Adam’s idea of oceanic insulation was accepted in many quarters, as
the maps disclose. Of course, they may not have derived it from him
in all instances, directly or indirectly, but at least they shared
it. Usually the name, slightly changed, becomes the equivalent “Green
Island” in one or another of several languages. Thus, to take a very
late instance, the map of Coppo, 1528[176] (Fig. 13), discloses near
the true site of Greenland a mass of land elongated from east to west,
but clearly all at sea with no greater land near it, and labeled Isola
Verde. There seems no room for doubt of the meaning or origin of this
name. That any land found there should be an island of the sea was
the natural assumption of geographers at that time. Maps of the early
sixteenth century generally show a scattering of islands south of North
America sometimes approaching an archipelago, sometimes more widely
distributed, and in either case being substitutes for what we now know
as North America and its appendages.
AS “ILLA VERDE” ON THE CATALAN MAP OF 1480
In another well-known map[177] (Fig. 7), an unnamed cartographer,
said to be Catalan, probably about 1480, delineates an elongated Illa
Verde (using the Portuguese name for island), locating it southwest of
Iceland, which bears the name Fixlanda, but is easily identifiable by
its outline and geographical features. His Illa Verde runs nearly north
and south, approximating more closely than Coppo’s island the true
trend of Greenland. It also by its greater bulk seems founded on more
adequate information. It is equally at sea and remote from other land,
except that off its concave southern end, with a narrow interval, lies
a large circular island named Brazil, our old mythical acquaintance of
medieval maps not often located so far westward but, as we have seen in
Chapter IV, apparently intended to represent the Gulf of St. Lawrence
region. These two islands strikingly resemble in general situation and
arrangement the Greenland and Estotiland (Labrador) in a map (Fig. 14)
illustrating Torfaeus’ early eighteenth century “Gronlandia,”[178]
except that the rounded outline of Estotiland is not completed, its
proportional area is greater than “Brazil,” the strait between the
two bodies of land is a little wider, and the lower end of Torfaeus’
Greenland is not made concave like that of Illa Verde. But again there
can be no doubt that the Illa Verde of the Catalan (if he were a
Catalan) represents the Greenland of Adam of Bremen and the sagas.
[Illustration: FIG. 13--Coppo’s world map of 1528 showing Green Island
(“isola verde”). (After Kretschmer’s hand-copied reproduction.)]
GREEN ISLAND ON SIXTEENTH-CENTURY MAPS
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