S e a M o n S t e r S S E A M O N S T E R S A VOYAGE AROUND THE WORLD’S MOST BEGUILING MAP (cid:31)(cid:30) JOSEPH NIGG THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS Chicago and London Joseph Nigg is one of the world’s leading experts on fantastical animals, and his exploration of the rich cultural lives of mythical creatures has garnered multiple awards and been translated into more than twenty languages. He is also the author of The Book of Gryphons, The Book of Fabulous Beasts: A Treasury of Writings from Ancient Times to the Present, and How to Raise and Keep a Dragon, among others. The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London Text copyright © Joseph Nigg 2013 Design and layout copyright © Ivy Press Limited 2013 All rights reserved. Published 2013. Printed in China 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5 ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92516-5 (cloth) ISBN-13: 978-226-92518-9 (e-book) DOI: 10.7208/chicago/9780226925189.001.0001 A CIP record for this title is available at the Library of Congress. ∞ This paper meets the requirements of the ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper). Color origination by Ivy Press Reprographics. Cover images: courtesy of James Ford Bell Library, University of Minnesota This book was conceived, designed, and produced by Ivy Press 210 High Street, Lewes East Sussex BN7 2NS United Kingdom www.ivypress.co.uk Creative Director Peter Bridgewater Publisher Jason Hook Editorial Director Caroline Earle Art Director Michael Whitehead For Joey Designer Andrew Milne and Project Editor Jamie Pumfrey In memory of my father C ON TE NTS (cid:31)(cid:30) INVITATION TO A VOYAGE 8 OLAUS MAGNUS 10 OLAUS MAGNUS’S CARTA MARINA 12 SEBASTIAN MÜNSTER’S MONSTRA MARINA & TERRESTRIA THE VOYAGE THE SEA SWINE 14 56 22 ABRAHAM ORTELIUS’S THE SEA UNICORN THE VAST OCEAN ISLANDIA 62 24 16 THE PRISTER THE ROCKAS MYTHICAL ANCESTRY 66 28 18 THE ZIPHIUS THE SEA WORM NATURAL HISTORY 72 34 INHERITANCE 20 THE SEA COW THE DUCK TREE 78 40 A SEA RHINOCEROS THE POLYPUS 82 44 SPERMACETI BALENA & ORCA 88 50 A BEACHED WHALE 92 MORE PRISTERS ANOTHER PRISTER 98 124 THE ISLAND WHALE A SEA CREATURE 104 130 THE SEA SERPENT A ROSMARUS 112 134 CARIBDIS THE KRAKEN 120 140 APPENDICES LANDFALL 148 CARTA MARINA FULL KEY 150 GLOSSARY OF SEA MONSTER COUNTERPARTS 152 TIME LINE 154 RESOURCES 155 INDEX 158 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 160 I NV ITATIO N T O A VOyAGE T he fi rst time one looks free to shape its own forms of the natural world. The chart’s at a color print of olaus giant lobster gripping a swimmer in its claws, a monster being Magnus’s 1539 Carta Marina, mistaken for an island, and a mast-high serpent devouring sailors the eyes scan the crowded would have represented actual fears of the unknown deep. land mass and fi x on the Those and olaus’s other fanciful sea beasts are not creatures in the western part of the map. Larger than the other mere decorations to fi ll empty spaces. nor are they only images and framed by open space, they dominate the chart visual metaphors for dangers lurking in the sea. Intended visually and stir the imagination. as representations of actual marine life, they are identifi ed in the To us, the quaint fi gures rising in the northern waters of map’s key. Most of them are also pictured and described in olaus’s olaus’s map of Scandinavia could be illustrations in a children’s commentary of the chart, Historia de Gentibus Septentrionalibus book. However, given that maps chart human knowledge, that (“History of the northern Peoples,” 1555). they provide glimpses of our understanding of the world at any point in time, olaus’s sixteenth-century contemporaries would have regarded the Carta Marina sea monsters diff erently than we do. When the chart was made, in the early years of the Age of Exploration, there was a lingering belief in the existence of griffi ns, unicorns, dragons, the phoenix, the monstrous races, and a host of other unnatural creatures. Modern science was in its infancy. Although adherents to the direct observation of nature would soon challenge hearsay and tradition and begin to classify animal life, at the time the medieval imagination was still A voyage up Olaus Magnus’s map promises sightings of monsters never seen before. Fearsome creatures such as the spouter rise for the fi rst time in the northern waters of the Carta Marina. The fantastic beast’s likeness appears again in celebrated works of the age. 8 The western half of the Carta Marina can be considered the major source of renaissance sea monster iconography and lore. olaus’s innovative monsters inspired the other two most famous keyed charts of fantastic sea creatures: Sebastian Münster’s Monstra Marina & terrestria (1544) and Abraham ortelius’s islandia (1590). Variations of Carta Marina’s beasts multiplied on other maps, and they spread from woodcuts in Conrad Gesner’s voluminous Historiae Animalium (1551– 1558) to other natural histories, including Adriaen Coenen’s 1585 marine-life manuscript (the Whale Book, 2003). Through his map and its voluminous commentary, olaus became the A Carta Marina mother whale nursing age’s principal chronicler of the sea serpent, the giant squid, and her calf is one of the earliest depictions of a spouter as a mammal. Elsewhere sea monsters in general. These representations were infl uential on the map, a narwhal is pictured for for centuries and are still discussed in our own time. They the fi rst time. Both of those fi gures, like are the ancestors of the decorative whales that dot oceans on nearly all of Olaus’s sea monsters, will be reproduced in the years to come. modern commercial globes. A Voyage with the Sea Creatures To sight olaus’s beasts, this book takes the reader on an imaginary voyage up the northern seas of the Carta Marina, with olaus himself as the guide. His commentary, from the fi rst English translation of his book, A Compendious History of the Goths, Swedes, and Vandals and Other northern nations (1658), introduces each beast before it surfaces in full-blown art. The beast encounter ends with discussion of the fi gure’s traditional lore, its legacy, and its modern forms. reproductions of the The most recently discovered of only two three renowned sea monster charts, and translations of their extant copies of Olaus Magnus’s Carta Marina. Four centuries after the 1539 keys, enable the reader to cross-reference infl uential images printing of the wood-block map in Venice, throughout the book. Surveys of sea beasts’ mythical beginnings the Uppsala University Library acquired and natural history complete preparations for the voyage. the print from Switzerland in 1962. 9