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The Mappae Mundi of Medieval Iceland
What did attempts to picture the world look like in medieval Iceland? And what do they tell us about Icelanders' perception of their place in the world?
Medieval Icelandic maps of the world (drawn in the period c. 1225 - c. 1400) bore witness to fundamental changes in the landscape of vernacular literary culture, scientific thinking and regional geopolitics.
In The Mappae Mundi of Medieval Iceland (Cambridge: D.S. Brewer, 2020), Dale Kedwards explores the plethora of meanings that medieval Icelandic map-makers invested into their works. From political statements about national origins, to diagrammatic expressions of cosmological theories, the mappae mundi provided a medium for medieval Icelanders to imagine their place in relation to the wide world, and even the physical universe.
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