beatus was the first person to present this history using a map. He used a Roman map as the basis for his own, layering the events of biblical history over it, and thereby started the tradition of filling maps with increasing references to the word of God, the Tower of Babel, Noah’s Ark, the Red Sea, the Sea of Galilee, the crucifixion and the Day of Judgement. From the 800s, the biblical narrative included on maps was supplemented with secular information about other peoples, zoology, botany and legends from classical antiquity. The maps were similar to illustrated encyclopedias, and people who were unable to read could obtain a visual overview of the medieval knowledge of the world by looking at them in churches, prayer books and textbooks.

  A third of the Catalan Atlas from 1375, in a restored version from 1959. It was probably created by Cresques Abraham in Mallorca, although this is not known for certain. The map is reproduced here in the correct orientation–it should be read from east to west. Norway is a mound of rocks down in the north.

  But few mappae mundi could present new geographical knowledge based on exploration. Since the decline of the Roman Empire’s infrastructure, travelling had become more difficult for the Europeans, and reports of the Norse expeditions rarely reached the scholarly, Latin-speaking cartographers on the continent. Those who travelled were missionaries, pilgrims, crusaders and certain traders–few travelled for travel’s sake. In the greatest literary work of the Middle Ages, the Divine Comedy by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)–a theological travelogue from hell, purgatory and heaven–we meet the Greek seafarer Ulysses in hell. Ulysses tells of how he set out on a final journey, because he wished to explore the world. He sailed west towards unknown waters, through the Strait of Gibraltar, ‘Where Hercules his landmarks set as signals,/That man no farther onward should adventure,’ and said to his crew: ‘Consider ye the seed from which ye sprang;/Ye were not made to live like unto brutes,/But for pursuit of virtue and of knowledge.’ Dante, however, had little time for Ulysses’ desire to learn–he saw this as a kind of vain curiosity. Only towards the end of the 1200s did eyewitness accounts start to make a systematic mark on European maps.

  NORðWEG | Like Ulysses, the Norwegian seafarer Ohthere of Hålogaland set out to explore the outer edges of the world. He set sail some time towards the end of the 800s, with the intention of travelling as far north as he possibly could. Some years later, he described his journey to King Alfred the Great of Wessex. King Alfred must have enjoyed the story, as he had it written down and added to the Anglo-Saxon translation of Orosius’s Historiarum, which only described the world south of the Alps.

  Ohthere told his lord, King Alfred, that he lived the furthest north of all Norwegians. He said that he lived in the north of Norway on the coast of the Atlantic. He also said that the land extends very far north beyond that point, but it is all uninhabited, except for a few places here and there where the Finnas have their camps, hunting in winter, and in summer fishing in the sea. He told how he once wished to find out how far the land extended due north, or whether anyone lived to the north of the unpopulated area. He went due north along the coast, keeping the uninhabited land to starboard and the open sea to port continuously for three days. He was then as far north as the whale hunters go at their furthest. He then continued due north as far as he could reach in the second three days. There the land turned due east, or the sea penetrated the land–he did not know which.

  Ohthere sailed to the White Sea in Russia, and then home again. To King Alfred, he described Norway as a long, narrow country–‘broadest in the south, and the further north it goes the narrower it becomes.’ Alongside the southern part of the country, on the other side of the mountains, was Svealand, and alongside the northern part the land of the Kvens. Ohthere was a merchant, and often travelled south to Skiringssal, a market town not far from where Larvik is situated today. From there, he travelled on to Hedeby in Denmark to exchange furs for luxury goods and textiles:

  From Sciringes heal [Skiringssal] he said that he sailed in five days to the trading-town called Hedeby, which is situated among Wends, Saxons and Angles and belongs to the Danes. When he sailed there from Sciringes heal he had Denmark to port and the open sea to starboard for three days. Then two days before he arrived at Hedeby he had Jutland and Sillende and many islands to starboard. The Angles lived in these districts before they came to this land. On the port side he had, for two days, those islands which belong to Denmark.

  So ends the oldest existing description of Europe’s northern fringes. This is also the oldest description that is dated and features the name form ‘Norway’–Norðweg. Over 100 years later, an anonymous Briton drew a world map that to some extent combined geographical information from both Orosius an
d Ohthere–the Cottoniana or ‘Anglo-Saxon map’ exhibits a strong Nordic influence, since Neronorweci, Island, Dacia and Gothia are included, if not particularly accurately located or reproduced.

  The links between the Nordic region and the rest of Europe were strengthened when the region was Christianised and began to learn Latin. Initially, before Lund, Nidaros and Uppsala became archdioceses, the Nordic region came under the administration of Bremen and Hamburg, and around the year AD 1070 clergyman Adam of Bremen wrote the History of the Archbishops of Hamburg-Bremen. The book was the most detailed description of the Nordic region to be written in Latin, and describes Norway as follows:

  As Nortmannia is the farthest country of the world, so we properly place consideration of it in the last part of the book […]. It begins with towering crags at the sea commonly called the Baltic; then with its main ridge bent toward the north, after following the course of the shore line of a raging ocean, it finally has its bounds in the Riphean Mountains, where the tired world also comes to an end.

  Nidaros became an archdiocese in the year AD 1154, around the same time that the Historia Norwegiæ–a work describing Norway and the northern regions–was written by an anonymous Norwegian author. Here, Norway is described as a large country, although mostly uninhabited due to extensive forests, mountains and extreme cold, and located as follows:

  It starts in the east from the Great River, but bends towards the west and so turns back as its edge circles round northwards. Full of fjords and creeks, it is a country that pushes out countless headlands, and along its length encompasses three habitable zones: the first and largest is the seaboard; the second is the inland area, also known as the mountain region; the third is wooded and populated by the Finns, but there is no agriculture there. To the west and north, Norway is enclosed by the Ocean tides, to the south lie Denmark and the Baltic Sea, while to the east are Sweden, Götaland, Ångermanland and Jämtland.

  The Christianisation of the region resulted in prominent Scandinavians and Icelanders sending their sons off to study on the continent. Many returned home with both transcripts and books they had purchased, containing the scholarly, Latin literature of the age, and much of this was translated into Icelandic. From the 1100s we have the Landafræði (Geography)–clearly influenced by Isidore of Seville and others: ‘Paradise is located in the eastern part of the world […]. Then Noah divided the world into three parts between his sons, and gave names to all the parts of the world that previously had no name. He called one part of the world Asia, another Africa, and the third Europe.’ The book’s geographical origins reveal knowledge of the northern regions: ‘The country from Vegistafr in the north–where Finnmark is situated by Gandvik–to the Göta älv river in the south, is called Norway. This country’s boundaries are Gandvik to the north and the Göta älv river to the south, Eidskog to the east and Engelsøysundet to the west. The main cities in Norway are the market town of Trondheim, the resting place of King Olaf II of Norway; the next is Bergen in Hordaland, the resting place of Saint Sunniva; the third is to the east of Vik, the resting place of Saint Hallvard, kinsman of King Olaf.’

  Vegistafr was the northern boundary of the old, Norwegian kingdom, probably the Russian Cape Svyatoy Nos on the western side of the White Sea, while Engelsøysundet is the Menai Strait between the island of Anglesey and the Welsh mainland. In other words, Norway extended to the west coast of Britain. Landafræði was probably written by Níkulás Bergsson, the first abbot at the newly established Benedictine monastery at Munkatverå in northern Iceland in AD 1155, and who also wrote the travelogue Leiðarvísir (Guidebook) about a journey from Iceland to Jerusalem. Níkulás crossed Europe on foot after travelling first to Norway, and then on to Denmark. ‘Thus pilgrims travelling to Rome may expect the journey from Aalborg to Viborg to take two days […]. Another way to Rome is to travel from Norway to Frisland, to Deventer or Utrecht, where one may collect one’s staff and bag, and be blessed prior to the journey to Rome.’ From Rome, Níkulás journeyed down to Brindisi, and from there to Venice, Greece, Turkey and Cyprus by boat, before coming ashore at Acre and from here travelling up to Jerusalem–‘This is the finest of all the world’s cities.’

  In setting out on his journey, Níkulás set himself apart from other Benedictines. Upon admission to the monastery, the monks made a vow to stay in one place–stabilitas loci. Through reading descriptions of journeys to the Holy Land, however, it was possible to embark on a peregrinatio in stabilitate–a pilgrimage undertaken without moving. Matthew Paris, a British Benedictine monk, created a map for this purpose around the year AD 1250–it extends across several pages of a book, and by turning from one page to the next, monks could ‘travel’ from the monastery to London, Dover, Calais, Paris, Rome and Otranto, where they boarded a ship and travelled to the Holy Land and Jerusalem–all while sitting at a desk.

  Books such as Landafræði and Leiðarvísir were written at the dawn of Norse penmanship and literary culture–when the Old Icelandic language, which would later be used to compose the Sagas, was coming into being as the conveyor of literature. The Icelandic written culture took shape when the domestic and the European stimulated each other, and it was during this time and in this environment that Snorri Sturluson grew up.

  HEIMSKRINGLA | Snorri has completed his book about Norse mythology and minstrelsy, and is now starting work on a larger work about the Norwegian kings. In the Edda, he had already told of how the Asians are ‘most richly endowed with all gifts, with wisdom and strength, with beauty and with all knowledge’ compared to other peoples, and how chieftains from Troy in Turkey had travelled north to become the start of the Nordic royal lineage. Now, Snorri aims to provide a more detailed description of their history and where they came from. The Old Norse kings’ sagas open with a long description of the world:

  It is said that the earth’s circle (Heimskringla), which the human race inhabits, is torn across into many bights, so that great seas run into the land from the out-ocean. Thus it is known that a great sea goes into Njorvasound, and up to the land of Jerusalem. From the same sea a long sea-bight stretches toward the northeast, and is called the Black Sea, and divides the three parts of the earth; of which the eastern part is called Asia, and the western is called by some Europe, by some Enea. Northward of the black Sea lies Svithjod the Great, or the Cold. The Great Svithjod is reckoned by some not less than the Saracens’ land, others compare it to the Great Blueland. The northern part of Svithjod lies uninhabited on account of frost and cold, as likewise the southern parts of Blueland are waste from the burning sun.

  Snorri’s place names are not immediately understandable to a modern reader. ‘Njorvasound’ is the Strait of Gibraltar, and the sea that stretches to the land of Jerusalem is the Mediterranean. The country to the north of the Black Sea is Russia, but Snorri uses the Norse name for Sweden, Svithjod, instead of Gardarike, which was the common name for Russia in the sagas. Perhaps he confused Svitjod with the Greek Skytia, a kingdom located in south-eastern Russia during antiquity. The ‘Saracens’ land’ is the area that stretches from southern Iraq to Morocco–the Arabic countries–while ‘Blueland’ is the rest of Africa, named for the blue-black skin of the country’s inhabitants.

  Like Greek Herodotus, Roman Pliny and church father Isidore of Seville, Snorri describes the Tanais River (Don) as the dividing line between Europe and Asia, but claims that this was previously known as the Vanaquisl:

  The country surrounding the Vanaquisl was therefore known as Vanaland or Vanaheim, and the river separates the three parts of the world, of which the easternmost is called Asia and the westernmost Europe. The country east of the Tanaquisl in Asia was called Asaland or Asaheim, and the chief city in that land was called Asgard. In that city was a chief called Odin, and it was a great place for sacrifice.

  Vanaheim, writes Snorri, was where the Vani lived–a group of gods who fought the first ever war against Asgard and the other tribe of gods, the Æsir. Snorri uses the similarity between the Norse word
‘Æsir’ and the word ‘Asia’ for all it’s worth, thereby linking the pagan Norse religion to Asia, the holy part of the world, and giving the Norwegian kings a noble, Asian descent. In fact, Odin is forced to flee northwards due to the war, and his son, Sæmingr, becomes the forefather of the Norwegian kings. Snorri reinforces Norwegian royal power using geography, by incorporating it into a map that emphasises noble origins.

  Around the same time, King Henry III of England used geography to bolster his power when the barons revolted in 1258. In a chamber in the Palace of Westminster, where he had both living quarters and meeting rooms, he had a large mappa mundi painted on the wall behind the chair in which he sat as a signal of his knowledge and power. The strategy worked only up to a point–five years later the map was destroyed in a fire during the Barons’ War. Matthew Paris had created a copy of the map, however–and although the copy has also been lost, it is probable that the map in the English prayer book is a copy of this in turn. The enormous amount of information included on this small map may indicate that it is based on a larger original. The 145 inscriptions on a circle measuring only 8.5 centimetres in diameter make the map a highly detailed medieval reference work.

  The image of Jesus included on the map has its roots in the classical tradition. Here, Jesus is holding a globe in the same way as the Roman god Jupiter, to show that he rules over the world. The globe he is holding is divided into three parts, as is the Earth below him. The gesture he’s making with his right hand, with his index and ring fingers bent, dates back to how Roman orators would signal their right to speak. The twelve winds that encircle the world have classical names; the north wind, septentrio, is named after the seven oxen (septem triones) the Romans saw in the Plough, and septentriones became the Roman name for the north.