Five Maps to Explore Medieval Britain
These five interactive maps offer us a lot of ways to look back on Britain during the Middle Ages.
“The Vinland Map is a fake” – new research suggests map is a 20th century forgery
A new analysis shows that the ink used in the Vinland Map was created no earlier than the 1920s, which further demonstrates that the famous item purportedly showing a medieval view of the Americas is actually a modern-day forgery.
Brief Introduction to Medieval Maps
Helen Davies, John Wyatt Greenlee, and Tobias Hrynick offer a brief introduction to medieval maps, what they look like, how they were made, and more!
Medieval Manuscripts: Cartography, Diplomacy and Espionage in the Atlas Miller
A closer look at the lavishly decorated charts reveals not only routes towards new horizons but also hidden motives of its commissioners and a high-stake intrigue.
40,000 early modern maps now freely available online
The British Library is making available 40,000 maps dating between 1500 and 1824, which will be freely available online for the first time. They are part of the Topographical Collection of King George III (K. Top), and included maps, atlases, architectural drawings, cartoons and watercolours.
Medieval Manuscripts: A Walk through 16th century Constantinople, Baghdad, and Aleppo
Do you want to see the 16th century Middle East through an illuminator’s eyes? Check out the interactive maps!
Mental Geographies and Cultural Identities in the Baltic Region in the Eleventh-Century: the Anglo-Saxon Cotton World Map
The cartography of the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia has been an interesting topic among scholars of the history of the ancient maps.
Jacopo de’ Barbari’s ‘View of Venice’ (1500): Image Vehicles Past and Present
This essay focuses on an iconic and ground-breaking woodcut – Jacopo de’ Barbari (c. 1460/70–1516) and Anton Kolb’s View of Venice (1500) – and an interactive museum installation that I first developed for Duke University’s Nasher Museum of Art.
500 Years after the First Voyage around the World: Secrets of the Atlas Miller
This is the secret of the Atlas Miller: it tries to counter the idea that the world could be circumnavigated.
Portolan Charts from the Late Thirteenth Century to 1500
From the earliest extant copies, probably a little before 1300, the outline they gave for the Mediterranean was amazingly accurate.
Geographies of Salvation: How to Read Medieval Mappae Mundi
Scholars who judge mappae mundi by medieval standards usually emphasize the salvific over the practical aspect. But were mappae mundi truly not ‘realistic’?
Maps, Monsters and Misericords: From Creation to Apocalypse
This survey of maps and misericords suggests that the other has persistently been envisioned as strange and threatening and thus a constant challenge that tests morality.
The Date of the Gough Map
The date commonly given for the Gough map of Britain, about 1360, is, in the author’s opinion, wrong. Arguments that have been offered to support such a dating are invalid.
The Piri Reis Map of 1528: A Comparative Study with Other Maps of the Time
The second world map by Piri Reis, made in 1528, as with his earlier world map of 1513, is only a remnant of a larger world map no longer extant. And, as with the first map, the surviving portion preserves areas depicting the newly discovered lands to the west of Europe.
Pilgrimage, Cartography, and Devotion: William Wey’s Map of the Holy Land
This article offers a reconstruction of a chapel, set up in England in the 1470s to commemorate a pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The reconstruction follows information drawn from the founder’s will.
Dialect in the Viking-Age Scandinavian diaspora: the evidence of medieval minor names.
This thesis aims to investigate the Scandinavian contribution to medieval microtoponymic vocabulary in two areas of northwest England, and it attempts to clarify what Scandinavian-derived place-name elements in minor names can tell us.
The Oxford map of Palestine in the work of Matthew Paris
He was long-winded, opinionated, cranky, and interested in everything. He moves from politics at court, to the abuses of ecclesiastical power, to foreign relations, to peculiar meteorological and astronomical occurrences, to uncanny incidents.
Mapping the World in Medieval China
This talk looks at the extent of geographic and cartographic knowledge of the world that existed in medieval China.
Maps, Travel and Exploration in the Middle Ages: Some Reflections about Anachronism
How were maps conceived in the Middle Ages? Using the words “map”, “travel” and “exploration”, historians must be wary of anachronism.
The Global Side of Medieval at the Getty Centre: Traversing the Globe Through Illuminated Manuscripts
Los Angeles correspondent, Danielle Trynoski takes through the, ‘Traversing the Globe Through Illuminated Manuscripts’ exhibut at the Getty Museum.
Unknown Europe: The Mapping of the Northern countries by Olaus Magnus in 1539
Olaus Magnus, a highly educated Swedish priest and scholar, published his geographically and ethnographically remarkable map of the Northern countries, the Carta marina, in Venice in 1539.
Mapping a New View of the Medieval World
Maps do more than show us the way and identify major landmarks – rivers, towns, roads and hills. For centuries, they also offered a perspective on how societies viewed themselves in comparison to the rest of the world.
The Atlas Miller
This gem in the history of cartography is the outcome of the combined efforts of the workshops of the first two ‘schools’ of Portuguese cartography
Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps
Chet Van Duzer, author of the recent book Sea Monsters on Medieval and Renaissance Maps, will trace the history of sea monsters on European maps, beginning with the earliest mappaemundi on which they appear in the tenth century and continuing to the end of the sixteenth century.