Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1962, Page 85

INVENTIO FORTUNATA
67
of the Polar regions on his world
map of 1569.19 Six legends occur
here.
Mercator is also responsible for
a summary of the Invenlio which
he sent to John Dee in a letter dated
20 April, 1577 in reply to an enquiry
from the latter as to the “authority
whereupon he fashioned unto us
that strange plat of the Septentrion-
al Islands.” This and all previously
mentioned references to the Inven-
tio, except that of Day, were trans-
lated and published by Professor E.
G. R. Taylor in Imago Mundi in
1956.20
In his letter, Mercator tells Dee
what he learned from a fourteenth
century book written by a certain
Jacobus Cnoyen of Herzogenbusch21
who was a traveller like Mandeville.
The account opens with a descrip-
tion of North or Dusky Norway
which is separated by only 12 miles
of sea from the lands of the Great
Cham and then discusses islands of
the Arctic. This information is said
to come from Gesia Arihuri (now
lost) which describes fantastic ex-
peditions made to Iceland, Green-
land and the Arctic by King Arthur
around the year 530. Arthur found
men 23 feet tall i.e. feet in which
land is measured. But some of his
men remained in the Arctic and in
1364 eight of these people, presum-
ably descendants, came to the king’s
court in Norway. Among them
were two priests one of which had
an astrolabe and who was descend-
ed in the fifth generation from a
man of Brussels. Then follow more
fantastic adventures of Arthur, after
which we return to the priest who
had the astrolabe.
“The priest who had the astro-
labe related to the king of Norway
that in A.D. 1360 there had come to
these Northern Islands an English
Minorite from Oxford, who was a
good astronomer etc. Leaving the
rest of the party who had come to
the Islands, he journeyed further
through the whole of the North etc.,
and put into writing all the wonders
of those islands, and gave the King
of England this book, which he
called in Latin Inventio Fortunatae,
which book began at the last cli-
mate, that is to say latitude 54°, con-
tinuing to the Pole.
This monk said that the mountain
range goes round the North like a
wall, save that in nineteen places
the indrawing channels flow through
it, whereof the widest is not above
12 French miles across, the narrow-
est % mile. And through the nar-
rowest no ship would be able to go,
because of the strong rush of the
water. The mountain range is sur-
rounded by sea except in North Nor-
way, when the Norwegian mountain
range reaches it for a width of about
17 miles. And right under the North
Star, opposite Norway, there lies a
fair level land which is uninhabited,
where many beautiful (fol. 268 r.)
. . . (Lacuna) . . . in the east there
stretches out an arm of land which
is nearly all wooded. And narrows
continually, (the farther north?)
19. Taylor, “A Letter“, pp. 62, 65.
20. Vol. XIII, 56-68.
21. On Cnoyen see Steinnes, “Ein Nordpolsekspedisjon”, pp. 411-414.