Portolan of Northern Europe by AnonymousOriginal Source: Museo Naval, Madrid.
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 back to 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 was reused as a book binding.
However, 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.
It is also unclear whether the map has been cut off at the bottom, where it could have originally shown 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.
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