The Mappae Mundi of Medieval Iceland (Studies in Old Norse Literature)

The Icelandic mappae mundi (maps of the world), drawn between c. 1225 and c. 1400, are contemporary with the breathtaking rise of its vernacular literary culture, and provide important insights into the Icelanders' capacious geographical awareness in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, in comparison with those drawn elsewhere, among them the English Hereford mappa mundi, they have received little critical attention.
This book explores the Icelandic mappae mundi not only for what they reveal about the Icelanders' geographical awareness, but as complex registers of Icelandic national self-perception and imagining, situating them in their various literary, intellectual, and material contexts. It reveals fully how Icelanders used the cartographic medium to explore fantasies of national origin, their political structures, and place in Europe. The small canon of Icelandic world maps is reproduced here photographically, with their texts presented alongside English translations to enable a wider understanding.

DALE KEDWARDS is HM Queen Margrethe II Distinguished Research Fellow at the Vigds Finnbogadttir Institute, the National Museum of Iceland, and the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle.

Table of Contents
Introduction
The Icelandic hemispherical world maps
The Icelandic zonal map
The two maps from Viey
Iceland in Europe
Forty Icelandic Priests and a Map of the World
Conclusion
Map Texts and Translations
Bibliography