Claudius Clavus

Claudius Clavus (also known as Claudius Claussön Swart, Claudius Clavus Suartho or Nicholas Niger, * September 14, 1388, † unknown ) was a Dane who is sometimes regarded as the first cartographer in Northern Europe.

Life

It is believed that he was born in the village Salling on the island of Funen. To 1423-1424 he lived in Rome. He is known for his allegedly cartographic works that depict the Islands and Greenland coastline with an amazing for its time accuracy, but are provided with obscure local information. Well to support the credibility of his statements, he claimed that he had traveled the coast of Greenland to 70 degrees and 10 minutes north latitude to the north, and even to 72 latitude to explore the country.

To 1427 he added at the request of Cardinal at Filiaster a copy of the Geographia of Ptolemy, a map and a description of the North - Western European countries. This card is preserved and is now in the library of Nancy. Later he made a second card in addition to a " Description of North -West Europe and Greenland ." This second card is lost today. However, the notes by Bjornbo in the Austrian National Library in Vienna was rediscovered. Based on this discovery to solve the riddle of the dubious location information on many maps of the early modern period succeeded.

Clavus had namely the drawing of Greenland provided with location information, based on a verse of a Danish folk song, which was about an incident in Greenland. The place names to the drawing Islands based on the name of runes. Later cartographers copied then - what was customary in those times - such information in their own works. In particular, the forger Nicolo Zeno went to eat with his Zeno card itself a forger. But others, like Donnus Nicholas Germanus and Henricus Martellus Germanus took over this information. It is therefore assumed that was " preserved " in the works of the latter two, the second map of Claudius Clavus '.

It is noteworthy that Clavus is considered quite favorably in the research, because his cards are fairly well in terms of graphical and have brought the cartography in the right direction. It is considered also obvious that he had actually snapped something about Iceland and Greenland and then actually brought into the correct shape. In contrast, Zeno invented whole countries and gave the maps to the modern era several centuries phantom islands, such as the island Frisland.