Zeno and the Cartography of Greenland

Author(s): William Herbert Hobbs

Source: Imago Mundi, Vol. 6 (1949), pp. 15-19
Published by: Imago Mundi, Ltd.
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Fig. I. Zeno's map, 1380 (1558).

Zeno and the Cartographyof Greenland.

By WILLIAM HERBERT HOBBS, Ann Arbor.

A study of the early mappemondes of the Middle Ages reveals that the first to show any close resemblance to the actual outline of Greenland, is that by Nicolo and Antonio Zeno (fig. i) which, though based
on voyages made near the close of the Fourteenth Century, was not published until a century and a half
later (I558)1 at Venice.
To appreciate how great an advance of our knowledge was made by the Zeno map, it is only necessary
to examine the state of knowledge before 1558. This is indicated by the map of Gastaldi (fig. 2) published
1 Dei Commentarii del Viaggio in Persia di M. Caterino Zeno il k. & delle guerre fatti nell' Imperio Persiano, dal Tempo
di Vssun-Cassano in qui Libri Due, et dello Scoprimento dell' Isole Frislanda, Eslanda, Engrouelanda, Estotilanda & Icaria,
fatto sotto il Polo Artico, da due fratelli Zeni, AM.Nicolb il k. e M. Antonio. Libro Uno. Con un disegno particulari di tutte le
dette parte di Tramontana da lor Scoperte. Con Gratia e privilegio. In Venetia Per Francesco Marcolino. MDLVIII. This
very rare volume, with map, is known to be in three American libraries: The Clements Library at Ann Arbor, the Library
of Congress, and that of the Surgeon General's Office in Washington. An English translation with facsimiles of the folios
of the original Italian text is by FRED W. LUCAS.The Annals of the Voyages of the Brothers Nicol6 and Antonio Zeno
in the North Atlantic about the End of the Fourteenth Century, and the Claim Founded Thereon to a Venetian Discovery
of America, A Criticism and an Indictment. London, I898.

2--9o0256

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Fig. 2. From the J. Gastaldi's world-map in "La Geografia di C. Ptolemeo", I548.

at Venice in I5482, where under the name Groelandia,Greenland appears at the top margin. The Carta
Marina of Olaus Magnus, though it appeared at Venice nineteen years earlier than the Zeno Map and bears
some small resemblance (fig. 3), is almost certainly copied (perhaps from memory) from it. Olaus was in
Venice in I539 while Nicolo was doubtless preparing his ancestor's map for publication there. As a high
Church prelate, Olaus must have been in communication with Nicolo, who was also a distinguished geographer, and high in the government of the state as a member of the powerful Council of Ten.3
To determine to what extent, if any, maps dating from the Middle Ages have been based upon exploration, it is necessary to enquire what navigational aids could have been and were employed by their makers.
The ancient mariners were accustomed to keep in sight of land, anchor at nightfall near some headland,
and resume their voyage at the next dawn, unless held up by storm or fog. If driven by storm out of sight
of land, a land-bird brought with them (usually a pigeon) was released, and they steered in the direction of its flight. All islands discovered which were not close to the mainland received therefore a haphazard location on the map, since the mariner had no means of measuring distance traveled at sea. The
size of an island on the map was that sufficient to display the necessary details - bays, capes, cities, etc.,
for the map could have had no common scale.
Even after the compass had come into general use in the North Atlantic in the Fourteenth Century,
only the very courageous dared venture there into the unknown seas. The best criterion, therefore, for
judging ancient maps is the outline of coasts. If skirted and surveyed by compass, the outlines of islands
began to assume more or less their actual shape, though not necessarily their correct orientation. The
primitive mariner's compass of the Fourteenth Century was a piece of loadstone set in a reed, floated in a
basin of water and held in the hand during rough weather.
The astrolabe was invented near the beginning of the Christian Era, used to cast horoscopes and,
much later, to read time at night from the elevation of Polaris and the stars of the Dippers. It was not
employed to fix latitudes at sea until the Fifteenth Century4, and then largely through the influence of
the navigation school of Henry the Navigator. Its use was then restricted to seas of the Northern Hemi2 Those interested in still earlier
maps on which Greenland appears, but with no resemblance to its actual outline, and
clearly not based upon exploration, should consult A. A. BJORNBO, Cartographia Groenlandica, Med. om Gronl., 48.
I910, 332 p., or R. H. MAJOR, The voyages of the Venetian brothers Nicol6 and Antonio Zano, etc., Hakluyt Society,

London, 1873.
8 In RUSCELLI'S Italian Edition of "Ptolemy" published at Venice in
I56i, Nicol6 Zeno is referred to as an authority in
both history and geography, "universally held to have, at this day, few equals in the whole of Europe".
4 See I'Abb6 ALBERT ANTHIAUME, Recherches sur l'Histoire de la Science Nautique anterieurement a la decouverte du
Nouveau Monde, Societe Havraise d'Etudes diverses, Extrait du Recueil de ses Publications, Le Havre, 1913, 235 p.

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C ARTA M ARINA ET DESCRIPTI

Fig. 3. From the Olaus Magnus' map, 1539.

sphere, where those stars could be seen, but in 1485 Martin Beheim prepared and published sailing tables
giving the meridional angular elevation of the sun for some distance both north and south of the Equator.
The mechanical log for measuring the speed of vessels, and so with the compass permit of dead reckoning,
seems first to have come into use in the Sixteenth Century. The use of watches to determine longitude,

though first suggested in 1530, began in 1765.

The compass needle was supposed to point to the true north, though actually its pointing was toward
the magneticNorth Pole of the earth, which when first discovered by James Clark Ross in 1831 was found
to be located in latitude 70? N, longitude 96? W, or some fourteen hundred miles south of the North Pole.5
The compass has therefore a variation from the true north depending upon its location. The locational
values did not become known until comparatively recent times.6 Today the values are known for all the
seas, and so it is now possible to correct the maps of all the early explorers who made use of the compass
in their navigation, and left a record of the compass bearings.7As an example, we may take the first westward cruise of Columbus in 1492. He steered by compass to the west from the Canaries, but the western
declination of his compass carried into the tropics and east of the Windward Islands.
Let us then examine the Zeno map of Greenland (fig. i). Nicolo's narrative shows that he sailed from
Svalbard or Spitsbergen (then Islanda) and in a northerly direction, which with compass correction
would be north north-west (fig. 4). That would bring him against the southern margin of the frozen Arctic
Ocean, and force him to follow it to the Greenland coast near Gael Hamke Bay, a position where later
explorers have found a comparatively easy landing place.
5 Since that time, it has migrated northward and is now in latitude 73? N, longitude 100? W. See R. GLENNMEDILL,
The search for the North Magnetic Pole, Arctic, vol. I, No. I, 1948, 8-I8, map fig. i.
6 The earliest map I have been able to find with compass variations indicated is dated 1765, and on this map the values
given are largely in error: BELLIN, Carte des variations de la Boussole, 1765.
7 For these values see H. 0. chart No. 1706 of the Navy Department (The variation of the compass for year 1945).

17

Fig. 5.

Fig. 6.

Fig. 4.

In the narrative Nicolo described finding in East Greenland many things which later explorers had
not discovered there: a populous settlement of Eskimos, a monastery of Catholic friars, volcano in eruption, hot springs with which the friars heated their houses and the church, summer shipping connection
with Scandinavia and Spitsbergen, etc. This had been considered quite fantastic and even false, so that
the Zeni have quite generally been classed with the great faker Cook. Yet during the last half century
the evidence for all of these has been found there.8
After his stay in East Greenland Nicolo Zeno skirted the East Greenland coast and arrived at Frisland (Iceland). Some years later his brother Antonio skirted the Greenland West Coast and prepared
the map, which with interior mountains removed, is our fig. 5. The outline is here so much like the actual
one that, with some knowledge and experience of Greenland, I was at once convinced that the island
must have been skirted and mapped by compass, notwithstanding the fact that its long axis is turned
clockwise through about half a right angle. The reason for this is not far to seek, for the compass variations in the waters about Greenland are excessively high and generally 45 degrees or more (fig. 4). Making
8 LAUGE KOCH, The geology of East Greenland. Med. om Gronl., 73, 1929, 192; D. MCL.JOHNSON,Observations on the
Eskimo

remains

on the east coast of Greenland

Dodemandsbugten,

18

an Eskimo settlement

between

72? and 75? North Latitude,

ibid., 92, 1933, 69 p.; HELGA LARSEN,

on Clavering Island, ibid., 102, 1934, 186 p.

the corrections, map fig. 5 is transformed into fig. 6, which resembles closely the present-day map. Because
the compass variations off the West Greenland coast are considerably greater than those off the eastern
shore, the island has in this correction broadened toward the north, and so come closer to its proper outline. But it has been learned that the compass declinations have since first measured been diminishing
within this area at the rate of about 14 minutes of arc per year. However, relocations of the Magnetic
Pole made in 1904 and 1947 indicate that it moves within an orbit of small radius and short cyclic
revolution, so that no large cumulative change in local compass declinations will occur even after several
centuries.
Had the Zeni made a map acceptable to modern geographers, they would thereby have shown them.
selves to have been early "Doctor Cooks". That they produced a true magnetic map of the island conclusively proves them to have been honest and reliable explorers who were far in advance of their age.
Their map was accepted by the great geographers of their time and copied onto their own maps, by Ruscelli in 1561, Mercator in 1569, and Ortelius in 1574.

However, so soon as the astrolabe had come into use to fix latitudes at sea, the Zeno map fell into
discredit because of the false latitudes which had been superimposed up on it by Nicolo the narrator.
Martin Frobisher used the Zeno map on his first westward voyage in 1576, and he made his "Frobisher
Strait" cut across south Greenland, though it was Frobisher Bay on the North American east coast.
This false location appeared on a number of later maps; and, in general, the Greenland maps of the Sixteenth, Seventeenth, and Eighteenth Centuries (e. g., those of Hondius in 1597, and i608, of Danckertz,
Corneille and Tavernier in 1628, and that of Bellin in 1765) are all of them, save for the orientation,
inferior to the Zeno map. This was despite the fact that very important new exploration had taken placeHenryk Hudson in 1607 on the east coast, and John Davis (1584) and William Baffin (i6I6) on the western.
Later cartography of Greenland belongs to the modern period, and resulted from exploration carried
up the waters west and north of Greenlandin attempts to discover, first, a Northwest Passage to the Orient,
and, later, the Northern Pole of the earth. Latest of all to be surveyed and mapped has been the northern
East Greenland coast, that to the north of Gael Hamke Bay. This has been surveyed and the evolution
of its cartography been treated in a superb work by Denmark's great explorer-geologist, Dr. Lauge Koch.9

9 Survey of North Greenland, Text and folio atlas. Med. om Gronland, 130, no. i,
Copenhagen 1940.

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