Le Nord : revue internationale des Pays de Nord - 01.06.1944, Blaðsíða 328

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LE NORD
portant progress to Danish carto-
graphy, not least because of the
King’s personal interest in the mat-
ter. He first imposed on Hans Lau-
remberg the task of making a new
and improved map of the country,
and Lauremberg for many years,
from 1631 to about 1645, was pre-
paring the work, but as the King as
late as 1645 had not yet received
any map, he grew impatient and in
1647 appointed Johannes Mejer
royal mathematician and deprived
Lauremberg of the work of survey.
This was no doubt a great disap-
pointment to the King, and he did
not live to see the vast results of
Mejer’s later activity. Lauremberg’s
maps, however, were utilized by the
great Dutch publishers of maps and
thus gained a considerable distribu-
tion. Johannes Mejer’s unique work
at the mapping of the country, on
the other hand, for a great part was
deposited in the archives and has
only now been published by the
Geodetic Institute in three large
volumes. Mejer’s maps therefore did
not become of so great importance
to foreign cartographical literature
as they deserved, and Denmark at
the end of the 17th century had not
yet got the national atlas which
Christian IV. had so eagerly wanted
to see. Something, however, hap-
pened. Danish surveying of the sea
was founded by Jens Sorensen, who
during the years around 1700 made
a survey of waters and coasts. From
his hand we have a number of ex-
cellent maps, and it is his great
merit to have drawn the first fairly
correct coast-line map of Denmark.
Jens Sorensen’s work, however, was
also preserved in the archives and
has not been edited till our day
(1916) by Johannes Knudsen, who
has given an excellent account of
Jens Sorensen’s life and work.
All the maps mentioned hitherto
were made according to rather
simple principles without the use of
triangulation. This was felt to be
unsatisfactory, and the need for a
rational surveying on a scientific
basis became more and more urgent,
but not until 1763 a possibility
opened up of beginning the great
surveying through which in the
course of some 80 years the whole
country was mapped out. The work
was done on the initiative of the
Royal Academy of Sciences and
with personal participation of a
number of prominent cartographers
and astronomers, among whom
Thomas Bugge should be mentioned
first of all as deserving a great part
of the credit for the eminent results.
The map of the Royal Academy
of Sciences is a geographical docu-
ment of high quality, to which
everybody working at the geo-
graphy of Denmark returns again
and again.
With perfect justice N. E. Nor-
lund has dedicated no less than three
volumes of the work to the study of
Johannes Mejer (1606—1674), who
was one of the supreme cartogra-