Tímarit Þjóðræknisfélags Íslendinga - 01.01.1962, Side 88

70
TÍMARIT ÞJÓÐRÆKNISFÉLAGS ÍSLENDINGA
Norihwestern pari of ihe Genoa world map of 1447 or 1457
times a year did it rain: and even
that was drizzle, lasting not more
than 6 or 7 hours.
. . . (fol. 269) (Lacuna) the wind
never blows hard enough to drive
a corn-mill. Furthermore the air
there is always cool. And the other
7 that were with him testified that
they had also heard such things
(as he related) said by their elders,
but had never seen there.
This is word for word everything
that I copied out of this author
(Cnoyen) years ago.
Farewell, most learned man, with
my most affectionate esteem.
1577 Gerard Mercator.
(End of Translation)”.22
What are we to make of this? The
manuscript contains numerous la-
cunae which may account for some
of the chaos. But plenty remains.
We may try to reduce the account
of the Inventio here to some kind
of order by looking at the legends
on the maps of Ruysch and Mer-
cator but what has actually happen-
ed is that in trying to follow the
Inventio Fortunata both Ruysch and
Mercator have been misled into a
fabulous distortion of the Arctic.
It is here impossible to go into
all the details necessary to support
the conclusions I have reached
through my reading on Nicholas of
Lynn or rather on the Inventio
Fortunaia. No doubt it contained
certain information about the Ca-
nadian Arctic but in such a garbled
form that it is very difficult to sep-
arate it from the legendary and
mythological. Let us for a moment
look at the situation in the Cana-
dian Arctic in the year 1360 when
the author was supposed to have
visited Greenland and the northern
islands. The Icelanders had been
living in Greenland for almost 400
years. As is well known they had
during that time become acquainted
with all parts of the Canadian North
from Labrador and Hudson Bay to
Ellesmere Island. We know this
22. The translation is Professor Taylor’s (“A Letter”, pp. 58-61).