{"id":11863,"date":"2022-07-04T04:12:38","date_gmt":"2022-07-04T04:12:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/tw\/?post_type=product&p=11863"},"modified":"2022-07-04T04:12:38","modified_gmt":"2022-07-04T04:12:38","slug":"olaus-magnus-sea-serpent","status":"publish","type":"product","link":"https:\/\/www.booksofall.com\/tw\/olaus-magnus-sea-serpent\/","title":{"rendered":"Olaus Magnus\u2019 Sea Serpent"},"content":{"rendered":"

The terrifying Great Norway Serpent, or Sea Orm, is the most famous of the many influential sea monsters depicted and described by 16th-century ecclesiastic, cartographer, and historian Olaus Magnus. Joseph Nigg explores the iconic and literary legacy of the controversial serpent from its beginnings in the medieval imagination to modern cryptozoology.<\/strong><\/p>\n

In his comprehensive study,\u00a0The Great Sea-Serpent: An Historical and Critical Treatise<\/em>\u00a0(1892), Dutch zoologist Antoon Cornelius Oudemans lists more than three hundred references to the notorious sea monster in his chronological \u201cLiterature on the Subject\u201d. The first ten of those, 1555-1665, cite Olaus Magnus\u2019 sea serpent: editions of Olaus\u2019\u00a0Historia de gentibus septentrionalibus<\/em>\u00a0(\u201cHistory of the Northern Peoples\u201d) and natural histories of Conrad Gesner, Ulisse Aldrovandi, Edward Topsell, and John Jonston. The list establishes Olaus\u2019 serpentine monster as the major ancestral source of sea serpent lore from the sixteenth century to widespread sightings of such creatures in Oudemans\u2019 own time. It is the basis for illustration and discussion of the creature in marine studies and popular fantasy up to the present, five hundred years after Olaus created it.<\/p>\n

While Oudemans cites natural histories in which copies or variations of Gesner\u2019s famous woodcut of Olaus\u2019 sea serpent appear, his list does not refer to the monster\u2019s iconic source: the 1539\u00a0Carta Marina<\/em>. Oudemans had not seen the map. After it went out of circulation by the 1580s, it was lost for three centuries until a copy was discovered in the Munich state library in 1886, shortly before publication of\u00a0The Great Sea-Serpent<\/em>. A second copy surfaced in 1962 and is now in the Uppsala University Library. The wall map, measuring about 5 feet (1.5m) wide and 4 feet (1.2m) high, was the largest, most accurate, and most detailed map of Scandinavia\u2013\u2013or of any European region\u2013\u2013at that time. A Catholic priest exiled with his Archbishop of Uppsala brother, Johannes, from their native Sweden after it converted to Lutheranism, Olaus began compiling the nationalistic map in Poland in 1527. Created to show the rest of Europe the rich history, culture, and natural wonders of the North prior to the Reformation, the map was printed in Venice twelve years later.<\/p>\n

The northern seas of the marine and terrestrial map teem with fantastic sea monsters either drawn or approved by Olaus. The most dramatic of those, off the busy coast of Norway, below the dreaded Maelstr\u00f6m, is the great serpent, coiling around a ship\u2019s mast and lunging with bared teeth at a sailor on the deck. Like the map\u2019s other sea beasts, the serpent is not just a cartographical decoration to fill space, as in Jonathan Swift\u2019s \u201celephants in wont of towns.\u201d It is meant to represent a real animal, one that Nordic sailors and fishermen vividly described to Olaus on his travels around Scandinavia. The Latin legend accompanying the image indicates the monster is 300 feet (91.4m) in length. According to the map\u2019s key, on the other hand, it is \u201cA worm 200 feet long wrapping itself around a big ship and destroying it.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Since publication of\u00a0The Book of Gryphons<\/em><\/a>\u00a0in 1982,\u00a0Joseph (Joe) Nigg<\/span>\u00a0has explored the rich cultural lives of mythical creatures in a variety of styles and formats for readers of all ages.\u00a0Sea Monsters: The Lore and Legacy of Olaus Magnus\u2019s Marine Map<\/em><\/a>\u00a0was published in 2013 by Ivy Press in the United Kingdom and as\u00a0Sea Monsters: A Voyage Around the World\u2019s Most Beguiling Map<\/em><\/a> by the University of Chicago Press in the United States.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"