1544 / 1545 Sebastian Münster Map of Scandinavia and Iceland after Olaus Magnus

Scarce, early, Scandinavia.

This is Sebastian Münster's scarce woodcut map of Scandinavia and the northern parts of the European world, first added to his Cosmographia in 1544; this example is of its second, 1545 printing. It is one of the few examples of this map printed during its author's lifetime. It is an important work, being the earliest acquirable derivative of the 1539 milestone Olaus Magnus Carta Marina, then the most correct and detailed depiction of Scandinavia. The present work is, moreover, one of the scarcest of Münster's maps. Of more than 30 editions of Cosmographia, this map only appeared in nine, and in only two editions of his Ptolemy.

A Closer Look

Münster centered this map on Scandinavia, with coverage extending eastwards to Muscovy (showing the city of Novgorod) and westward to include Scotland, with Iceland due north. The southern limits reach Denmark, coastal Germany, and Prussia. Among the cities identified are Edinburgh, Hamburg, Gdańsk (Danzig), Vilnius, Riga, and Novgorod. In the extreme north is Wahrthus (Vardøhus), a vital fishing center and a strategic Norwegian base, both for defending against and trading with Karelia and the Republic of Novgorod.

A New Map of the North

In adhering to the above layout and detail, Münster presented the state-of-the-art mapping of Scandinavia and the European Arctic according to Olaus Magnus's 1539 Carta Marina, then the first large-scale detailed map not only of Scandinavia, but of any other part of Europe. (Magnus' original survives in two known examples, both in institutional collections.) Although much smaller and simpler than the nine-sheet Carta Marina, Münster's map faithfully presented the 1539 map's topography and its placenames (with the exception of Scotland, which reflects Ptolemy's sharp eastward distortion).

The placement of Iceland due north of Scotland - copied from the Magnus - originated in the maps introduced by Nicolaus Donnus Germanus to printed versions of Ptolemy in the 15th century.

A Brief Appearance

This was not the first map of this region to appear in Münster's oeuvre. The first two editions of his Geographia (1540 and 1542) contained a map based on the 1532 Ziegler map; although informed by conversations with Scandinavian churchmen, it neither contained the detail nor conveyed the authority of Magnus. Münster adopted the new map as his source as soon as he produced his opus magnus, Cosmographia; he would also replace his Ziegler-based map in the remaining two editions of Geographia with this new work.

It is surprising, then, that when Münster produced his expanded 1550 edition of Cosmographia, this excellent map was among those to be cut from the book's foretext. Instead, smaller, more narrowly focused maps were included within the text pertaining to the northern regions, accompanied by the famous Monstra Marina woodcut. Having only appeared in four editions of Cosmographia, this woodblock stayed in retirement for more than twenty years before being reintroduced to the book in 1569. It appeared only in four further editions of the book before being replaced in 1588 by a completely new map based on Ortelius.

Publication History and Census

This map first appeared in the 1544 edition of Münster's Cosmographia, and was included in that work until its retirement after 1548. It reappeared in German and Latin editions of the work between 1569 and 1578. In total, it appeared in less than a third of the editions of Cosmographia and only two editions of Münster's Ptolemy. Over the course of the map's print run, we have identified three states of this block, of which this is the first. (The second lacks the placename for the River Elbe; the third lacks both this and the 'gia' portion of the placename 'Nordwegia.' The present example conforms typographically to the 1545 Geographia. The four editions of Geographia are well represented in institutional collections. We see only two examples of this issue of the separate map listed in OCLC: one at the Bayerische Staatsbibliothek and the other at the Biblioteca Nacional de España.

Cartographers

Sebastian Münster (January 20, 1488 - May 26, 1552), was a German cartographer, cosmographer, Hebrew scholar and humanist. He was born at Ingelheim near Mainz, the son of Andreas Munster. He completed his studies at the Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen in 1518, after which he was appointed to the University of Basel in 1527. As Professor of Hebrew, he edited the Hebrew Bible, accompanied by a Latin translation. In 1540 he published a Latin edition of Ptolemy's Geographia, which presented the ancient cartographer's 2nd century geographical data supplemented systematically with maps of the modern world. This was followed by what can be considered his principal work, the Cosmographia. First issued in 1544, this was the earliest German description of the modern world. It would become the go-to book for any literate layperson who wished to know about anywhere that was further than a day's journey from home. In preparation for his work on Cosmographia, Münster reached out to humanists around Europe and especially within the Holy Roman Empire, enlisting colleagues to provide him with up-to-date maps and views of their countries and cities, with the result that the book contains a disproportionate number of maps providing the first modern depictions of the areas they depict. Münster, as a religious man, was not producing a travel guide. Just as his work in ancient languages was intended to provide his students with as direct a connection as possible to scriptural revelation, his object in producing Cosmographia was to provide the reader with a description of all of creation: a further means of gaining revelation. The book, unsurprisingly, proved popular and was reissued in numerous editions and languages including Latin, French, Italian, and Czech. The last German edition was published in 1628, long after Münster's death of the plague in 1552. Cosmographia was one of the most successful and popular books of the 16th century, passing through 24 editions between 1544 and 1628. This success was due in part to its fascinating woodcuts (some by Hans Holbein the Younger, Urs Graf, Hans Rudolph Manuel Deutsch, and David Kandel). Münster's work was highly influential in reviving classical geography in 16th century Europe, and providing the intellectual foundations for the production of later compilations of cartographic work, such as Ortelius' Theatrum Orbis Terrarum Münster's output includes a small format 1536 map of Europe; the 1532 Grynaeus map of the world is also attributed to him. His non-geographical output includes Dictionarium trilingue in Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, and his 1537 Hebrew Gospel of Matthew. Most of Munster's work was published by his stepson, Heinrich Petri (Henricus Petrus), and his son Sebastian Henric Petri.   Further Details...

Olaus Magnus (October 1490 - August 1, 1557), whose name is Latinized from Månsson, was a Swedish writer and Catholic canon and archdeacon. A mission to secure an archbishopric for his brother Johannes led him to travel to Rome in 1524, and thereafter he remained broad engaged in diplomacy until the victory of the reformation in Sweden exiled him permanently, first to Poland and then to Rome in 1537. Magnus' contributions to geography are his 1539 map Carta marina et Descriptio septemtrionalium terrarum and his 1555 Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus (a collection of folklore and history which for a century remained the European authority on Sweden, its people and its climate.) Carta Marina, a 9-sheet woodcut map surviving in but two known copies, was deeply influential, providing the dominant model for the mapping of the northern parts of Europe prior to Ortelius. The map has withstood scrutiny even to this day in some respects. Modern oceanographers have analyzed Magnus' work and found his descriptions of currents between Iceland and the Faroe islands to be accurate.   Further Details...

Source

Münster, S., Geographia (Basel: Petri) 1545.    

Following in the footsteps of Martin Waldseemuller and Lorent Fries before him, Sebastian Munster edited and published a modernized version of Claudius Ptolemy's Geographia. This appeared in six Latin editions in 1540, 1541, 1542, 1545, 1551 and 1552. According to Karrow, Munster based the text on the Latin translation of Willibald Pirkheimer, but he carefully collated it with previous editions, adding notes of his own. The first three editions contained 48 maps, consisting of 27 based on Ptolemy's ancient geography, and 21 maps based on modern geographical knowledge. The latter three editions contained 54 maps, comprised of the same ancient works but with six of the modern maps discarded, and twelve new ones added. For the collector, the modern maps are of sharpest interest. Some were based on Waldseemuller's geography, but many were based on Munster's own surveys and those of other European geographers whose assistance Munster had been able to enlist. Most of these would be reprised in Munster's magnum opus, Cosmographia Universalis. A disproportionate number of Munster's modern maps show contemporary geographical knowledge of the their respective areas for the very first time: The first map to show the continents of the Western Hemisphere; the first map to focus on the continent of Asia; the first modern map to name the Pacific Ocean. Even in cases where earlier maps exist, Munster's works very often remain the earliest such acquirable by the collector.

Condition

Excellent. Faint marginal stains not impacting image, else fine.

References

OCLC 163145800 (1574). Ginsberg, W., Scandia: Important Early Maps of the Northern Regions and Maps and Charts of Norway, #14.