A glance at the Zeno map (Fig. 19) discloses a good approximation
to the general outline, trend, and taper of Greenland, with certain
features which imply information. For a long time it was thought that
no earlier source existed from which this could have been drawn by
Zeno the compiler. But of later years other fifteenth-century maps
showing Greenland have been discovered in various libraries, notably
four by Nordenskiöld,[228] out of which or out of others like them
Zeno could certainly have gleaned all that he needed for judicious
copying. In particular the maps of Donnus Nicolaus Germanus (1466 to
1474, or a little later; e. g. Fig. 17), elaborated from the map of
Claudius Clavus (1427; Fig. 16), seem to supply the chief features of
the Zeno exhibition.[229] Sharing an error common to Clavus and all
successors of his school, Zeno connected Greenland to Europe. He also
represented its eastern coast as habitable at the extreme upper end. It
is true that a visitor to the real surviving Greenland settlement about
Ericsfiord probably would not learn the facts about these matters, so
that his misinformation is no disproof of the visits of the older Zeni
to that country. On the other hand, it would be difficult to point
to any convincing evidence that either of them was ever there. Kohl
suggests[230] that the fisherman’s story may be a mere reflection of
the general American knowledge of Greenlanders, and this might call
for the presence of one of the Zeni in Greenland to hear the story.
But, if the Norse of Greenland knew anything about Newfoundland or
Labrador, they could hardly have credited and passed along these word
pictures of cities, libraries, and kings. The only thing like internal
corroboration is in the geography of Estotiland and Drogio.
As Nicolò Zeno followed the disciples of Claudius Clavus in outlining
Greenland, so he took for his guide Mattheus Prunes’ map of 1553[231]
in dealing with the more eastern islands. Podanda or Porlanda (Pomona,
the main island of the Orkneys) and Neome (Fair Island) are in both
(Figs. 19 and 12). Prunes displaces these islands to a position west,
instead of south, of southern Shetland (Estiland or Esthlanda), and
Zeno simply carries them both still farther west, while moving them
southward; but his Neome is still in the latitude of the lower end of
Shetland. Long before the time of either of them, the Faroe Islands
had been shown as one territory--see the Ysferi (Faroe Islands) of
the eleventh-century map of the Cottonian MS. in the British Museum,
reproduced by Santarem.[232] The main islands are in fact barely
severed from each other by a thread of water.
FRISLAND
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