On other maps, Iceland is placed somewhere at the northwestern edge of the globe, or else it is confused with Thule, an island said to have been visited by Greek seafarers in the 4th century B.C. This applies particularly to maps that may be considered of English origin, although they may not all have been made in England. Iceland appears on some of the major medieval maps, and in some cases, it lies northeast of the British Isles but south of Norway. Some of the biggest maps formed altar-pieces, and their purpose was rather to confirm churchgoers in their belief in minor religious doctrines than to give them any practical idea of foreign countries and peoples, such knowledge being seldom available. The map was more of a pictorial story than a map in our way of thinking. Finally, there were various types of contemporary educative material, though this was for a long time not very conspicuous. The Bible and ancient classical literature were the main sources, which were supplemented by various materials from medieval authors, folklore motifs, and migratory legends. Many of these have been preserved to this day. In the Middle Ages, ecclesiastics made a fair number of maps, probably inheriting the tradition from the days of the Roman Empire, for most of the more interesting ones can presumably be traced to Roman maps. The ideas of cartographers about lands and peoples in the North have been very unreliable at various periods, and there are even examples from more recent times. At the western extremity is the name Scridefinnas (the Skridfinnar or Lapps), who appear there like a deus ex machina. At the extreme east of this country, there is the name Iceland, which is not known to have appeared before in older sources. It is broadest in the east, but narrows towards the west, where it ends in a point or ness. In the sea northeast of Britain and a peninsula, which is probably Jutland though it is named Norway, there is a largish country with its greatest extent running from east to west. This is estimated to have been around the time when the Christian faith was adopted in Iceland, or about the year 1000 A.D., i.e., just over a hundred years after the country is said to have been first settled. Over thirty editions of this Epitome were published in different languages.Iceland first appears on the so-called Anglo-Saxon map of the world in the British Museum. In 1577, engraver Philip Galle and poet-translator Pieter Heyns published the first pocket-sized edition of the Theatrum, the Epitome. The number of map sheets grew from 53 in 1570 to 167 in 1612 in the last edition. Editions were published in Dutch, German, French, Spanish, English, and Italian. Some 24 editions appeared during Ortelius's lifetime and another ten after his death in 1598. Nothing was like it until Mercator's atlas appeared twenty-five years later. The importance of the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum for geographical knowledge in the last quarter of the sixteenth century is difficult to overemphasize. The Parergon can be called a truly original work of Ortelius, who drew the maps based on his research. Later editions included Additamenta (additions), resulting in Ortelius' historical atlas, the Parergon, mostly bound together with the atlas. This first edition contained seventy maps on fifty-three sheets. It was one of the most expensive books ever published. He completed the atlas in 1569, and in May of 1570, the Theatrum was available for sale. In 1568 the production of individual maps for his atlas Theatrum Orbis Terrarum was already in full swing. In 1565 he published a map of Egypt and a map of the Holy Land, a large map of Asia followed. The inspiration for this map may well have been Gastaldi's large world map. In 1564 he published his first map, a large and ambitious world wall map. In addition, he travelled a lot and visited Italy and France, made contacts everywhere with scholars and editors, and maintained extensive correspondence with them. Luke as an "illuminator of maps." Besides colouring maps, Ortelius was a dealer in antiques, coins, maps, and books, with the book and map trade gradually becoming his primary occupation.īusiness went well because his means permitted him to start an extensive collection of medals, coins, antiques, and a library of many volumes. He learned Latin and studied Greek and mathematics.Ībraham and his sisters Anne and Elizabeth took up map colouring. The maker of the 'first atlas', the Theatrum Orbis Terrarum (1570), was born on 4 April 1527 into an old Antwerp family.
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