Archival item of the month: The Carta Marina and the history of the Nordic peoples of Olaus Magnus

Every month, the German Maritime Museum (DSM) / Leibniz Institute of Maritime History presents a special treasure from the archive in the "Archival item of the month" series. In July, the Carta Marina and the history of the Nordic peoples of Olaus Magnus are presented.

A whale where an English ship has anchored and the crew unsuspectingly cooks soup on the animal's back, crabs that are so strong that they catch a swimming man and crush him in their claws, a fish the size of an elephant, that climbs a mountain to eat grass and clings to rocks with its teeth to sleep, ducks that have grown from the fruit of a tree - Olaus Magnus shows these and more such incredible things in his Carta Marina, a map of the countries of northern Europe.

Olaus was born in 1490 in Linköping, 180 kilometers south of Stockholm, became a priest and in 1518 went on a one-and-a-half-year inspection tour of the bishoprics of Sweden and Norway with a papal envoy. In 1523, Olaus was commissioned by King Gustav Vasa to travel to Rome to obtain confirmation from the Pope of his brother John's election as Bishop of Uppsala: He never returned to Sweden. Olaus initially continued to travel to Hanseatic cities on behalf of the Swedish king before settling in Gdansk with his brother from 1526 to 1536: In the meantime, the Reformation had been introduced in their homeland and thus lost the support of the king, who confiscated their assets. Supported by patrons, the brothers began their scientific work: Olaus with the description of the countries and peoples of Northern Europe, initially cartographically as Carta Marina. Appointed to Rome by the Pope, Olaus only resumed work on it in Venice, thanks to the patriarch's support. As an important maritime trading city, such projects were also in Venice's own interests. There was a long tradition of cartography there with a corresponding infrastructure, for example in the form of high-quality printing.In 1539, Olaus was therefore finally able to have the 1.25 by 1.70 meter map, composed of nine sheets of paper, printed. In the accompanying Latin "brief explanation and interpretation" of the Carta Marina, Olaus already refers to his planned detailed book on the peoples of the north, the Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, from which the pages presented here are taken. He finally printed the book in Rome in 1555: after the death of his brother Johannes, Olaus had meanwhile been consecrated titular bishop of Uppsala and head of the Birgitta Hospital in Rome and had set up a printing press in this house. Olaus died in Rome in 1557 and, like his brother, was buried there.

The Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus, the "Historien der mittnächtigen Länder von allerley Thun, Wesens, Condition, Sitten, Gebreuchen, Aberglauben, Unterweisung, Übung, Regiment, Narung, Kriegsrüstung, auch allerley Zeug, Instrumenten, Gebeuwen, Bergwerk, metal and other marvelous things, likewise also of all kinds of four-footed and other animals that live and float on and in the earth, water and air of the places mentioned," as the translation of the complete title from 1567 states, is divided into 22 books with 778 chapters. The leaf from the 1555 edition presented here is from book 13, entitled De humano victo - Vom Ackerbau und menschlicher Nahrung, and was acquired from a private collection by the Maritime Museum in 1996. From climate and geography to customs and traditions, house building and agriculture to animals and insects such as snails, bees and ants, Olaus uses 481 woodcuts to try to convey to the reader the content that he has "recorded and described from his own experience over many years on land and water". As on the Carta Marina, he integrates things from the realm of fable and fantasy. Like Herodotus, for example, Olaus presents the reader with a mixture of the true and the untrue in the ancient tradition; a precise separation was not considered necessary. Last but not least, oral tradition was still of great importance in his time. Another challenge for Olaus was certainly the translation of his descriptions into woodcuts by the artists. While the scene for the ninth chapter appears realistic (Fig. 1), in the illustration for the tenth chapter on the transport of grain with rafts and barges, the rafts in particular appear stylized (Fig. 2; 3): Several interconnected rafts are being pulled by a riverboat, with the raft platforms shown in top view instead of side view. Here, Olaus presents rafts as a means of transporting goods and food: in addition to the actual transportation of timber, this was evidently a not insignificant aspect of rafting in his day. The goods depicted include bundles of wood and, above all, heaps of bulk goods, probably grain in containers. There is a tent on a raft, which probably refers to the raftsmen's accommodation on the journey.

The central part of the depiction is occupied by a boat rowed by two men, also loaded with bulk goods. In the accompanying text, Olaus presents Gdansk as a rich merchant city: "there an inestimable amount of grain is brought there" and "many hundreds of large ships are sold and taken to distant countries such as Portugal, Hispania, France, England, Scotland, Holland and Brabant (...) with good profit".

Cf.: Olaus Magnus, The Wonders of the North. Erschlossen von E. Balzamo u. R. Kaiser (Frankfurt a. Main 2006); E. R. Knauer, die Carta Marina des Olaus Magnus von 1539 (Göttingen 1981); Olai Magni Historien der mittnächtigen Länder (...) übers. Johann Baptist Fickler (Basel 1567): urn:nbn:de:bvb:12-bsb11197033-8