(Text page to) Polus Arcticus. Ac Terrarum Circumjacentium descriptio.

• Main Authors: Mercator, Gerhard, 1512-1594, Mercator, Rumold, approximately 1545-1599
• Format: Text
• Language: unknown
• Published: Rumold Mercator 1595
• Subjects: Arctic; Dee; Fortuna; Four Islands; North Pole
• Online Access: https://www.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/RUMSEY~8~1~332482~90100968; https://media.davidrumsey.com/MediaManager/srvr?mediafile=/Size4/RUMSEY~8~1/190/10805002.jpg

This plate was originally published in 1595 in the posthumous part III of Mercator's Atlas. Verso: Latin text, 'Polus Arcticus Ac Terrarum Circumiacention descriptio' "The rare first state of Mercator's map of the North Polar regions, the first separately-published map of the North Polar Regions. It shows the North Pole surrounded by four islands, an iconic representation. It is also a telling documentation of the prevalent geographic theories of the time. Although best known for the projection named for him, Gerard Mercator was also the first cartographer to create an Arctic map. In fact, this was due in part to his famous projection. The Mercator projection sacrifices accuracy at the poles for navigational utility and efficiency. This map, the first stand-alone map devoted to the Arctic regions, is drawn from an inset on his famous world map of 1569—a clarification of the Arctic region that was so distorted on the larger world map. Mercator's classic map of the Arctic is in hemispherical form and framed by four medallions and a handsome floral border. The map extends thirty degrees in radius to sixty degrees N latitude—ten degrees wider in radius than the original inset. The pole itself is made up of four islands, which myth had it were separated by four strong flowing rivers. These carried the oceans of the world towards a giant whirlpool at the pole where there stood a large rock, labeled here as “Rupes Nigra et Altissima.” An account of this myth in Mercator's own hand still exists in a letter from the cartographer to John Dee. It is based in part on a report by the traveler Jocobus Cnoyen van Herzogenbusch describing a lost fourteenth-century work, Inventio Fortunata. The Fortuna tells the story of an English friar who traveled to the northern regions. It also mentions pygmies, which Mercator places on one of the four islands. Although many believed the rock at the North Pole to be magnetic, Mercator preferred to place a magnetic rock near the Strait of Anian, possibly in an attempt to explain magnetic ...