Sea Monsters

A Voyage around the World's Most Beguiling Map

Joseph Nigg

• Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780226925165
• eBook ISBN: 9780226925189
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Military & Maritime History
• Index: History

The mythic creature expert and author of Phoenix takes readers through a bestiary of sea monsters featured on the famous 16th century map Carta Marina. In the sixteenth century, sea serpents, giant man-eating lobsters, and other monsters were thought to swim the waters of Norther Europe, threatening seafarers who ventured too far from shore. Thankfully, Scandinavian mariners had Olaus Magnus, who in 1539 charted these fantastic marine animals in his influential map of the Nordic countries, the Carta Marina. In Sea Monsters, mythologist Joseph Nigg brings readers face-to-face with these creatures and other magnificent components of Magnus's map. Nearly two meters wide in total, the map's nine wood-block panels comprise the largest and first realistic portrayal of the region. But in addition to its important geographic significance, Magnus's map goes beyond cartography to scenes both domestic and mystic. Close to shore, Magnus shows humans interacting with common sea life—boats struggling to stay afloat, merchants trading, children swimming, and fisherman pulling lines. But from the offshore deeps rise some of the most terrifying sea creatures imaginable—like sea swine, whales as large as islands, and the Kraken. In this book, Nigg draws on Magnus's own text to further describe and illuminate these inventive scenes and to flesh out the stories of the monsters. Sea Monsters is a stunning tour of a world that still holds many secrets for us land dwellers, who will forever be fascinated by reports of giant squid and the real-life creatures of the deep that have proven to be as bizarre and otherworldly as we have imagined for centuries. It is a gorgeous guide for enthusiasts of maps, monsters, and the mythic. "[A] beautiful new exploration of the Carta Marina."— Wired

THE VOYAGE

“There are monstrous fish on the Coasts or Sea of Norway”

OLAUS MAGNUS

THE VAST OCEAN

At the outset of a voyage up the northern seas of the Carta Marina, Olaus Magnus speaks of the expanse and mystery of the waters of the world. His paean to the sea and its counterparts to land and sky relies heavily on ancient authority.

“The vast Ocean in its Gulph offers all Nations an admirable spectacle, and shews divers sorts of Fish; and these not onely wonderful for magnitude, as the Stars are compared one with another, as they are terrible in shape; so that there is nothing in the Ayr nor Earth, nor Bowels of it, or in domestique Instruments that may seem to lye hid, that is not found in the depth of the Sea. For in the Ocean that is so broad and by an easie and fruitful increase receives the Seeds of Generation, there are found many monstrous things in sublime Nature, that is always producing something; which being perplexed and rolled up and down one upon another by the ebbing and flowing of the Waters, they seem to generate forms from themselves and from other principles; that whatsoever is bred in any part of nature, we are perswaded is in the Sea, and many things are to be found there that are to be found nowhere else.

And not onely may we understand by sight that there are Images of Animals in the Sea, but a Pitcher, a Sword; Saws and Horses heads apparent in small Shell fish. Moreover you shall find Sponges, Nettles, Stars, Fairies, Kites, Monkies, Cows, Woolves, Mice, Sparrows, Black-Birds, Crows, Frogs, Hogs, Oxen, Rams, Horses, Asses, Dogs, Locusts, Calves, Trees, Wheels, Beetles, Lions, Eagles, Dragons, Swallows and such like: Amongst which, some huge Monsters go on Land and eat the roots of Trees and Plants: Some grow fat with the South wind; some with a North wind blowing.

Also, I must add, that on the Coasts of Norway, most frequently both old and new Monsters are seen, chiefly by reason of the inscrutable depth of the Waters. Moreover, in the deep Sea, there are many kinds of fishes, that seldome or never are seen by men.”

This book’s charted voyage begins at the bottom of the map and winds northward through the vast ocean’s Nordic seas, in whose waters Olaus’s sea beasts endanger fishermen and sailors. Like modern whale-watching tours, this course is set to sail in the map’s areas where certain beasts are known to be.

CHARTED COURSE ON THE CARTA MARINA

——— H ———

The Rockas and sharks

——— E ———

The Sea Worm and giant lobster

——— D ———

The Duck Tree

The Polypus (“Octopus”)

Balena and Orca

The Sea Swine

——— A ———

Southwest, not keyed, The Sea Unicorn

——— D ———

The Prister

The Ziphius

“Another grisly monster”

——— E ———

West, not keyed, The Sea Cow

A Rhinoceros-like Monster and giant lobster

——— D ———

Spermaceti

Beached Whale

——— A ———

More Pristers

The Island Whale

——— B ———

The Sea Serpent

Caribdis

Another Prister

Northwest, not keyed, A Sea Creature

A Rosmarus

The Kraken (Giant Squid)

Dangerous Fishing

Olaus continues, turning from ancient authority to what he has observed and what he has gleaned from fishermen who risk their lives on the Norwegian Sea:

“The Fishing is said to be dangerous in the Norway Ocean for many Reasons, because men fish in the open Sea very far from Land: When great Tempests arise, the Fisher-men are soon drown’d by the Waves: Where great Sholes of Ice flote, they are dispersed: by the fishing of Whales, and other Monsters they are distracted. Moreover, sometimes they are debilitated in their hands by some monstrous Fish out of the Sea; and if they do not presently let them go a Tempest riseth and drowns them. If therefore some rash Fisher-men, fighting with some Sea Monster, pull him into the ship, that is like a Fryer with his Cowl, they are presently overwhelmed with howling and crying of these Monsters, that they can neither cast forth their Hooks to catch fish nor row with their Oars, and they can scarce hoise [hoist] up Sail to be gone, unless they let go the Monster.

Many Thousands of Fisher-men dwell in the Villages in the utmost Borders of Norway. In February and March, and also in January, the Inhabitants of this Country go in strong ships to fish from the shore into the Deep: as far as they can sail in two days, carrying with them necessaries for their Food for 20 or 30 days. But the place where they most frequently exercise their Fishing is between Norway and Island. Nor do the Fisher-men, when it is Tempestuous Weather, ride at Anchor, but they fish floting up and down till their ships be full. And it is observed that when ever monstrous fish are drawn forth of the Sea; with men or Lions faces, and the like, that this always foreshews Discords and War in the Land.”

A sea monster “like a Fryer with his Cowl.” Conrad Gesner’s Sea Monk, (or Monk-fish), reproduced from Guillaume Rondelet’s book of fishes and adapted in many Renaissance natural histories. During Gesner’s own lifetime, the monster was caught in the Baltic, near Copenhagen. Marine authority Richard Ellis concludes the animal was a giant squid (The Quest for the Giant Squid, 1998). Rondelet, Gesner, and others pair the Sea Monk with the Sea Bishop, another cleric figure, based on a 1531 sighting near Poland.

A vignette from Olaus Magnus’s History chapter. Olaus Magnus scholar John Granlund notes the fish are cod and a halibut and that ice-fishing was not done in the north Norway waters.

Northern Ships

Fishermen and merchants ply the waters of the Carta Marina in crafts of many sizes and kinds: from rowboats, rafts, and leather boats of the Greenlanders to sailing ships of the northern European nations. While ships that decorate the open spaces of maps are often generic, Olaus’s are not. Like the tales he heard from Scandinavian fishermen, his boats and ships derive from his first-hand experience of living in the Baltic port city of Danzig and traveling throughout Scandinavia.

The medieval merchant vessels in the North Sea were influenced by the ships of the Norsemen. Like their predecessors, Hanse cogs—cargo boats of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries—were also “clinker-built” with overlapping hull planks, with a single square sail. Their side rudder, however, was moved to the stern, under a fighting platform. These were the ships of the Hanseatic League, a federation established by northern German cities to protect their trading interests. While the alliance’s centuries-long dominance of Northern European trade routes was fading, the three-masted carracks of southern Europe transformed shipbuilding in the North. These were typically “carvel-built,” with joined hull planking.

Carta Marina scholar Edward Lyman points out that the model for most of Olaus’s larger ships would seem to be a Flemish form o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Copyright
• Title
• Dedication
• Contents
• INVITATION TO A VOYAGE
• THE VOYAGE
• APPENDICES