5 - Forty Icelandic Priests and a Map of the World

Summary

The two maps from Viðey, drawn across a single manuscript opening and its following verso, are a combined statement about the order of the world and Iceland's place within it. Both show the lands of the three continents, the kringla heimsins, centred on the Mediterranean Sea. The larger map shows in detail the geographic dispersion of the world’s people and places, while the smaller map, a simple T-O, bears only the names of the world's three continents. These maps’ depictions of the known world are enclosed within cosmological wheels that correlate the four cardinal directions with other natural fours. This conceptual frame conveys a vision of an ordered universe in which both space and time are subject to a fourfold ordering. The correspondences between the four cardinal directions, the four seasons, and the four component stages that measure a human life reveal the order intrinsic to nature. The Viðey Maps are complex visualisations of an ordered and harmoniously proportioned world.

The conceptual frame furnishes the two maps with their main organising principle. On the larger map, the cardinal directions are presented in both Old Norse and Latin at the head of each of the map's quarters.

East and west have been placed outside the map's elliptical frame, while north and south (and their associated natural fours) are accommodated by square inserts intruding onto the map's terrestrial circle. Beneath the cardinal directions is a circle of winds, blowing inwards from their points around the map's horizon. The map's other fours are written into the space below the perimeter of winds in each of the map's four quarters.

This quadripartite structure is more prominent still on the smaller map (f. 6v), the central T-O ensconced by three concentric circles divided into four by prominent radials extending from the map's middle. These concentric outlines accommodate groupings of natural fours: the outer circle containing the winds, months, and signs of the zodiac; the middle circle containing the seasons; and the inner circle containing the human microcosm. It would appear that this distinction of the conceptual frame into concentric zones was also intended for the larger map.