Septentrionalium Terrarum Descriptio

• Main Author: Mercator, Gerhard, 1512-1594
• Format: Still Image
• Language: Latin
• Published: Duisberg, Germany : [Publisher not identified] 1594
• Subjects: Arctic regions > Maps > Early works to 1800; Northern Hemisphere > Maps > Early works to 1800; Arctic; North Pole
• Online Access: http://digitalcollections.library.miami.edu/cdm/ref/collection/kis0001/id/2880

Taken from title: "From: Atlantis pars altera". Double-page engraved map, contemporary handcoloring; light marginal spotting and soiling, small hole in lower blank margin. The first map devoted to the north pole, second state. Literature: Burden, p. 88. Born in Flanders the Dutch cartographer Gerard Mercator spent most of his life in Duisberg, Germany. When he died in 1594 he was arguable, was "the greatest name in geographical science after Ptolemy" (Tooley, 31). Following his death in 1594, his son published the final part of Mercator's famous atlas, the Atlantis Pars Altera, which included this, the first map dedicated to the North Pole and an expansion of Mercator's inset of the area in his world map of 1569, here showing recent Northest and Northweast Passage discoveries. It is a map of the Northern Hemisphere from the Arctic Pole to latitude 60 degrees North, representing an ancient concept of the pole as a tall black mountain of lodestone surrounded by four large islands, divided by four inward-flowing rivers into which the oceans of the world empty, forming a giant whirlpool that sucks water back down into the bowels of the earth.