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.



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