History of cartography of the Nordic countries

The invitation for this special issue of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography stated that the aim was to present research on how, where and why maps have been made in the past representing the Nordic countries (Norden) or localities within them. The intention was to present maps and mapping in their historical and geographical context, reflecting social and political organization and power structures of their time and place. Articles that provided a Nordic perspective, such as comparative studies of two or more countries, or cross-border studies, were particularly requested. Other articles providing new historical-geographical perspectives on the history of cartography in particular places, regions or countries within Norden were also of interest.

The historical development of mapping reflects social, political and ideological circumstances that resulted in the production of particular types of map in particular places and regions at particular times. It further reflects networks whereby cartographers, surveyors, writings, instruments, and maps have circulated both within countries and internationally. Relatively little has been published in English on the history of cartography of the Nordic countries. Until the 1990s, research on this topic was largely published in the Nordic national languages, with only a small number of journal articles in English concerning specific maps or limited topics, published in international cartography journals or in national geographical journals.¹ Much of this research has had a national perspective and only to a limited degree presented a broader Nordic perspective. An exception is Scandinavia in Old Maps and Prints by Erik Van Mingroot & Eduard Van Ermen (1987).

In the first half of the 1980s, British geographer and Norden specialist, W.R. Mead (1915–2014), wrote two pioneering manuscripts that provided for the first time an overview of the history of cartography of the Nordic countries from the 15th century to the end of the 18th century. Both manuscripts were intended for The History of Cartography (hereafter abbreviated as HOC), a multi-volume work published by the University of Chicago Press from 1987 onwards and still in the process of publication. Due to delays in production, the first of these manuscripts, titled ‘Scandinavian Renaissance cartography’, was not published until 2007, appearing in HOC Volume 3: Cartography in the European Renaissance (Mead 2007a; 2007b). The second of the two manuscripts, titled ‘Scandinavian cartography, 1650–1800’, was intended for HOC Volume 4: Cartography in the European Enlightenment. Delays and a change from long articles to short articles in an encyclopaedic format meant that the second manuscript no longer suited the new format and it was not published. The HOC project subsequently released the manuscript and gave permission for its publication outside the project. It has now been edited for publication in the present special issue (Mead 2020). Volume 4 of the HOC in the new format was not published until May 2020. It does not contain an entry on Scandinavia or Norden as a whole but has separate entries on Denmark–Norway and Sweden–Finland, as well on specified cartographical topics within these realms (Edney & Pedley 2020).

Twenty-one years after Mead’s articles were originally written, Ulla Ehrensvärd’s monumental work, The History of the Nordic Map, was published, providing a comprehensive overview of Nordic cartographical history up to 1800 (Ehrensvärd 2006). Further, William B. Ginsberg’s cartobibliographies of printed maps of Scandinavia and the Arctic from the 15th century to the early 17th century and of Norway from the late 16th century to the mid-19th century were published between 2002 and 2012 (Ginsberg 2002; 2006; 2009; 2012). A number of articles and books on specific topics have been published in English subsequently, but beyond this the English-language literature on maps and mapping in the Nordic countries remains comparatively limited.² This special issue of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography contributes original English-language articles presenting recent and ongoing research relating to the history of cartography of the Nordic countries.

Mead’s contribution, like his earlier article in the HOC (Mead 2007a; 2007b), is the product of his long-lasting interest in the cartography of the Nordic countries (e.g. Mead 1940; 1968). That interest is reflected in his many publications on the geography of the Nordic countries (for a full bibliography, see Mead 2015, 94–100; for accounts of Mead’s scholarly work, see Jones 2016 and Clout & Jones 2018). Mead had familiarized himself with the major map archives in Norden and spent many hours in them. He always carried with him a notebook in which he noted down items of interest and in that way accumulated a wide knowledge of historical maps. Mead’s cartography-related research was carried out long before the archives began to digitize historical maps and make their collections available online.

Mead left three slightly different versions of his draft article on cartography in the Enlightenment period. One was a photocopy of his original manuscript (with handwritten corrections and additions), which he had sent to the HOC project, ‘submitted on time in 1985!’, as he wrote in a letter to me in 2009 after he had learnt that Volume 4 of HOC was to take a different form. The second version was a retyped and amended version, which was found among his papers after his death. The third version was a reformatted but not yet edited version in the HOC archive, on which was written in hand ‘Brian’s copy’ – this evidently refers to Brian Harley (1932–1991), founding co-editor of the HOC, whose premature death aged 59 years contributed to the delays in the HOC project, along with a further setback some years later following the early death of his co-editor David Woodward (1942–2004).

Mead’s manuscript provides an overview of cartography in Norden in the period 1650–1800, compiled from his notes. His notebooks were handwritten as he went along and contained inaccuracies and misspelt names (Hansen & Jones 2004, 144; Jones 2016, 132). I have edited the draft article with assistance from Hugh Clout, professor emeritus in geography and Mead’s colleague at University College London, who sorted out Mead’s personal papers after his death in 2014. During the editing, particular attention was paid to the orthography of the different Nordic languages. Spellings of personal names and place-names were checked and standardized. In the article included in this issue of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography, English versions of place names are used where commonly known; otherwise, contemporary historical forms of place names are used with alternative forms in parentheses. For example, in the case of Finland, Mead uses the Swedish forms of names as they appeared on maps and documents of the 17th and 18th centuries; these have been kept with the Finnish forms given in parentheses. References have been checked as far as possible and factual inaccuracies in the text have been rectified.

W.R. Mead (2020, this issue) notes the similarities and differences between the Nordic realms regarding cartographical endeavour over time. Mapmakers influenced one another across international boundaries even if mapping was stimulated by rivalries and military hostilities. Mead’s article demonstrates the strong utilitarian motivation of different types of cartographical activities undertaken in the period 1650–1800. These activities included property mapping for taxation and land reorganization, early town plans, scientific mapping by scholarly societies, military surveys (especially in border regions), charting of economic resources on land (especially forests and minerals), and hydrographical surveys of the coasts. Mead shows the significance of government mapping institutions as well as the role of individual mapmakers for what was mapped and he refers to a wide selection of the maps that were produced. He draws comparisons between the kingdoms of Denmark–Norway and Sweden–Finland, the two political realms of the period in the region that today comprises the Nordic countries. Mead does not overlook cartography in other territorial possessions belonging to these monarchies: in the case of the Danish king, Schleswig–Holstein (Slesvig–Holsten), as well as the North Atlantic territories of Iceland and Greenland; and in the case of Sweden, Pomerania (Pommern), south of the Baltic, and the areas lost to Russia in the east during the course of the 18th century.

Besides Mead’s overview (Mead 2020), this special issue of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography contains three other articles. The posthumously published article by Erling Sandmo (1963–2020) (Sandmo 2020) discusses the remarkable sea monsters that are depicted in the Norwegian Sea on Olaus Magnus’s pioneering map of Northern Europe, the Carta Marina of 1539. Sandmo classifies and interprets these northern sea monsters in relation to political and religious epistemologies prevalent in 16th century Europe in the aftermath of the Reformation. He discusses the ontological status of the monsters against the understandings of geography, history and nature that are visualized on the map. The Carta Marina was intended to demonstrate Northern Europe as a region worthy of the pope’s attention at the time when it was becoming Lutheran. In exile in Italy, Olaus Magnus played an active part in the early Counter-Revolution. In 1544 the pope appointed him as the last titular archbishop of Sweden. The Carta Marina provided, on the one hand, a more accurate cartographical picture of the north than had existed previously and, on the other hand, presented through its depiction of the sea monsters another dimension that signified the monstrous nature of the new religion that was engulfing the north. Sandmo was a historian, who in 2016 took up a position as researcher at the National Library of Norway with the task of establishing the library’s Map Centre, which opened in September 2019. In 2020 he was appointed as head of the new Map Centre. His publications include other work on Olaus Magnus’s Carta Marina and more generally on sea monsters on maps (Sandmo 2018; 2019a; 2019b). His article in this special of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography issue had been recommended for publication shortly before his unexpected and untimely death. This issue includes an obituary of Erling Sandmo written by National Librarian of the National Library of Norway, Aslak Sira Myhre (Myre 2020).

The article by Benedicte Gamborg Briså (2020) deals with the mapping of the North European Arctic regions in the late 16th century. Before that time, the cartographical image of these northern regions was fragmentary and incomplete. Discoveries made by Dutch explorers in the 1590s, as they searched (unsuccessfully) for a shorter trading route to Asia through the Northeast Passage, reshaped the image of the European Arctic through more accurate mapping. The main impulse for this extensive mapping of the northern regions came from Dutch trading interests. The voyages were financed by both Dutch merchants and government authorities. The mapping was undertaken by Dutch cartographers who accompanied the three expeditions led by the navigator Willem Barentsz (1550–1597), until he lost his life on the third expedition. A network of Dutch cartographers, engravers and publishers ensured the rapid dissemination of the newly acquired geographical information. Briså’s article provides an account of the different stages in the development of cartographical knowledge of the Arctic before, during and after the 16th century Dutch voyages of exploration. Her research was based on Ginsberg’s cartobibliographies from the early 2000s (Ginsberg 2006; 2009; 2012) and on his unique collection of early printed maps of the north, which were donated to the National Library of Norway in Oslo in 2017. Briså is a historian and has worked at the National Library as research librarian since 1997, with special responsibility for the library’s map collection. She was involved in setting up the library’s new Map Centre. The historical mapping of the North European Arctic has been a topic of particular interest in several of her published articles and edited exhibition catalogues (Briså 2009; 2010; 2017).

The article by Anne C. Lien (2019, this issue) examines the prime meridians used on Norwegian maps between 1770 and 1970. Lien shows the changes through time from multiple prime meridians at the beginning of the period, through the period of the Swedish-Norwegian joint monarchy in the 19th century, when Sweden tried to impose cartographical unity and hence a single meridian on the two countries, to the acceptance of the Greenwich meridian as the prime meridian on Norwegian maps in the 20th century. The article shows that Sweden failed in its geopolitical ambition to unify Scandinavian cartography. Norway adopted a prime meridian through Christiania (Oslo) in the 19th century and continued to use it on maps until the 1960s, although increasingly alongside the Greenwich meridian after 1914.³ A Norwegian prime meridian served in the 19th century as a political instrument to assert national identity during the union with Sweden and continued long to serve as an affirmation of Norwegian national consciousness after Norway’s independence in 1905. Anne Lien has from 2015 been employed by the Norwegian Mapping Authority (Kartverket) as head of the county mapping office in Hordaland and Sogn og Fjordane counties (united in 2020 as Vestland county) in Norway. Her master’s dissertation in geography examines Norwegian cartography in a power perspective from 1750 to 1875 (Lien 2017). In 2017 she began working on a doctoral thesis, analysing Norwegian historical maps in relation to political and other motives behind their construction.

As the number of manuscripts submitted for the special issue titled ‘History of cartography of the Nordic countries’ and accepted after peer review exceeded the number of articles that could be included in a single issue of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography, further articles will be published later in the journal.

Notes

1 Mead (2007a; 2007b) provides 85 extensive footnotes giving a good overview of earlier literature in the Nordic languages and in English on the history of cartography of the Nordic countries; further relevant literature is referred to in Mead (2020). An extensive reference list is provided by Ehrensvärd 2006, 255–260.

2 In addition to the research presented in this article, examples of new research in English–language publications since the mid-1980s include: Sporrong & Wennström 1990; E.G. Berg 2004; Jones 2004; 2008b; Tollin 2004; Miekkavaara 2008; Strandbjerg 2008; Ekman 2011; Svenningsen 2015; 2016; T.R. Berg 2018 [2017]. Examples of publications in the Nordic languages include: Hoem 1986; Widmalm 1990; Jansson 1993; Nevéus 1999; Halling 2008; Huhtamies 2008; Jones 2008a; Karsvall & Tollin 2010; Enebakk 2012; Strang 2014; Harju 2016; Harsson & Aanrud 2016; Velsand 2018. A recent publication in German is by Dreyer-Eimbcke 2006.

3 Anne Lien has requested the following corrigendum for her article: ‘the Ferro prime meridian was a universally accepted meridian historically, and was used extensively by both Norwegian and Swedish cartographers throughout large parts of the period 1770–1870’ (not 1770–1970 as stated in the third sentence of the second paragraph of the Conclusions section in the online version (Lien 2019, 276, this issue)).