Overview

An innovative, interdisciplinary approach to the understudied Icelandic mappae mundi. The Icelandic mappae mundi (maps of the world), drawn between c. 1225 and c. 1400, are contemporary with the breathtaking rise of its vernacular literary culture, and provide important insights into the Icelanders' capacious geographical awareness in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. However, in comparison with those drawn elsewhere, among them the English Hereford mappa mundi, they have received little critical attention. This book explores the Icelandic mappae mundi not only for what they reveal about the Icelanders' geographical awareness, but as complex registers of Icelandic national self-perception and imagining, situating them in their various literary, intellectual, and material contexts. It reveals fully how Icelanders used the cartographic medium to explore fantasies of national origin, their political structures, and place in Europe. The small canon of Icelandic world maps is reproduced here photographically, with their texts presented alongside English translations to enable a wider understanding.

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9781843845690

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A book that is as important as it is interesting. * IMCoS Journal * This study of mappae mundi and their concomitant texts will certainly be useful to future scholars of all kinds in the tracing of medieval sources and thus improving the maps of the routes of ideas bridging the North Atlantic Ocean in the Middle Ages. Kedwards deserves praise for his perseverance in sharing his vast knowledge with us in this fine book. * SPECULUM *

A book that is as important as it is interesting. * IMCoS Journal *

A book that is as important as it is interesting. * IMCoS Journal * This study of mappae mundi and their concomitant texts will certainly be useful to future scholars of all kinds in the tracing of medieval sources and thus improving the maps of the routes of ideas bridging the North Atlantic Ocean in the Middle Ages. Kedwards deserves praise for his perseverance in sharing his vast knowledge with us in this fine book. * SPECULUM * Kedwards' study is an important contribution to the field of medieval geographies, this book also shows that maps are so much more than geographical documents and should be considered as part of the wider cultural record. -- Victoria E. H. Walker * Nottingham Medieval Studies *

Author Information

DALE KEDWARDS is HM Queen Margrethe II Distinguished Research Fellow at the Vigdís Finnbogadóttir Institute, the National Museum of Iceland, and the Museum of National History at Frederiksborg Castle.

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