Theater of the World

by Thomas Reinertsen Berg

  After drawing the central and southern parts of Europe except Spain and Portugal, Mercator started on the northern regions. Iceland had been fairly inaccurately represented on his map of Europe from 1554, but Mercator had now obtained a map from 1585, probably drawn by an Icelandic bishop, and the result was a dramatic map featuring an erupting Hekla Volcano. There’s even a monster splashing in the sea to the north of the island. Norway and Sweden had to make do with sharing one map between them, while Denmark was given an entire map to itself as Mercator had been supplied with information by a Danish viceroy.

  Not long after completing the maps of the northern regions, Mercator suffered a heart attack that left the entire left side of his body paralysed. He was greatly frustrated at not being able to work, but Mercator, who was now seventy-eight years old, knew that he would need another lifetime to complete everything he’d started. A text about the creation of the world was the last work he managed to complete before his death towards the end of 1594.

  One of Mercator’s sons and three of his grandchildren pulled together his posthumous works, and just four months after Mercator died, his Atlas was published, giving the world the name of a new genre of books. Ortelius had been the first, but Mercator was more greatly respected as a geographer, and perhaps this is why we say ‘atlas’ today, rather than ‘theatre of the world’. Sales of the book, however, were disappointing. Compared with Theatrum, Mercator’s Atlas was incomplete. It lacked maps of both Spain and Portugal, and only three maps–drawn not by Mercator but by his son and grandchildren–covered the world beyond Europe.

  Disappointed by the book’s failure, and in desperate need of money after Mercator’s last son died, leaving his wife and children with no income, the family sold the copper plates to Jodocus Hondius the Elder–who knew how to turn them into a moneymaking machine.

  RIVALRY | Hondius the Elder understood that people didn’t buy maps to find out the exact location of Venice or Puerto Rico–far more important was that the maps were attractive to look at and contained more information than the purely geographical. He therefore supplemented Mercator’s copper plates with extravagant, baroque illustrations of people in national costume, small city maps, more ships and larger cartouches. Mercator would probably have turned in his grave to see the result–but the Atlas sold. After its first printing in 1606, twenty-nine editions of the Mercator–Hondius Atlas were printed in Latin, Dutch, French, German and English.

  Jodocus Hondius the Elder died in 1612. His two sons, Jodocus the Younger and Henricus, took over the running of the firm, but disagreements caused them to part ways. Henricus joined forces with his brother-in-law Johannes Janssonius–Blaeu’s neighbour and copyist–while Jodocus started to produce maps for a new atlas. Jodocus, however, died suddenly at the age of just thirty-six before ever publishing a single copy of his work. And who ended up purchasing his posthumous copper plates? None other than Willem Blaeu–arch-rival of Johannes and Henricus.

  Blaeu was ecstatic. He would now be able to compete in the market for atlases, and just one year later published the Appendix Theatri A. Ortelii et Atlantis G. Mercatoris (Appendix to A. Ortelius’s Theatre and G. Mercator’s Atlas). Of the sixty included maps, an entire thirty-seven were the work of Hondius the Younger, but Blaeu simply replaced Jodocus’s name with his own, writing nothing of the deceased young man in his preface. Although the atlas appendix was inconsistent in terms of both the quality of the printing and its geographical scope, it was a hit among wealthy citizens looking to buy an atlas that had not been created by Henricus. Henricus and Johannes hit back almost immediately with a new appendix to their own atlas. Three years later, they published an expanded, French edition of the Mercator–Hondius Atlas, in which they attacked Blaeu, calling his atlas a ‘concoction of old maps’. This was the start of an atlas rivalry, in which each side constantly tried to surpass the other with increasingly larger and more painstakingly crafted editions.

  Blaeu gained a significant competitive advantage when he was appointed the East India Company’s official cartographer in 1632. Not only did the position give him the opportunity to earn significant amounts of money, it was also his job to stay up to date with all the new geographical information brought home by the company’s ships.

  In February 1634, Blaeu placed an ad in an Amsterdam newspaper: ‘At Amsterdam is now being printed by Willem Jansz Blaeu a large book of maps, an Atlas, in four languages: Latin, French, German and Dutch. The one in German will appear about Easter, the ones in Dutch and French in the month of May, or early June at the latest, and the one in Latin shortly thereafter. All editions on very fine paper, completely renewed with newly engraved copper plates and new, comprehensive descriptions.’ The new atlases were slightly delayed, and not finished until the following year, but ultimately contained a total of 207 maps divided between two volumes.

  Blaeu’s map of the Nordic region from 1635 bears clear signs of having been based on Andreas Bureus’s simplified representation of the Diocese of Stavanger, and it must therefore be the case that Scavenius’s map arrived in Amsterdam by some unknown means just after this version of Blaeu’s atlas was published. The following year, the Nova et accurata tabula episcopatum Stavangriensis, Bergensis et Asloiensis vicinarumque aliquot territorium was printed by Janssonius and Hondius for the first time–without crediting Scavenius.

  On the other hand, in 1638 Joan and Cornelius Blaeu called the map Dioecesis Stavangriensis & partes aliquot vicinæ, opera L. Scavenii, S. S, giving Scavenius the credit he deserved. The map was decorated with what the Dutch believed to be a typical Norwegian, equipped with an axe and logs to supply them with timber for shipbuilding, and flanked by typical Norwegian animals–two mountain goats.

  Joan and Cornelius Blaeu’s map Dioecesis Stavangriensis & partes aliquot vicinæ, opera L. Scavenii, S. S. (Diocese of Stavanger and some adjacent regions, prepared by L. Scavenii, S. S.). Telemark is a large, blank space as the Dutch had little knowledge of the area. ‘Mare Germanicum Vulgo De Noord Zee’ means that ‘North Sea’ is the usual name for these waters.

  Willem passed away the same year, and the Blaeu brothers inherited both Europe’s largest printworks with nine printing presses, of which six only printed maps, and the position of official cartographer with the East India Company, which Joan assumed. At the same time, Henricus Hondius withdrew from the map-making profession, and it became Blaeu vs Janssonius once again.

  BATTLE OF THE TITANS | In 1640, the Dutch merchant shipping fleet had a total of 2,000 ships–far more than any other country. The East India Company alone employed an entire 30,000 seamen, and the West India Company sailed to South Africa, west Africa and America, where in 1614 the Dutch founded New Amsterdam on an island the Native Americans called ‘Mannahata’. The income generated from the trading of pepper, ginger and nutmeg–goods highly valued in a Europe that had developed a taste for spices–was huge.

  All the ships needed maps to navigate by, and the captains and mates tasked with travelling to the Spice Islands were usually given a set of nine maps. The first showed the route from the Dutch island of Texel to the Cape of Good Hope; the second showed the Indian Ocean from Africa to the Sunda Strait between Java and Sumatra; the next three presented the Indonesian archipelago, and the last four were individual maps of Sumatra, the straits, Java and Jakarta.

  All these maps were created by Joan Blaeu and his assistants. A cartographer’s salary wasn’t much–just 500 guilders a year–but Blaeu was also able to sell new maps to the company, which in 1668 resulted in him earning an astronomical 21,135 guilders. These earnings, combined with the access to information brought home by maritime personnel, put Blaeu in the privileged position of being able to continually publish new atlases in an increasing number of volumes–but the competitive pressure applied by Janssonius was intense. Both parties were locked in a battle to create the greatest atlas of the age. They doubled and redoubled their efforts, printing increasingly larger, more ambitious and more costly atlases o
ver the 1640s and 1650s. The results of this competition read almost like football scores, the number of volumes published like the number of goals:

  1640: Blaeu 3–Janssonius 3

  1645: Blaeu 4–Janssonius 3

  1646: Blaeu 4–Janssonius 4

  1650: Blaeu 4–Janssonius 5

  1654: Blaeu 5–Janssonius 5

  1655: Blaeu 6–Janssonius 5

  1658: Blaeu 6–Janssonius 6

  It was neck and neck. Blaeu set out to create an atlas that would surpass his rival once and for all–a magnificent work giving complete descriptions of the land mass, the seas and the heavens: Atlas maior, sive cosmographia Blaviana, qua solum, salum, coelum, accuratissime describuntur (Grand Atlas or Blaeu’s Cosmography, in Which are Most Accurately Described Earth, Sea, and Heaven). Blaeu dedicated all his resources to completing the work, holding a closing-down sale at his bookshop in 1662 because he wanted to do nothing other than work on the atlas. When the atlas was finally published later that year, it became clear why Blaeu had needed both time and money. The Atlas Maior was gigantic–nobody had ever printed anything like it before. The eleven volumes comprising 4,608 pages and 594 maps made all previous atlases pale into insignificance. The price was congruous with its product: 430 guilders for a coloured edition, almost as much as Blaeu’s annual salary and the equivalent of around £25,000 today. In other words, the book was not something for the general public, but rather for aristocrats, diplomats and merchants.

  The Atlas Maior can easily be said to be the world’s most beautiful and most impressive atlas. But it was also a statue with feet of clay; a dinosaur. Blaeu and Janssonius prioritised quantity over quality, and extravagance over accuracy–their strategy was to spew out as many maps as possible. Some of the maps in the Atlas Maior were thirty years old, and this lack of innovation on Blaeu’s part may have been due to commercial reasons–he had invested so much money in the project that he didn’t want to risk introducing new, unfamiliar maps. Perhaps he had also learned from Mercator’s failure upon presenting his new, accurate and markedly unspectacular maps eighty years earlier. In any case, Blaeu’s work was no failure: the Atlas Maior sold well, and has remained popular as a deluxe edition–the greatest cartographic publication of the extravagant Baroque era.

  MILITARY MAPS | While Blaeu and Janssonius were caught up in their own private battle, the Dutch had been fighting a much bigger war–and the conflicts with Spain continued even after the Netherlands had informally declared its independence in 1579. While private cartographers were most concerned with atlases, globes, world maps and city maps, the military required strategic maps of border areas and fortifications. In 1600, Leiden University started offering a programme of study within mathematics, engineering and land surveying, and textbooks such as Practijck des lantmetens (Land Surveyor Practice) were published the same year. The Dutch engineers soon gained a reputation for their innovative practices–including beating the Spanish troops by destroying strategically constructed dams to flood the enemy–and many were offered appointments abroad. One of them even managed to get lost on his journey northwards to a Danish province.

  Isaac van Geelkerck, a cartographer’s son, drew his first map when he was around sixteen years old, and was therefore highly experienced by the time he was employed as a cartographer and military engineer by the Danish-Norwegian Army in 1644 at the age of twenty-nine. Two years later, he drew a map of Bergen featuring suggestions for new fortifications–the oldest surviving map of the city. Later, van Geelkerck also drew maps of the border areas, the seaward approach to Gothenburg, the Diocese of Trondheim and the city of Fredrikstad. In 1650, he was recalled from leave to complete a map of Norway he had started work on. This map was probably never finished, but just a few years later a map of Denmark and Norway–Daniæ et Norvægie tabula–was created, partly ‘ex Is. Geelkerckij’–‘by Isaac van Geelkerck’. His work on the map must have already been well under way when he left Norway in 1657.

  On one of van Geelkerck’s maps of the border areas, Abris der Smaa Lehnen (Østfold), Båhuslen is shown as a part of Norway–a part that was transferred to Sweden the year after van Geelkerck had left the country. At the same time, a treaty regarding the demarcation and setting of the new international border was signed.

  The border between Norway and Sweden had always been fluid. Not even in 1645, when Norway had to admit that ‘regarding Jemptelandh and Herredalen, to a certain extent Herredalen is situated on the Swedish side of the mountains,’ was an accurate border line drawn. But in the summer and autumn of 1661, the border from Iddefjord to Hisøya/Hisön in Nordre Kornsjø was determined and entered on an official map, and the ‘Riksrøys 1’ border stone can still be seen here today. But the border further north would not be finally settled until seventy-seven years later.

  THE BORDER | The border disputes at Finnmark continued after Christian IV of Denmark’s voyage around the Cap of the North to show his power. In 1709, when Denmark-Norway went to war with Sweden yet again, the disputes were mentioned in the declaration of war. Only when the two countries were back on truly amicable terms in 1734 was a treaty signed, which stated that the countries must settle disputes ‘in all the places where any dispute regarding the Norwegian border may arise.’ But settling border disputes was not the same as establishing an international border, and in an official communication Christian VI wrote that the aim should be to ‘compose a complete map and drawing of the boundary line and area between Norway and Sweden on both sides.’ The commissaries asked whether the border area should be ‘approached geometrically, with all lines, angles and curvatures stated in their net length and breadth,’ or simply ‘geographically’, based on the statements of local people. The king ordered the first method–a decision indicative of the accuracy he was striving to achieve.

  The middle section of the tripartite Norlandia Map, which shows the shipping routes from Troms to Trøndelag, and more specifically from Andsnes to Leka and Gutvik, using a dotted line. This part of the map shows a small boat between Kielsøe (Tjeldøya), Hindøen (Hinnøya) and Hameröe (Hamarøy), a large ship flying the Danish flag in the Westfiorden, another out by Røst and two small boats sailing along the dotted line past Engelvær and Brixvær (Bliksvær), respectively. The map is neither signed nor dated, but is thought to be from around the year 1750. It measures 215 x 38 cm. The border, featuring a decorative gold pattern, is possibly made from wallpaper.

  The boundary survey began at Hisøya on 1 August 1738. When surveying of the first area was completed–an area at a boundary marker where the Norwegian municipalities of Aremark and Marker butt up against Sweden–the Norwegian land surveyors created a map on which they clearly marked where Norway believed the border line to be. The border line according to Sweden was marked on the map with a fainter line, and the area between the two lines marked with a separate colour. The disputes here related to what had long been regarded as completely insignificant areas. But when the land surveyors reached the village of Indre, east of Elverum, they arrived in the regions occupied by Sweden almost 100 years earlier. In earlier times, the border of Indre Parish towards Rendalen had passed through the lake at Femunden from south to north, and based on this the Swedes submitted a map on which the international border followed the same path. Norway would have liked to reclaim part of Indre, but even more important was to ensure that the copper mill at Røros, a significant consumer of timber for its smelting works, had access to large areas of forest. Denmark-Norway therefore proposed a compromise. In exchange for Denmark-Norway not requesting the return of all of Indre Parish, the international border would be set twenty to twenty-five kilometres east of Femunden, and the country enlisted the help of Major Peter Schnitler to submit this request.

  Schnitler was both a military officer and a jurist. After having submitted his ‘Deduction of the Nordenfields border line between Norway and Sweden’, and having had a certain level of success with this–today the border runs over ten kilometres east of Femunden–he was ta
sked with travelling up the entire border from Røros to Varanger to perform surveys and hold court sessions to ask the local population where they believed the border to be. During his travels, Schnitler proved to be a capable cartographer. In October 1742, he was ‘held up by the weather’ at Inderøy, and used the time to create ‘an approximate map, with the border drawn as explained by witnesses’, of the areas he had visited so far: Inderøy, Namdal, Helgeland and Salten. He later also produced maps of the rest of Nordland, Senja, Tromsø and Finnmark. In early 1746 he wrote in his journal: ‘From 16 January to 16 February, created preparatory geographical maps of Nordland’s Lappmark, to the extent it belongs to the bailiwick of Senjen and Tromsø, and sent them to the royal officials at the same location.’

  Schnitler sent all his maps and journals on to the Norwegian military engineers, who worked in his tracks. They accurately measured what Schnitler had drawn only by eye, used the information he had obtained from the locals in the negotiations with Sweden, and added all the border markers he had witnessed to their completed maps. It is difficult to overemphasise the importance of Schnitler’s role in locating the northern border between Norway and Sweden where it remains today.

  On 2 October 1751, the treaty regarding the longest border between two countries in Europe was signed, regulating the approximately 2,200-kilometre-long border from Hisøya to Golmmešoaivi, south of the Varangerfjord, where the areas common to both Norway and Russia began. The border was marked with border markers and surveyed by land surveyors from both countries over the next fifteen years.

  During the work on the border with Sweden, Norway had gained its first college to educate land surveyors, but the timing of this was coincidental. There was dissatisfaction among the ranks of the Danish-Norwegian Army because officers were not required to possess any form of education, and consequently promotions were generally given to those who were of noble birth, or had connections or the money to buy themselves a title. These individuals, it was said, contributed little ‘strength or competence’ to the profession. Someone noticed that a German citizen in Trondheim, Georg Michael Döderlein, was offering to teach ‘officers or officers’ children in the mathematical sciences’, and that several of his students had become good engineers. The king was asked whether it would be possible to make better use of Döderlein to rid the army of its ‘ignorance’, and in December 1750 Döderlein was appointed the first leader of Den frie matematiske Skole (the Free Mathematical School) in Oslo. Here, students could learn ‘the spherical trigonometry and land surveying’–for the first time, Norway had an educational institution at which one could learn to make maps. This was the start of both the Norwegian Military Academy and the Norwegian Mapping and Cadastre Authority.