Dwellers of the waves: Sea monsters, classical history, and religion in Olaus Magnus’s Carta Marina

Abstract

ABSTRACT The article presents the spectacular monsters depicted in the Norwegian Sea on Olaus Magnus’s pioneering map of the northern countries, the Carta Marina, published in Italy during the Reformation. Olaus Magnus later discussed them in detail in his Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus (‘Description of the Northern Peoples’), published in Italy in 1555 during the Counter-Reformation. The article places the two works within a religio-political context and discusses how the 1539 map not only reveals the revival of Ptolomaic geography but also juxtaposes religious polemic and natural history, reflecting a whole spectrum of epistemologies, sources, and types of evidence. The various ways of classifying the monsters point towards different interpretations of monstrosity itself and of the interrelations between the northern monsters. The author further discusses in geographical, historical and natural terms the various understandings of the north that are visualized on the map. The map is of particular interest because of its early date, the widespread impact of its imagery and ideas, and its geographical exactitude.