A fascinating map of Greenland, the North Atlantic, and the Canadian Arctic, reprinting Isaac de La Peyrère’s speculative conception of Arctic geography from nearly a century earlier.

The map accompanied La Peyrère’s “Account of Greenland” in the third edition of Awnsham and John Churchill’s Collection of Voyages and Travels (London, 1744-1746). The “Account” is an English translation of La Peyrère’s Relation du Groenland, first published at Paris in 1647. The “Relation” included a map upon which the present map is closely based, along with an “Advertissement sur la carte du Groenland,” which provides much source material for this discussion.

Broadly speaking, La Peyrère began constructing his map with four location he believed reasonably well established: Cape Farewell, Iceland, Spitsbergen, and Jens Munk’s winter harbor on Hudson Bay. He consulted the geographer Nicolas Sanson and mathematician Gilles Personne de Roberval on the map’s construction, and for the western geography compared Munk’s map with one attributed to Henry Hudson (Scroll to the bottom for a translation of the “Advertissement.”)

La Peyrère and the shape of Greenland
The map’s most striking feature is the treatment of “Groenland,” which seems to form part of an immense northern landmass extending from the vicinity of Hudson Bay eastward past Cape Farewell and nearly to Spitsbergen. La Peyrère’s “Advertissement” makes clear, however, that the apparent connection of Greenland with the Hudson Bay region to the west and Spitsbergen to the east rested on very different levels of confidence.

On the northeast he reported that he had heard it positively asserted in Denmark that the entire coast between Cape Farewell and Spitsbergen belonged to Greenland. He accordingly described Greenland as a vast northern country extending from Cape Farewell along the Arctic coast toward Spitsbergen and Novaya Zemlya; he even recorded speculation that it might ultimately join Asia. Spitsbergen itself, he noted, was reckoned by the Danes among the “lands of Greenland.”

He was much less certain about the western coast. Although his map draws an apparently continuous coast between Davis Strait and Munk’s winter harbor, La Peyrère expressly warned that an undiscovered river or strait might divide this territory and separate Greenland from America. Later in the Relation he returned to the question and concluded that the extent of the intervening sea was so poorly understood that one could not know whether Greenland and America were contiguous.

Also of interest, the map depicts Greenland transected by a “Streight St Martin”, south of which are two islands, the southern of which is named “Cape Farewell.” According to La Peyrère’s “Advertissement,”

“I have divided the southern part of Greenland, at Cape Farewell, into two islands, in the manner in which they are represented here. I did this not on the basis of the Danish accounts I used for my own narrative, for they say nothing of it, but on the basis of a map in the library of His Eminence Cardinal Mazarin…

 

“These words are written at the foot of that map: “This delineation was made by Martin, son of Arnold, born in Holland in the town called Den Briel, who twice undertook a voyage to the island called Old Greenland, as chief commander, in the years 1624 and 1625.””

This treatment seems to have been influential, as it shows up for example on Moses Pitt’s 1680 “Map of the North-Pole.”

“New Denmark” and Jens Munk
The Danish nomenclature at left (“King Christians Streight,” “King Christians Sea,” “New Denmark”) derives principally from a 1624 map by Jens Munk, sent by Christian IV of Denmark in 1619 in search of a Northwest Passage. Munk entered Hudson Strait and Hudson Bay and wintered near the mouth of the present Churchill River in Manitoba. On the map, two small ships and the label “Monks Winter harbour” mark this location  The expedition ended catastrophically: disease and privation killed nearly the entire company, and only Munk and two other men survived to make their way back to Denmark.

Relative to the objective of Munk’s voyage—locating a Northwest Passage—on this map the jury is still out. A number of possible outlets from “King Christians Sea” are depicted as closed bays, but a single outlet at the northwest corner is left open, presumably for future exploration. 

Frisland
Southwest of Iceland appears “Frisland,” one of the most persistent phantom islands in the history of North Atlantic cartography.

Frisland entered European mapmaking through the Zeno map of 1558, which purported to record much earlier voyages in the North Atlantic by the Venetian brothers Nicolò and Antonio Zeno. The island never existed, but the authority accorded the Zeno account led Frisland to be copied by Mercator, Ortelius, and later cartographers. It survived on maps of the North Atlantic long after repeated navigation of the region should have rendered it untenable.

In all, a fascinating survival of 17th-century Arctic geography, combining exploration, guesswork, and inherited cartographic error.

References
Kenneth A. Kershaw, Early Printed Maps of Canada, vol. II, #398. Rodney Shirley, Maps in the Atlases of the British Library, G.CHUR-1d, #20.

 

Translation of the “Advertissement sur la carte du Groenland”
in Isaac de la Peyrère, “Relation sur Groenland” (Paris, 1663)

“I may say that Monsieur Chapelain is the true author of this map, inasmuch as he judged it absolutely necessary for understanding my account, and I could hardly go wrong in following the advice of a person held in such high and universal esteem.

“I have constructed this map on the basis of four latitudes that were particularly well known to me: that of Cape Farewell, of Iceland, of Spitsbergen, and of that place in the Christian Sea where the ice stopped Captain Munk, here marked and named “Munk’s Winter Harbour.”

“I took the longitudes of all these places from the meridian of the island of Ferro in the Canaries, on the advice of Monsieur Roberval, a mathematician of great reputation, and Monsieur Sanson, an excellent geographer, whom I consulted concerning the construction of this map.

“The longitude of Munk’s winter harbour was known to me more precisely than the others by means of a lunar eclipse reported in that captain’s own account. He says that he saw it while at that harbour, at about eight o’clock in the evening on the twentieth of December in the year 1619. According to the tables of celestial motions, it should have appeared at Paris at about three o’clock in the morning on the 21st of the same month. But because this eclipse lasted three hours or more, and Captain Munk does not say whether he saw it at its beginning, middle, or end, Monsieur Gassendi, whom I consulted about this difficulty, and whose abilities are known to all who profess a love of learning, advised me, in order to arrive at a plausible conjecture and not fall into either extreme, to suppose that this eclipse was observed at Munk’s harbour between its beginning and its end, that is to say, around the midpoint of the time it lasted, and at approximately the hour at which it should have appeared at Paris.

“From this it would follow that when it is three in the morning at Paris, it is only eight in the evening of the preceding day at Munk’s harbour, and that there is a difference of seven hours between the two places. Now, taking fifteen degrees for each hour, according to the rules of the science, it would likewise follow that the meridian of Munk’s harbour would be 105 degrees distant from the meridian of Paris; and, placing Paris at 23½ degrees of longitude, Munk’s harbour ought to be placed at 278½ degrees, that is, 81½ degrees beyond the meridian of the Canaries. And it would be evident by the same reasoning that, reckoning twelve common French leagues for each degree of this parallel, whose degrees are about half as small as the degrees of the great circles, this harbour would be about 1,260 leagues from Paris.

“I have divided the southern part of Greenland, at Cape Farewell, into two islands, in the manner in which they are represented here. I did this not on the basis of the Danish accounts I used for my own narrative, for they say nothing of it, but on the basis of a map in the library of His Eminence Cardinal Mazarin, which Monsieur Naudé—the soul of that great body of excellent books and curious researches that make up this illustrious library—was kind enough to communicate to me.

“These words are written at the foot of that map:

“This delineation was made by Martin, son of Arnold, born in Holland in the town called Den Briel, who twice undertook a voyage to the island called Old Greenland, as chief commander, in the years 1624 and 1625.”

“This Martin, son of Arnold, calls Greenland an island, although it is not yet known whether it is an island, a continent, or composed of islands. He says that this is the map of Old Greenland. He might have said of old and new Greenland, for no other is known. And what we know of it ought rather to be called New Greenland than Old Greenland. The reason is that, although Old Greenland was certainly situated somewhere in the land described here, and west of Iceland, nevertheless its exact location cannot be determined, and it is unknown even to the Norwegians of today, although their ancestors discovered and inhabited it for entire centuries, as will be explained more fully in this account.

“What is represented here concerning the connection of Cape Farewell with Christian Strait and the Christian Sea, and with Munk’s winter harbour, was taken from a map that Captain Munk had made of his voyage, which is printed with his account. I followed it all the more willingly because it bears a resemblance to the map of Captain Hudson himself, who first discovered this strait and this sea; Monsieur Chapelain, as courteous as he is curious, took that map from his cabinet and placed it in my hands so that I might compare it at leisure with the one I have from Captain Munk.

“I do not dare assert that the entire coast of the Christian Sea and of the west, described here between Davis Strait and Munk’s winter harbour, belongs to Greenland, because there may be some considerable river or some strait unknown to me that cuts through this land and separates Greenland from America.

“What makes me still more uncertain on this point is that I did not hear it said in Denmark that this whole coast belonged to Greenland, as I did hear it affirmed of the whole northeastern coast lying between Cape Farewell and Spitsbergen. I leave the resolution of this doubt to those who may have greater knowledge of it from English and Dutch accounts, since my intention here has been only to write what I learned of this land from Danish books and from the conversations I had in Denmark.” (translated from the French by ChatGPT, Sept. 2026)