From jellied seas to open waterways: redefining the northern limit of the knowable world

Abstract

In the ancient world, the northern limits of Europe were unknown, and believed to be unknowable. Geographers constructed a mental framework for the continent that restricted human inhabitation to more southerly regions. The constituents of this frame were: a region of monstrous creatures, a zone of uninhabitable wastelands, and ultimately, limitless ocean. By the sixteenth century, classically educated Europeans were sailing into the unknown Arctic regions in search of a north‐east passage, but their descriptions and even goals for exploration were still influenced by the classical preconceptions. The three elements of the classical frame were altered, but persisted in European geographical thought even after fifty years of northern exploration.