Friesland: The Land That Never Was

Published in

· 14 Apr 2023

Between 1540 and c.1700 there persisted a cartographic anomaly known as ‘Frisland’ [the most common spelling]. Frisland came into being in the mid-16^th century for two reasons:

As a result of scanty geographical knowledge of the Iceland-Greenland- N.E. Canada region.
As the result of transferring the Earth to a flat map.

It seems to have started with Ptolemy’s Geographica Universalis [1540] with the island ‘Coterati’ [A] off ‘Francisca’ [now called Labrador]. A, B, E and F resemble parts of Newfoundland [known before 1627 as ‘Terra de Baccalaos’] as seen on maps today.

Only Pierre Descaliers in 1550 came close to accurately depicting the whole landmass. [Ortelius showed a group of islands]. With relative distances, landmass sizes and positions distorted. It is clear how Frisland became a distinct location lying between Greenland and Iceland. In fact C resembles the latter on modern maps. The form and size of Frisland seems to have depended on the whim of the cartographer:

Note the similarities in the coastlines of D, E, G, H and I. On most maps in that c.160 year period the bays or headlands aren’t named, neither are any ‘towns’ marked. When they are, their names and siting are fairly consistent, as though they were actual places:

Caboru;
Aqua;
Campa;
Rane;
Frisland;
Rovea;
Godmec [T. de Bry - Gramec];
Sor[i]ando;
Ocibar;
Sanestol;
Hondius and Pitt - Banar [Ortelius - Venden dea Portos]. CB. Cape Bovet; CC. Cape Cunalar; CS. Cape Spag[n]ia; GN. Golfa Norda; SG. Sudero Golfo.

Had it existed, Frisland would surely have been mentioned and mapped by Viking seafarers. Between c.980-986 Eirik Thorvaldson [known as ‘the Red’ because of his hair colour] voyaged from Iceland to Greenland, as he’d been exiled for manslaughter. Greenland had been sighted a few years earlier by Gunnbjörn Úlfsson, but Eirik was the first to land and settle there. He gave the island its name to try and encourage others to join him! The fact it was four-fifths ice meant that his two bases were coastal. The Western Settlement, near present-day Nuuk (Godthåb), was the starting point for his son Leif’s journey westwards in c.1000.

There has been much debate about the location of Leif’s ‘Vinland’, Labrador, Newfoundland, Nova Scotia and New England all being candidates. The epic explorations of Helge Ingstad in the 1950s and 1960s convinced him that the only location “that would have fully corresponded with the sagas” [C.W. Ceram] was Newfoundland. Instead of meaning ‘wine land’, he argued, it simply referred to a fertile region. Near the fishing village of L’Anse aux Meadows’ [an Anglo-French name meaning ‘The Bay by the Meadows’] Ingstad discovered remains “that were clearly not those of Indian or Eskimo settlements” [Ceram], including a vast longhouse. Archaeological finds confirmed their Scandinavian origin, the radiocarbon date of charcoal pieces c.1000. The longhouse was thought to have been Leif’s residence.

In c.1700 A.F. Zurner in his World Map finally dispatched Frisland with the terse “vol fabulosa vol submersa”, thereby consigning the island to the status of mere myth ... As the cartography of the region improved Frisland was no more.