Portolan of Northern Europe

This map was drawn in black ink and shows the Atlantic coastline of Spain, France, Germany, Scandinavia, England, Ireland, Iceland, and the coast of European Russia as far as the Kanin Peninsula. The courses are arranged around a central hub in the North Sea located at the same latitude as Edinburgh.

The map can be dated from the first half of the 16th century. We know that it was no longer being used as a cartographic document by 1574 given that its parchment had instead been reused as a book binding. There are clues that the map's creator may have been a cartographer at the Casa de la Contratación (House of Commerce) in Seville. Place names are written in Spanish and the map has characteristics of Mediterranean cartography, including a particular rigidity in the way the coasts are drawn. However, the model on which it was based appears to have been Portuguese as the Galician-Portuguese and Cantabrian regions are the only areas drawn out of the whole peninsula.

It is also unclear whether the map has been cut off at the bottom and in fact originally showed the whole of the Iberian Peninsula and Mediterranean Sea. This seems unlikely, however, given that the numerous place names indicate that the map's main area of interest is Northern Europe.

Medieval "portolans" (also called "portolan charts") were cartographic instruments that, together with other nautical equipment such as compasses, became indispensable tools allowing ships to move safely around the Mediterranean coastline. Their origins can be traced back to the "peripli" manuscripts used to record oral descriptions of coastal routes by Greek and Roman navigators. In time these developed into "portolan charts": a geographical summary including port characteristics, approximate distances between coastal features, river mouths, anchorage information, and any other references that a seafarer might find useful on their journey. This information was written on parchment or a similar material, resulting in what are now known as nautical or portolan charts.

Portolan charts were first created in the Middle Ages (13th century) and were produced until the Early Modern Period. They were originally made in a region of the Mediterranean where there were intensive political, commercial, and cultural links between cities. Major centers of map production included Majorca, Genoa, and Venice.