Dwellers of the waves: Sea monsters, classical history, and religion in Olaus Magnus’s Carta Marina

ABSTRACT

The article presents the spectacular monsters depicted in the Norwegian Sea on Olaus Magnus’s pioneering map of the northern countries, the Carta Marina, published in Italy during the Reformation. Olaus Magnus later discussed them in detail in his Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (‘Description of the Northern Peoples’), published in Italy in 1555 during the Counter-Reformation. The article places the two works within a religio-political context and discusses how the 1539 map not only reveals the revival of Ptolomaic geography but also juxtaposes religious polemic and natural history, reflecting a whole spectrum of epistemologies, sources, and types of evidence. The various ways of classifying the monsters point towards different interpretations of monstrosity itself and of the interrelations between the northern monsters. The author further discusses in geographical, historical and natural terms the various understandings of the north that are visualized on the map. The map is of particular interest because of its early date, the widespread impact of its imagery and ideas, and its geographical exactitude.

KEYWORDS:

• classifying monstrosity
• Counter-Reformation
• monsters on maps
• Olaus Magnus
• Ptolemaic geography

Notes

1 Erling Sandmo died unexpectedly on 21 February 2020 (see Aslak Sira Myhre’s obituary in this issue of Norsk Geografisk Tidsskrift–Norwegian Journal of Geography). Michael Jones took care of the subsequent editing of this article.

2 In quotations from Olaus Magnus’s Description of the Northern Peoples (O. Magnus 1996–1998 [1555]), the ‘Book’ and ‘Chapter’ numbers are indicated by Roman and Arabic numerals respectively, followed by the volume and page numbers of the English edition.

3 These booklets are known as Opera breve (O. Magnus 1539a) and Ain kurze Auslegung (O. Magnus 1539b). An English translation of the Opera breve can be found in a book by Ginsberg (2006, 186–195). Ain kurze Auslegung has been translated into Swedish (O. Magnus 1965 [1539]).

4 The Council of Trent was the 19th ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, held between 1548 and 1563. Olaus Magnus was a member throughout the council’s meetings in Trent 1545–1547, Bologna 1547–1549, and again in Trent 1551–1552 (O. Magnus 1996–1998 [1555], note to Preface, 13).

5 The transition from an epistemological system of analogy to one of difference is a main theme of Foucault’s book The Order of Things (Foucault 1970 [1966]).

6 On dolphins, Olaus Magnus refers to the work ‘On Animals’, Book XXIV, by 13th century German philosopher and bishop St Albertus Magnus; this work, the original Latin title of which was Quaestiones super de animalibus, was recovered in the early 20th century and can be found in a recent English translation (A. Magnus 2008).

7 On the whale, Olaus Magnus refers to the work of St Ambrose (Aurelius Ambrosius), a 4th century Bishop of Milan, whose text Hexameron (Book V: 11) can be found in a modern English translation (Ambrose 1961).