When talking about space in the Middle

Ages, it's important to find out what

scholars at the time thought about it,
and that is to be found in cosmographies.
Cosmography as such covers descriptions
of the universe, its shape and size.
Geography, on the other hand,
deals with our globe of the Earth,
its shape, size, the number of continents,
three known in the middle ages as well
as speculations about a fourth one,
as well as the size and
the extent of the oceans.
So, cosmography is in fact
the wider of the two terms.
In manuscripts, texts are normally marked
by paratext in cosmographical manuscripts
and cosmography is marked by a so-called
cosmos picture depicting the Earth and
the seven planets revolving around
it as well as the firmament.
These pictures, as you can see,
one on the next foil on the left-hand
side, one from an old Norse manuscript.
On the right-hand side a typical small one
from the late medieval Isidore manuscript.
These cosmos pictures stand for
the universe as such.
In geographical texts,
you find small T-O maps like
the one you see one the next foil.
These T-O maps are marked
by a T inscribed in an O,
thus separating the three continents,
Asia in the east,
Europe in the northwest, and
Africa in the southwest.
Generally, one can say
that old Norse cosmography
doesn't differ drastically
from continental cosmography.
In the north however the geographical
horizon was wider due to the discoveries
made in the 10th and 11th centuries,
but generally speaking there is
not much difference between
Continental Latin texts and Old Norse texts.
And the Old Norse texts to a great extent
actually depends on those Latin texts.
In medieval Latin texts,
cosmographies are extremely numerous and
permeate all sorts of texts from
astronomical, to historical,
to natural philosophy, and natural

history, and even Bible compilations.

In Old Norse however,
the cosmographies are normally tacked on
to ethnographies and travel descriptions.
The only exception in Old Norse
is a extremely voluminous
bible compilation called Stjrn, or
guideline if you like, of which you
can see a page on the next foil.
And in that bible compilations there
is the most extensive Old Norse
cosmography to be found anywhere,
dependent on several Latin
texts from the high Middle Ages,
especially the 12th and 13th century.
On the other hand, so
smaller cosmographies
of which we find several different types,
are found sprinkled over
manuscripts which deal with
natural history and astronomy.
Especially noteworthy is the manuscript
GkS, for Gamle kongelige Samling,
1812, 4to which not only
contains a cosmography, but
also the most extensive world map
found in Old Norse manuscript,
probably dating from the 13th century.
On that world map,
you have the whole map on the next foil,
there are over 110 legends which is
quite numerous for a medieval map.
And especially Europe, which you can see
on the next foil, is extremely detailed.
But it also shows that there was special
knowledge in Scandinavia about the north.
You find entries about Iceland and
Thile, the two of them separate,
as normally they're actually synonymous.
Thile stands for Thule.
That's a misconception, but
there's also Gautland, Norway,
Sweden, and, most interestingly,
with Russia,
there is the only medieval world map that
shows the town of Kiev, here called Kio.
Which you can see to the right hand of
the European part of the world map.
Medieval world maps called Mappae mundi
in Latin come in three major types.
The first one of these is
the T-O map mentioned above.
And the Old Norse map just mentioned
belongs to the type as well.

But so does the biggest known

medieval map still existing,
namely the Hereford world map,
which you can see on the next foil,
which also conforms to the same principle,
namely of a circle divided by a T
with Asia covering the eastern,
the top half of it, and Europe and
Africa sharing the western half.
Snorri Sturluson, whom you all know,
in his cosmographical descriptions
at the beginning of Heimskringla and Snorra Edda
also he doesn't mention a map
follows exactly the same pattern
when he describes the known world,
talking about the three parts of
the world namely Asia, Africa and Europe.
The second type of medieval world
maps are the so-called zone maps.
They are not nearly as
numerous as the T-O maps and
they divide the known globe
into five climatic zones.
Namely a hot zone along the equator,
two temperate inhabited
zones in the northern and
southern hemisphere, and
two cold zones at the poles of the globe.
The fact that there is an inhabited,
or even inhabitable zone
in the southern hemisphere sparked
ideas about the fourth continent.
And interestingly enough the two
very small Icelandic maps
of the type we find in Old Norse
manuscript show exactly that fact,
namely they point out in Old Norse that
the southern hemisphere is habitable.
The third type of map, namely, so-called
climatic maps, date back to antiquity and
they just divided Europe
into seven climatic zones.
However, there are no maps of
that type known from Iceland,
maybe due to the fact that the whole of
Scandinavia was lying outside those seven
climatic zones devised
by the ancient Greeks.
Apart from the world maps, most of
the cosmographic description in Old Norse
texts tend to concentrate on questions
of geography and ethnography.
Only very occasionally we
get glimpses on questions

of a more principal nature as

to the build of the universe.
Nobody in the middle ages, and
that is contrary to modern, popular
opinion, believed in the flat earth.
But
the question was the size of the globe and
whether it was really possible
to circumnavigate it.
The consequences of
the sphericity of the Earth
had to be exemplified
in more popular texts.
And such, the description in
the Old Norse King's Mirror dated to
around 1263 to 65 approximately,
where we get an example of
how one imagined the sun and
the spheric Earth to work together
is described in a simple simile,
describing the sun as a candle and the
Earth as an apple, being held next to it.
Therefor trying to explain the fact
why it's hotter along the equator, and
colder around the globe, the poles.
Of these popular, and rather simplistic
explanations of the mechanics
of the universe we find just a few more
examples in Old Norse manuscripts.
And they either seem to be translated
either from Isidore or from
the Elucidarius or from the Imago mundi
by Honorius of Autun written about 1125.
Where, for example,
the planets are likened
to ants crawling around on
a millstone turning around its axle.
Therefor trying to explain
the different positions
of the planets as seen from the Earth.
The above mentioned cosmographies
in Old Norse texts,
namely those that integrate cosmography,
geography, and ethnography come in
various lengths, ranging from
about 700 to about 1,500 words.
The longest of these is found in Hauksbk,
Dating to 1309,
approximately, and written in Norway.
But a slightly shorter one
manages better to integrate
the knowledge of the Scandinavians
about their own countries.
Mentioning not only the Scandinavian

countries countries themselves, but

also the Norse discoveries in Greenland,
Markland, Helluland, and Vinland.
And interestingly enough, also a land
bridge, the supposed land bridge,
leading from Norway to Greenland.
A road view still found
in Icelandic printed
maps in the 15th and 16th century like
the one you see on the next foil.
Now why were those cosmographies
actually written down in Old Norse
manuscripts at all?
Interestingly, it seems that an itinerary,
either in the sense of a travel report or
a travel guide was actually
the crystallizing point for
the collection of
cosmographical information.
It was only after Abbot Nikuls
of Munkathver in northern Iceland
came back from a pilgrimage
to Iceland in 1154.
He had been away for three years,
traveling from Denmark on foot to southern
Italy and then taking ship to Palestine
and returning probably the same way.
Only after he returned to Iceland,
the monks in Munkathver
started collecting all sorts of
cosmographical information and
putting it together into
manuscripts with his itinerary.
150 years later Haukr Erlendson who was
a judge in Norway and
owner and partly scribe
of the above mentioned manuscript
Hauksbk followed similar interests.
He also collected material
of a cosmographical nature.
And history, geography, cosmography
belonged to his main interests.
And so for, therefore he included sagas
even on the discovery of Greenland,
what we today call the Vinland sagas,
as well as mathematical
natural history, and
other texts falling into that category.
He even included a drawn map of Jerusalem,
which you can see on the next foil.
This map, he copied from a 12th,
early 12th century
Flemish encyclopedia, the so
called Liber floridus,

written by a Flemish monk

called Lambert of St. Omer.
Apart from these cosmographies proper
which try and attempt a description,
a systematic description of the old world,
there are numerous
texts which we can subsume under
the heading of cosmography.
They include details on all
sorts of geographical and
cosmographical nature, namely, for
example, on the four rivers of Paradise,
on the size of the continents,
on holy places in the world,
on Jerusalem and other towns in the world.
But also including, ethnographical
texts and even interesting facets
of that like lists of the monstrous races
in hidings of all corners of this globe.
And also a list of relics to be found
in the Hagia Sophia in Constantinople.
This last text is a very
interesting example of how
such snippets of information
traveled across Europe.
It, as it turns out It's not dependent
on the traveler notes of an Icelandic
traveler and Abbot Nikuls, for example,
never touched on Constantinople but
it turns out that it's an Old Norse
translation of a Latin text
written by an English pilgrim
sometime in the 12th century.
Of this text, two copies survive
in the Vatican Library and
they conform exactly
to the Old Norse text.
To summarize, it may be said that there
was a distinct interest in cosmography and
geography in medieval Iceland.
But as opposed to the continent
where those texts were more or
less exclusively written in Latin,
the Icelanders were busily composing,
translating and adopting geographical and
cosmographical texts in Old Norse.
Not only using Latin texts as the basis,
but
also extending it with
their own knowledge.
And the Icelanders, of course,
had a much better knowledge of
the Northern Hemisphere than most other
Europeans through the discoveries

of Greenland and of the New World, but

also of Eastern Europe and a mentioned,
a legend about Kiev and
Russia on the map is a testimony to that.
Only late medieval maps on the continent,
like the printed one here from 1490 and
depending on Scandinavian information
through a German geography but
printed in Venice,
in fact, started to digest
the information collected by
Scandinavians during the Middle Ages, and
integrating them into
a European world view.
That world view stayed upright and
for the next two to 300 years.
Even it, even if it contained
wrong information like the supposed
land bridge between Greenland and
Norway, which you can also see
on this early modern map here.